Music

Fanny Mendelssohn

1805–1847 · German

Early Romantic — the Berlin Sunday salon

Fanny Mendelssohn, who after marriage signed herself Fanny Hensel, wrote over 460 works, chiefly songs and piano music, but was pressed by her father and her brother Felix to treat composition as an ornament rather than a profession. She published almost nothing until the last year of her life, and six of her songs appeared under Felix's name. She died suddenly at forty-one while rehearsing one of his cantatas.

How to spot them

▸Short, intensely lyrical piano pieces and Lieder in the same idiom as her brother's — the family style, and long confused with it
▸A twelve-movement piano cycle, one piece for each month of the year, written out with a coloured epigraph and a watercolour by her husband on every page
▸Questions circle the Sonntagsmusiken, the Sunday morning concerts she ran at the Mendelssohn family house in Berlin
▸The biographical hooks: the pieces published under Felix Mendelssohn's name, and the letter in which their father told her music could only ever be an ornament

Key works — listen

A cycle of twelve character pieces for piano, one for each month, from a thawing spring to a chorale at the year's end (1841)

Das Jahr ('The Year') — her masterpiece; the fair copy is written on coloured paper with illustrations by her husband Wilhelm Hensel

A dramatic cantata on the plague of the firstborn and the crossing of the Red Sea, written for her Sunday concerts (1831)

Oratorium nach Bildern der Bibel — a full-scale oratorio, unperformed again for over 150 years

A four-movement piano trio in D minor, her last substantial chamber work, written for her sister Rebecka's birthday (1846)

Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 11 — published posthumously in 1850

A Grillparzer setting yearning for the warm south, issued as her brother's Op. 8 No. 3 and named by Queen Victoria as her favourite of his songs (1825)

Italien — one of six Fanny songs printed under Felix Mendelssohn's name

An 1846 set of six songs with piano, the first music she ever allowed to be published under her own name (1846)

Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 — issued by Bote & Bock in Berlin the year before she died

A concert overture in C major, her only surviving work for full orchestra (c. 1832)

Overture in C major — first recorded only in the 1990s

Quick-fire facts

•She was born in Hamburg on 14 November 1805, the eldest of the four Mendelssohn children; Felix was her junior by four years
•As a girl she could play all twenty-four preludes of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier from memory
•Her father Abraham wrote to her in 1820 that music could be only 'an ornament' for her, while for Felix it might be a profession
•Six of her songs were published under Felix's name, three in his Op. 8 and three in his Op. 9
•Queen Victoria told Felix that her favourite of his songs was Italien — which was in fact Fanny's
•She married the Prussian court painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829; their only child was named Sebastian, after Bach
•She ran the Sonntagsmusiken, Sunday morning concerts at the family home on Leipziger Strasse in Berlin, performing as pianist and conductor
•She finally published under her own name in 1846, against Felix's advice, beginning with the Sechs Lieder, Op. 1
•She died of a stroke on 14 May 1847 while rehearsing Felix's cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht; Felix died six months later, aged 38
•Her catalogue runs to more than 460 works, the great majority unpublished in her lifetime

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources

R. Larry Todd — Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn
Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Hensel [née Mendelssohn], Fanny Cäcilie
Encyclopaedia Britannica — Fanny Mendelssohn