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Fanny Hensel born
Mendelssohn
14.11.1805, Hamburg - 14.5.1847 in Berlin
14. November 2005 – bicentenary
Introduction
Fanny Hensel grew up in a well-situated and highly
cultured Berlin family. She and her younger brothers and
sister Felix, Rebecca and Paul all received excellent
education. The banker Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and
his wife Lea were quick to recognise Fanny's exceptional
musical talent and, just like her brother Felix, she
received instruction from the best music teachers
available. In 1816, during a period of several months
spent in Paris, the children studied piano with Marie
Bigot de Morogues, who was a particular favourite of
Haydn's and Beethoven's.
Hamburg 1800
Education and first
compositions
After returning to Berlin they took lessons with the
well-known Beethoven interpreter Ludwig Berger. Abraham
Mendelssohn hired the conscientious Carl Friedrich
Zelter, a friend of Goethe's and the director of the
BERLINER SINGAKADEMIE, to teach his children music
theory and composition. Fanny soon became known to the
Mendelssohn's circle of friends and acquaintances not
just as an excellent pianist but also as the composer of
lieder and piano pieces. In an obituary written just
after Fanny's sudden death, the Berlin music critic
Ludwig Rellstab wrote that she had shared "a partnership
of talent" with her famous brother and "had achieved a
level of musical knowledge which few other artists who
have dedicated their lives to music could claim".
While Felix's education included lengthy travels and he
was able to try himself as a conductor and pianist and
become acquainted with the famous musicians of the times,
Fanny was faced with many restrictions. At the age of 14
her father reminded her to concentrate on her future
role as a wife and mother. Her musical activities did
not reach beyond the bounds of the Mendelssohn's circle:
public concerts and the publication of musical works
were not deemed to be womanly activities. As Jews who
had converted to Protestantism the Mendelssohns were
particularly eager to live according to bourgeois
convention. Restricted to the domestic realm, the
majority of Fanny Hensel's compositions were piano
pieces and lieder which could be performed in the
evening concerts held at the Mendelssohn's home. Works
such as the PIANO QUARTET written in 1822 remain unusual
for her work during this time. In an attempt to make her
compositions known beyond the inner circle of family
friends, in 1827 and 1830 she found opportunity to
publish five lieder and a duet with piano accompaniment
under Felix Mendelssohn's name in his Liederheften op. 8
and 9. She made presents of copies of her lieder and
piano pieces to friends and acquaintances.
Sonntagsmusiken
Nevertheless, Fanny Hensel was able to reach at least a
small circle of concert-goers by presenting her works in
the ‘Sonntagsmusiken’ which were established during the
early 1820s. Following the example of Zelter's
‘Freitagsmusiken’, Abraham Mendelssohn hired musicians
from the HOFKAPELLE to play in these concerts which took
place at the Mendelssohn's home every other Sunday from
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.. This gave both Felix and Fanny a
chance to perform works by earlier and contemporary
composers and to try out their own works in a
semi-public setting with a hand-picked audience.
In 1829, when Felix left home to embark upon his first
extended trip to England, the "Sonntagsmusiken" were not
continued. In the spring of 1831 Fanny, who had married
Wilhelm Hensel in October 1829, decided to reinstate
these concerts which, as reported by Rellstab, were "a
musical festival of the most unusual sort, in which
meticulous interpretations of classical works of former
and current times could be heard and the pleasure was
enhanced by the performances or mere presence of the
very best Berlin musicians or those from elsewhere who
visited our city." Fanny Hensel conducted and
accompanied her choir which consisted of about twenty
singers giving, joined by instrumentalists who were
friends of hers, high-level performances of oratorios,
opera arias and chamber music by Bach, Mozart,
Beethoven, Weber and Mendelssohn. Here she was also able
to make her own works known.
These concerts became increasingly well attended over
the years with Fanny presenting her works for piano
solo, her lieder, duets, choral songs, the scene HERO
AND LEANDER for Soprano and Piano or Orchestra, the
PIANO TRIO which appeared posthumously as op. 2 as well
as the ORCHESTRAL OVERTURE of 1830, for the première of
which the Orchestra of the Königstädter Theater was
engaged. In addition to the friends and acquaintances
who came to the "Sonntagsmusiken", quite a number of
famous people attended: the Humboldt brothers, Franz
Liszt, Clara Wieck-Schumann, Johanna Kinkel, Heinrich
Heine etc. These concerts with which, according to
Rellstab, Fanny Hensel "to whom we are much indebted,
enriched the artistic life in our town", made up for
some of the restrictions she was forced to live with.
Conducting such concerts had a positive effect on her
work as a composer. In 1831, she composed larger works
for soloists, choir and orchestra such as the cantatas
HIOB and LOBGESANG and MUSIK FÜR DIE TOTEN DER
CHOLERA-EPIDEMIE (ORATORIUM NACH BILDERN DER BIBEL).
Venedig 1850
Italy
In 1839/40 the Hensel family was finally able to fulfil
a long-standing wish: they spent a year travelling in
Italy. This year was among the happiest in Fanny's life.
In Italy she finally received recognition for her work
beyond the family circle and became acquainted with
various musicians who thought highly of her work and
were supportive of her creativity.
The young Charles Gounod, for example, wrote the
following in his memories, "Mrs. Hensel was an extremely
learned musician and played the piano very well. Despite
her small, slight figure she was a woman of excellent
intellect and full of energy that could be read in her
deep, fiery eyes. Along with all this she was an
extremely talented pianist...". After returning to
Berlin, Fanny composed her most important piano work,
the biographical cycle DAS JAHR (1841). During the epoch
in which she lived Fanny was the only composer to use
the idea of depicting each of the twelve months of the
year musically.
Berlin 'Unter den Linden' um 1800
Publications
It was only in the last year of her life that Fanny,
encouraged by the family friend Robert von Keudall and
despite her brother's explicit objections, found the
courage to start systematically having her works printed.
Thus, in 1846 lieder, a cappella choral songs and piano
pieces appeared with the opus numbers 1 to 7.
Death
She was not to carry through further publications of her
works: Fanny Hensel died of a stroke suffered during a
rehearsal for one of her "Sonntagsmusiken" on May 14th,
1847.
Following the death of his sister, Felix Mendelssohn
fell into a deep depression; he died suddenly on
November 4th of the same year. Upon the request of his
brother-in-law Wilhelm Hensel, he had arranged for
several of Fanny's further works to be published. They
appeared in 1850. In 1987, the Furore Verlag began
publishing those of her works which had remained
unprinted. Today Fanny Hensel born Mendelssohn is
considered to be one of the most important composers of
the romantic era.
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