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Fanny Mendelssohn
1805 – 1847
Fanny's father and brother did not want her to perform in public, so she used the family’s Sunday concerts to play, conduct and present her work.
Life and Music
- Although Fanny’s music is similar to her brother Felix’s, it is more emotionally direct.
- Although culture and education were highly valued in the Mendelssohn household, the expectations for Felix and Fanny in the public sphere were different.
- Felix was encouraged to go out and explore, learn from travel, meet people and exhibit his pianistic and composing talents. But it was considered unseemly for a 19th-century woman to do those things, so Fanny was forced to accept that her destiny was to become a housewife and mother.
- Music was Fanny’s life, and somehow she had to find a way of doing what she loved while being prevented from doing it in public. But she had two advantages. First, she married a man who totally supported her musical efforts. Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, the Prussian Court painter, encouraged her to compose and even wanted her to publish.
- Fanny wrote over 400 works, including many songs and piano pieces, other vocal works and chamber music. However, her insecurity, the discouragement around her, and the lack of wider opportunities meant she didn’t venture into some of the more large-scale forms she could well have tackled, given suitable encouragement.
- Felix was ambivalent about her publishing; he felt it was unseemly for a woman. However, as women had to stay at home in the 19th century, Felix had been happy to include some of her work with his own; he incorporated some of her songs in his Op.8 and Op.9.
- In 1834, Fanny wrote her String Quartet. It is not the first quartet written by a woman - Maddalena Lombardini-Sirmen got there about 60 years earlier.
- Probably the happiest time of Fanny’s life was 1839-40, when she and Wilhelm toured Italy for a year. They had musical parties most evenings; she played German music with which they were not familiar, to their collective delight.
- When she died suddenly, of a stroke (in the middle of a Sonntagsmusik rehearsal) in May 1847, her family was devastated. When Felix died six months later, many said it was of a broken heart.
Did you know?
Felix was in London for the 1842 Coronation, and when received at Buckingham Palace by Queen Victoria, Fanny asked to sing some of his songs with him. She chose ‘Italien’, and Felix then had to admit it was by Fanny. Many people think that the Songs without Words were Fanny’s idea as well although there is nothing to prove it either way.
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