Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel — Storied No. 037

In 1820 Abraham Mendelssohn sat down to explain his daughter's future to her. Music, he wrote, "will perhaps become his profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament." The he was her younger brother Felix. Fanny was fourteen, and by every account inside that famously musical household she was at least his equal at the keyboard and on the page. She did not argue. She simply kept composing — for another twenty-seven years, mostly into manuscripts that almost nobody was permitted to read.

She published under her own name at last in 1846, at forty, against her brother's advice. The songs sold; reviewers were kind; she began another opus. Ten months later she collapsed at the piano and died. Most of what she wrote would wait a further century and a half to be printed at all.

Forty-one years, four hundred works

The lifeline

1805

Born in Hamburg, a granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn

1829

Marries the painter Wilhelm Hensel, who draws her constantly and urges her to publish

1831

Takes charge of the family's Sunday Musicales in Berlin, conducting chorus and orchestra herself

1840

Winters in Rome, fêted by the young French composers of the Villa Medici

1846

Publishes her Opus 1 under her own name — her first music printed as hers

1847

Dies of a stroke at 41, mid-rehearsal; Felix follows within six months

By the numbers

The measure of her

460+

Works she composed — songs, piano cycles, chamber music, an oratorio

6

Of her songs printed under Felix's name, in his Opus 8 and Opus 9

24

Bach preludes she played from memory at 13, as a birthday gift to her father — by the family's own telling

40

Her age when Opus 1 appeared, one year before her death

What she wrote

The work

1827 & 1830

Six songs under her brother's name, in Felix's Opp. 8 and 9. One of them, Italien, was named by Queen Victoria in 1842 as her favourite of his — and Felix had to confess whose it actually was.

1831

Oratorio on Scenes from the Bible, written in the year cholera swept Berlin and performed at her own Sunday concerts — a full choral-orchestral work by a composer with no public stage.

1834

String Quartet in E-flat major. Felix criticised its free handling of form; she defended it in writing and did not revise. It waited until 1988 to be published.

1841

Das Jahr — "The Year." Twelve piano pieces, one for each month, with a postlude; copied onto coloured paper, each month headed by a drawing from her husband. Unpublished for roughly 150 years, it is now her most celebrated work.

1846

Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 11, written for her sister Rebecka's birthday and published after Fanny's death. It has since entered the standard chamber repertoire.

Silenced, then heard

Recognition

In her lifetime

Told at fourteen that music could be, for her, "only an ornament"
Asked in 1837 to support publication, Felix declined to encourage it
Six of her songs reached print under her brother's name instead of her own
Performed in public just once — a charity concert in Berlin in 1838
A handful of slim opus numbers appeared in her final two years; everything else stayed in manuscript

Today

Scholars have catalogued more than 460 works; new editions still appear
Das Jahr, unpublished for 150 years, is recorded and performed worldwide
Her Piano Trio, Op. 11, is played by professional ensembles everywhere
In 2017 her Easter Sonata — long filed under Felix's name — was performed publicly as hers for the first time
Berlin marks her family's house with a plaque, and a street carries her name

The room that was her concert hall

Leipziger Straße 3, Berlin

The Mendelssohns bought a rambling house on Leipziger Straße with a garden the size of a park, and in its garden hall Fanny built the only stage she was ever given. From 1831 she programmed, rehearsed, conducted and played at the Sunday Musicales — free, by invitation, and good enough that Europe's travelling musicians made a point of coming. It was a private room doing the work of a public institution.

1825

The year the family moved in, garden and all

16

Seasons she directed the Sunday Musicales there, 1831–1847

1899

The year the house came down; the Bundesrat stands on the site today

"I cannot help considering it a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts." — Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, 1836