Fanny Mendelssohn
Apr. 22nd, 2021 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThese last ten days or so, I've kept reading all I could get my hands on by and about Fanny Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy, Hensel). I had been vaguely aware of her in the past as sister of (Felix), and granddaughter of (Moses), and I knew she'd composed, but then I listened to a wonderful audio portrait of her available on Audible ("Nach Süden. A correspondence and eleven songs"), and was swept away by the charm and wit of her letters, and the eleven songs she'd composed were also beautiful. Audible had another Fanny book in their repertoire, this one exclusively focused on her correspondence with her brother Felix, since it had started out as a radio feature apropos his 200th birthday. ("Du fehlst einem spät und früh: Der Briefwechsel von Fanny und Felix Mendelssohn"), which was also great, and so I raided the university library. (Which within limits of six booiks at a time is possible again.)
One printed correspondence, one diaries edition, one biography and one portrait in quotes from letters and diaries later: Fanny was indeed fabulous, and the Mendelssohn family, unsurprisingly, the definition of "it's complicated", refusing easy categories. (Other than being the most famous German-Jewish family of the 18th and 19th century.)
On one level, Fanny can be seen as a real life example of Virginia Woolf's argument as laid out in her essay "Shakespeare's Sister", where she refuted the argument that there hasn't been a female Mozart or a female Shakespeare by imagining what would have happened if Will S., in addition to those sisters he did have, had had one with exactly the same gifts, and came to the conclusion she'd have ended up not conquering the London stage with her plays but married, with children, and a likely early death. Back when I read a biography of Mary Renault for a Yuletide story some years ago, I wasn't surprised to learn that Mary Renault, no feminist she, refuted that argument by saying that a female Shakespeare wouldn't have allowed herself to be tied down like that and of course would have succeeded in being a glorious exception to the female rule.
Well, Fanny wasn't a female Shakespeare, but she was, in every sense of the world, a female Mendelssohn. She and younger brother Felix were regarded as equally gifted by their composition teacher Zelter, they both received early encouragment as child prodigies by their family. And then gender (and puberty) struck, and Felix was the prodigy with the public concerts and the journeys to Goethe, while Fanny was the stay-at-home girl with no other future imaginable but marriage, for, as their father Abraham put it: "Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament, never the basis of your existence and actions". Whille Fanny never stopped composing (over 300 songs by her exist, plus pieces for piano, organ and one overture for orchestra), as an adult she only performed - and conducted - in a half public, half private space; the Mendelssohns had started Sunday musical matinees at their house, which, in theory, didn't count as the same as performing in public since you had to be invited to attend, but in practice, the guests by the end of Fanny's (short) life went to the hundreds.
Because life is more complicated than an essay making a point, though, Fanny's marriage (and motherhood - she had a son as well as repeated stillbirths after her first pregnancy) wasn't an impediment to her musical life. Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, was an artist as well, a painter, and damn near an ideal spouse for any artist to have. Unlike the men of her family, he didn't think publishing one's compositions was unfeminine, and encouraged her to do so (when she finally did, he supposedly said "Hallelujah!"); they gave each other the room for their respective art, and since they were financially well off, Fanny didn't have to do household work (or for that matter childraising) all on her lonesome. (Unlike Shakespeare's hypothetical sister.) Her early death had nothing to do with either marriage or motherhood - like her grandfather Moses and her mother, and like her brother after her (Fanny and Felix died within six months of each other), she died of a stroke. (Mid conducting Felix' "Walpurgis Night" in preparation of a musical matinee. She'd even composed another song that day, based on an Eichendorff poem.)
Now, since Fanny's husband Wlihelm Hensel isn't suitable for the role, the part of "evil patriarch impending female talent" in a movie would probably be divided between father Abraham and brother Felix, since both of them were against not her composing, but her publishing said compositions and thus becoming a full time professional composer. But it wasn't that simple, either. Not least because the same Felix who argued against Fanny going public gave her intense feedback for her compositions, both good and bad (and expected the same from her). They were quintessential to each other's musical development. And the reason why they both internalized so much of what Abraham taught them (which was one big reason why, despite her husband's encouragement, it took Fanny so many years to go public) was that he hadn't been a distant but a close and affectionate father, just as their mother Lea had been.
It's telling to compare and contrast this particular taboo breaking with how both siblings dealt with another key issue. Their grandfather Moses had been the most famous Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment, while also beeing committed to his Jewish faith, but of his six surviving children, only two (Jacob and Recha) didn't convert to Christianity. The other four had various motives. In the case of Abraham, who had all four of his own children (Fanny, Felix, Rebecka and Paul) baptized six years before he and his wife Lea converted), it was the horrible legal status Jews had in Prussia during his childhood, with the few advances in the Napoleonic era taken back afterwards more than anything. Plus, as Abraham wrote to Fanny on the occasion of her confirmation:
We, your mother and myself, were born and raised Jews by our parents and have known without having to change the form how to follow God in us and in our conscience. We have raised you and your siblings as Christians because it is the faith of the majority of civilised beings and doesn't contain anything which would distract you from being good. (...) You have now through confirming your faith fulfilled what society demands of you and are called a Christian. Now be what your duty as a human being demands, be true, loyal and good!
Lea's brother, Abraham's brother-in-law, who'd been the first to adopt the name "Bartholdy" instead of his birth name of Salomon, put it somewhat sharper when discussing religion with Abraham: in his opinion, if one had children, setting them up for a life time of discrimination was only justified if one truly believed the faith in question to be the only right one. If not, then for the sake of said children one should convert. Of course, their life time was just when old fashioned Antijudaism became modern Antisemitism, and Felix and Fanny both found out it didn't make a bit of difference that they were, religion-wise, Christians. Felix was spat at and called "Jew boy" not too long after the family had moved back to Berlin from Hamburg, Felix and Fanny both had to run from a bunch of antisemitic thugs when the family was holidaying at the sea side, and if Abraham thought through the baptism and the name change (from Mendlelssohn to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, with the intention that "Bartholdy" should be the final name), he'd bought them protection, they knew better. This came up massively the first time Felix was on tour abroad without a parent or another supervisor, though he was still a minor at this point, during his first trip to England. When Abraham read the English papers, eagerly scanning them for reviews of his son, he could see that they exclusively referred to his son as "Felix Mendelssohn", no "Bartholdy" in sight. Cue big explosion.
Fanny to Felix: "I know and approve your intention to remove that name" - Bartholdy - "again which none of us loves, but right now you can't yet do it, since you're still a minor, and I don't have to point out the disagreeable consequences it could have for yo; it will be enough for you to know that you sadden Father by doing this. You can easily claim it was an accident and fulfill your intention at an opportune time later."
Her husband Wilhelm Hensel to Felix: Listen, Felix, remain longer at the Rubicon than Caesar did. If you don't do it, we won't love you any less, but we would have to suffer with you, for you would be sorry later. Consider that the public renunciation of a name becomes a critique of the taking of said name, and that even if it's not meant in this bitter way it has to be come across like this to a father.
Well, quite. Abraham to Felix: My father's father was called Mendel Dessau. As his son, my father, started to make his name in the world, as he made the noble decision which can never be praised enough to take himself and his brothers out of the humiliation into the spreading of a higher education, he felt that he could not do so (...) as Mendel Dessau, and named himself, without fearing to insult his father by this, Mendelssohn. The difference was as small as it was decisive. (...)The great influence whom he exerted back then through word, writing and deed in the most noble and high minded way, who still lives on and spreads, all this gave the name he'd taken a great weight. But a Christian Mendelssohn cannot exist, for the world would not recognize one, and he himself had not wanted to be one. (...) The status which my father and my time have given me gave me a different duty towards you, my children, and gave me other means in order to fulfill it. I have learned, and I will not forget until my last breath, that there is but one eternal truth, yet its forms are many and temporary, and thus I have raised you for as long as the state we were then living in permitted it without any religious form, since I wanted to give you the choice of your convictions, should there develop one, or depending on your convenience. But this was not to be, and thus I had to choose for you. (...)
I deliberately printed your calling cards in Paris saying "Felix M. Bartholdy" when you were starting your way into the world and making a name for yourself. You didn't take up my idea in this. (...) You cannot and may not call yourself Felix Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is too long, and cannot be a name for daily usage, and so you have to call yourself Felix Bartholdy, because a name is a dress and this dress has to be appropriate to one's time, to the needs and to the social standing, if it shouldn't be an impediment or ridiculous. (...) I repeat, there cannot be a Christian Mendelssohn any more than there was a Jewish Confucius. If you call yourself Mendelssohn, you are eo ipso a Jew; and this is not right for you, not least because it is not true.
End result: Felix remained "Mendelssohn-Bartholdy" but refused to give up Mendelssohn. When Fanny published her Opus 1, she did so as "Fanny Hensel, nee Mendelsohn-Bartholdy". Abraham settled for this. Did it make a difference to the antisemites? Not one bit. See also: Richard Wagner's infamous diatribe "Das Judentum in der Musik", singling out Felix along with Meyerbeer (to whom, btw, the Mendelssohns were distantly related).
Back to Fanny and more joyful aspects of her life. One of the great charms of her letters is how they dance between witty teasing and deep emotion, specially those directed at Felix. (BTW, her letters to him were published in English in the 1980s, but I'm using the 1997 German edition by Eva Weisgerber, which also contains his replies (as far as they still exist) and thus offer more context and a sense of dialogue. There are also a lot of nicknames: Fanny, using her older sister status, calls Felix "son" sometimes, or "Felixchen" (i.e. little Felix) , or "Flesch", while he calls her "Fenchel" (presumably this was what he made of her name as a toddler when starting to speak and it stuck), "Cantor", "River Otter" or "Gere". Have some choice quotes.
The opening and ending of her first preserved letter to him, when twelve years old Felix is off to be presented to old Goethe in Weimar: One misses you from morning till nightfall, dear son! and music just drags along without you (this salutation provided the title of the German edition as well, and moves on to When you come to Goethe, you must keep eyes and ears open all the time, I'm telling you, and if you can't repeat every single word he ever says to me once you're back, our friendship is over and done for, only to finish with: Adieu, my Hamlet-chen! Think of me when I'm turning 16. Another thing, you have to drink a sip of wine to my health in secret, and any redness which develops from this will be justified by me completely. Adieu, don't forget that you are my right hand and my eyeball and that without you music won't glide for at all. Your most faithfull and most coughing Fanny. (She had a cold.)
Fanny composed her own wedding music, and her wedding day letter to Felix is a good example of how intense this sibling relationship could get:
I am completely calm, dear Felix, and your picture is sitting next to me (...). I've always known that nothing could happen which would remove you from my mind even for the tenth part of a second; I'm now glad to have experienced the proof, and will be able to repeat this to you tomorrow, and in every moment of my life, and I don't think I'm wronging Hensel in this.
In 1839, Fanny, her husband and their son went to Italy for an entire year, which became a big turning point for Fanny, not just because she was very happy there, but also because she ended up with a circle of admiring friends (including 18 years old Charles Gounoud, later one of the most famous 19th century French opera composers, who had a huuuuuge crush on her) who all boosted her confidence re: the publication of her own compositions outside of family Sunday matinees. Since Felix had been in Italy before here, he gave her a "Must visit" list which together with her replies is a good example of how they talked to each other:
Felix:
Venice: don't forget the Casa Pisani with Paul Veronese, and the gallery Manfrini with an incredible female Alpine zither player by Giorgione, and a no less incredible entombment by Tizian. (Hensel is laughing at me.) Compose a song for the zither player; I did. Think of me when watching Mary's Ascension. (...) If you don't think of me when seeing the yellow glitter behind Mary, I'm not talking to you anymore. Same with two certain angelic heads from which even an ox could learn what beauty is.
Fanny: (...)We were about to visit Tizian for the second time; I furthered your salute to the glory and can assure you that I'm at least not ox enough not to find two and even more angelic heads beautiful. This wreath of children is one of the best things Tizian managed and Tizian is certainly one of the best things God managed, and if both God and Tizian are so hard at work, the result is definitely presentable.
Felix: Rome: Holy Week: annoy yourself with all the psalm singings, it won't hurt. Pay attention of how they pronounce in the last Benedictus domine "Israel", all four voices unisono fortissiimo, in D minor; it sounds very dignified. Listen to the weird modulations created by accident when one unmusical priest after the next takes the booik and sings, one closes in D major, then the next starts in B minor. Anyway, see and listen to everything in the Sixtina and write some melodies or anything else to your old F.M.B.
Fanny: Have you ever heard a mass with the Armenians? This is the most awful cat yowling my ears ever listened to, and meow is about the only word which was clearly understandable. And yet the people have such beautiful, dignified heads, and the bishop is such an honorable old man (...) On the other hand, the Greeks sing really well, three voice male choirs, well composed music, and strongly and confidently performed, much better than the papal singers who started the Miserere both times in A minor and once ended in G, once in F minor. We really have to talk about this. If Spontini hadn't made suggestions on how to improve ecclesiastical music already, I'd approach His Holiness, because some improvement is direly needed.
Felix: (...) Eat broccoli as a salad with ham and write to me whether it isn't delicious!
The last one is an ongoing thing with him:
Where do you live in Rome? Have you eaten broccoli with ham already? And Zuppa inglese? Is the Monastery San Giovanni e Paolo still standing? And is the sun shining on your buttery breadrolls each morning? I just played your caprices from B Major, G major and F major for Ferdinand Hiller, and both of us were amazed and tried very hard to find the bad points in them, but there weren't any.
Fanny died on May 14th, 1847; as mentioned, of a stroke. she was conducting "Walpurgis Night" by her brother which she planned to present at the next matinee. Here's a description of her by another female musician who attended these matinees:
A Sforzando by her little finger jolted us like an electric current striking our soul and moved us very differently than the wooden knocking of a conductor's stick can. (...) She was small in figure, and had a bit of an uneven shoulder, a legacy from Moses Mendelssohn, though it was hardly noticeable most of the time. The most beautiful about her were her large, dark and very expressive eyes, whom you couldn't tell were short sighted. She had a strong nose and mouth, and beautiful, white teeth. Her hand showed all the piano practice. She was fast and decisive in her movements, the face was very expressive, all her moods were mirrored faithfully in it; deception was impossible for her.
She was happy at that moment; she'd started to publish her own compositions and they were received positively, her son was nearly grown up, she was leaving Felix' shadow as a composer (and patriarchal brother) while still being connected to him as a musician. Her second life had just started when it ended. Felix, who was just returning from another tour abroad when told, had an instant breakdown and spent the remaining six months of his life in grief (and repentance; now he pushed for the publication of more of her work, her Opus 8, 9 and 10, with his own publisher), until he died on November 4th and was buried next to her. Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, couldn't cope, either; he had given his nearly grown up son to Fanny's younger sister Rebecka, and stopped painting for years. He lived much longer, only dying in the 1861, and was buried at Fanny's other side.
Lastly, some of her compositions:
Her cycle "The Year" in its entirety:
Something shorter: Fanny's version of Goethe's poem "Kennst du das Land?"
Schwanenlied, i.e. "Swan Song":
One printed correspondence, one diaries edition, one biography and one portrait in quotes from letters and diaries later: Fanny was indeed fabulous, and the Mendelssohn family, unsurprisingly, the definition of "it's complicated", refusing easy categories. (Other than being the most famous German-Jewish family of the 18th and 19th century.)
On one level, Fanny can be seen as a real life example of Virginia Woolf's argument as laid out in her essay "Shakespeare's Sister", where she refuted the argument that there hasn't been a female Mozart or a female Shakespeare by imagining what would have happened if Will S., in addition to those sisters he did have, had had one with exactly the same gifts, and came to the conclusion she'd have ended up not conquering the London stage with her plays but married, with children, and a likely early death. Back when I read a biography of Mary Renault for a Yuletide story some years ago, I wasn't surprised to learn that Mary Renault, no feminist she, refuted that argument by saying that a female Shakespeare wouldn't have allowed herself to be tied down like that and of course would have succeeded in being a glorious exception to the female rule.
Well, Fanny wasn't a female Shakespeare, but she was, in every sense of the world, a female Mendelssohn. She and younger brother Felix were regarded as equally gifted by their composition teacher Zelter, they both received early encouragment as child prodigies by their family. And then gender (and puberty) struck, and Felix was the prodigy with the public concerts and the journeys to Goethe, while Fanny was the stay-at-home girl with no other future imaginable but marriage, for, as their father Abraham put it: "Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament, never the basis of your existence and actions". Whille Fanny never stopped composing (over 300 songs by her exist, plus pieces for piano, organ and one overture for orchestra), as an adult she only performed - and conducted - in a half public, half private space; the Mendelssohns had started Sunday musical matinees at their house, which, in theory, didn't count as the same as performing in public since you had to be invited to attend, but in practice, the guests by the end of Fanny's (short) life went to the hundreds.
Because life is more complicated than an essay making a point, though, Fanny's marriage (and motherhood - she had a son as well as repeated stillbirths after her first pregnancy) wasn't an impediment to her musical life. Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, was an artist as well, a painter, and damn near an ideal spouse for any artist to have. Unlike the men of her family, he didn't think publishing one's compositions was unfeminine, and encouraged her to do so (when she finally did, he supposedly said "Hallelujah!"); they gave each other the room for their respective art, and since they were financially well off, Fanny didn't have to do household work (or for that matter childraising) all on her lonesome. (Unlike Shakespeare's hypothetical sister.) Her early death had nothing to do with either marriage or motherhood - like her grandfather Moses and her mother, and like her brother after her (Fanny and Felix died within six months of each other), she died of a stroke. (Mid conducting Felix' "Walpurgis Night" in preparation of a musical matinee. She'd even composed another song that day, based on an Eichendorff poem.)
Now, since Fanny's husband Wlihelm Hensel isn't suitable for the role, the part of "evil patriarch impending female talent" in a movie would probably be divided between father Abraham and brother Felix, since both of them were against not her composing, but her publishing said compositions and thus becoming a full time professional composer. But it wasn't that simple, either. Not least because the same Felix who argued against Fanny going public gave her intense feedback for her compositions, both good and bad (and expected the same from her). They were quintessential to each other's musical development. And the reason why they both internalized so much of what Abraham taught them (which was one big reason why, despite her husband's encouragement, it took Fanny so many years to go public) was that he hadn't been a distant but a close and affectionate father, just as their mother Lea had been.
It's telling to compare and contrast this particular taboo breaking with how both siblings dealt with another key issue. Their grandfather Moses had been the most famous Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment, while also beeing committed to his Jewish faith, but of his six surviving children, only two (Jacob and Recha) didn't convert to Christianity. The other four had various motives. In the case of Abraham, who had all four of his own children (Fanny, Felix, Rebecka and Paul) baptized six years before he and his wife Lea converted), it was the horrible legal status Jews had in Prussia during his childhood, with the few advances in the Napoleonic era taken back afterwards more than anything. Plus, as Abraham wrote to Fanny on the occasion of her confirmation:
We, your mother and myself, were born and raised Jews by our parents and have known without having to change the form how to follow God in us and in our conscience. We have raised you and your siblings as Christians because it is the faith of the majority of civilised beings and doesn't contain anything which would distract you from being good. (...) You have now through confirming your faith fulfilled what society demands of you and are called a Christian. Now be what your duty as a human being demands, be true, loyal and good!
Lea's brother, Abraham's brother-in-law, who'd been the first to adopt the name "Bartholdy" instead of his birth name of Salomon, put it somewhat sharper when discussing religion with Abraham: in his opinion, if one had children, setting them up for a life time of discrimination was only justified if one truly believed the faith in question to be the only right one. If not, then for the sake of said children one should convert. Of course, their life time was just when old fashioned Antijudaism became modern Antisemitism, and Felix and Fanny both found out it didn't make a bit of difference that they were, religion-wise, Christians. Felix was spat at and called "Jew boy" not too long after the family had moved back to Berlin from Hamburg, Felix and Fanny both had to run from a bunch of antisemitic thugs when the family was holidaying at the sea side, and if Abraham thought through the baptism and the name change (from Mendlelssohn to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, with the intention that "Bartholdy" should be the final name), he'd bought them protection, they knew better. This came up massively the first time Felix was on tour abroad without a parent or another supervisor, though he was still a minor at this point, during his first trip to England. When Abraham read the English papers, eagerly scanning them for reviews of his son, he could see that they exclusively referred to his son as "Felix Mendelssohn", no "Bartholdy" in sight. Cue big explosion.
Fanny to Felix: "I know and approve your intention to remove that name" - Bartholdy - "again which none of us loves, but right now you can't yet do it, since you're still a minor, and I don't have to point out the disagreeable consequences it could have for yo; it will be enough for you to know that you sadden Father by doing this. You can easily claim it was an accident and fulfill your intention at an opportune time later."
Her husband Wilhelm Hensel to Felix: Listen, Felix, remain longer at the Rubicon than Caesar did. If you don't do it, we won't love you any less, but we would have to suffer with you, for you would be sorry later. Consider that the public renunciation of a name becomes a critique of the taking of said name, and that even if it's not meant in this bitter way it has to be come across like this to a father.
Well, quite. Abraham to Felix: My father's father was called Mendel Dessau. As his son, my father, started to make his name in the world, as he made the noble decision which can never be praised enough to take himself and his brothers out of the humiliation into the spreading of a higher education, he felt that he could not do so (...) as Mendel Dessau, and named himself, without fearing to insult his father by this, Mendelssohn. The difference was as small as it was decisive. (...)The great influence whom he exerted back then through word, writing and deed in the most noble and high minded way, who still lives on and spreads, all this gave the name he'd taken a great weight. But a Christian Mendelssohn cannot exist, for the world would not recognize one, and he himself had not wanted to be one. (...) The status which my father and my time have given me gave me a different duty towards you, my children, and gave me other means in order to fulfill it. I have learned, and I will not forget until my last breath, that there is but one eternal truth, yet its forms are many and temporary, and thus I have raised you for as long as the state we were then living in permitted it without any religious form, since I wanted to give you the choice of your convictions, should there develop one, or depending on your convenience. But this was not to be, and thus I had to choose for you. (...)
I deliberately printed your calling cards in Paris saying "Felix M. Bartholdy" when you were starting your way into the world and making a name for yourself. You didn't take up my idea in this. (...) You cannot and may not call yourself Felix Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is too long, and cannot be a name for daily usage, and so you have to call yourself Felix Bartholdy, because a name is a dress and this dress has to be appropriate to one's time, to the needs and to the social standing, if it shouldn't be an impediment or ridiculous. (...) I repeat, there cannot be a Christian Mendelssohn any more than there was a Jewish Confucius. If you call yourself Mendelssohn, you are eo ipso a Jew; and this is not right for you, not least because it is not true.
End result: Felix remained "Mendelssohn-Bartholdy" but refused to give up Mendelssohn. When Fanny published her Opus 1, she did so as "Fanny Hensel, nee Mendelsohn-Bartholdy". Abraham settled for this. Did it make a difference to the antisemites? Not one bit. See also: Richard Wagner's infamous diatribe "Das Judentum in der Musik", singling out Felix along with Meyerbeer (to whom, btw, the Mendelssohns were distantly related).
Back to Fanny and more joyful aspects of her life. One of the great charms of her letters is how they dance between witty teasing and deep emotion, specially those directed at Felix. (BTW, her letters to him were published in English in the 1980s, but I'm using the 1997 German edition by Eva Weisgerber, which also contains his replies (as far as they still exist) and thus offer more context and a sense of dialogue. There are also a lot of nicknames: Fanny, using her older sister status, calls Felix "son" sometimes, or "Felixchen" (i.e. little Felix) , or "Flesch", while he calls her "Fenchel" (presumably this was what he made of her name as a toddler when starting to speak and it stuck), "Cantor", "River Otter" or "Gere". Have some choice quotes.
The opening and ending of her first preserved letter to him, when twelve years old Felix is off to be presented to old Goethe in Weimar: One misses you from morning till nightfall, dear son! and music just drags along without you (this salutation provided the title of the German edition as well, and moves on to When you come to Goethe, you must keep eyes and ears open all the time, I'm telling you, and if you can't repeat every single word he ever says to me once you're back, our friendship is over and done for, only to finish with: Adieu, my Hamlet-chen! Think of me when I'm turning 16. Another thing, you have to drink a sip of wine to my health in secret, and any redness which develops from this will be justified by me completely. Adieu, don't forget that you are my right hand and my eyeball and that without you music won't glide for at all. Your most faithfull and most coughing Fanny. (She had a cold.)
Fanny composed her own wedding music, and her wedding day letter to Felix is a good example of how intense this sibling relationship could get:
I am completely calm, dear Felix, and your picture is sitting next to me (...). I've always known that nothing could happen which would remove you from my mind even for the tenth part of a second; I'm now glad to have experienced the proof, and will be able to repeat this to you tomorrow, and in every moment of my life, and I don't think I'm wronging Hensel in this.
In 1839, Fanny, her husband and their son went to Italy for an entire year, which became a big turning point for Fanny, not just because she was very happy there, but also because she ended up with a circle of admiring friends (including 18 years old Charles Gounoud, later one of the most famous 19th century French opera composers, who had a huuuuuge crush on her) who all boosted her confidence re: the publication of her own compositions outside of family Sunday matinees. Since Felix had been in Italy before here, he gave her a "Must visit" list which together with her replies is a good example of how they talked to each other:
Felix:
Venice: don't forget the Casa Pisani with Paul Veronese, and the gallery Manfrini with an incredible female Alpine zither player by Giorgione, and a no less incredible entombment by Tizian. (Hensel is laughing at me.) Compose a song for the zither player; I did. Think of me when watching Mary's Ascension. (...) If you don't think of me when seeing the yellow glitter behind Mary, I'm not talking to you anymore. Same with two certain angelic heads from which even an ox could learn what beauty is.
Fanny: (...)We were about to visit Tizian for the second time; I furthered your salute to the glory and can assure you that I'm at least not ox enough not to find two and even more angelic heads beautiful. This wreath of children is one of the best things Tizian managed and Tizian is certainly one of the best things God managed, and if both God and Tizian are so hard at work, the result is definitely presentable.
Felix: Rome: Holy Week: annoy yourself with all the psalm singings, it won't hurt. Pay attention of how they pronounce in the last Benedictus domine "Israel", all four voices unisono fortissiimo, in D minor; it sounds very dignified. Listen to the weird modulations created by accident when one unmusical priest after the next takes the booik and sings, one closes in D major, then the next starts in B minor. Anyway, see and listen to everything in the Sixtina and write some melodies or anything else to your old F.M.B.
Fanny: Have you ever heard a mass with the Armenians? This is the most awful cat yowling my ears ever listened to, and meow is about the only word which was clearly understandable. And yet the people have such beautiful, dignified heads, and the bishop is such an honorable old man (...) On the other hand, the Greeks sing really well, three voice male choirs, well composed music, and strongly and confidently performed, much better than the papal singers who started the Miserere both times in A minor and once ended in G, once in F minor. We really have to talk about this. If Spontini hadn't made suggestions on how to improve ecclesiastical music already, I'd approach His Holiness, because some improvement is direly needed.
Felix: (...) Eat broccoli as a salad with ham and write to me whether it isn't delicious!
The last one is an ongoing thing with him:
Where do you live in Rome? Have you eaten broccoli with ham already? And Zuppa inglese? Is the Monastery San Giovanni e Paolo still standing? And is the sun shining on your buttery breadrolls each morning? I just played your caprices from B Major, G major and F major for Ferdinand Hiller, and both of us were amazed and tried very hard to find the bad points in them, but there weren't any.
Fanny died on May 14th, 1847; as mentioned, of a stroke. she was conducting "Walpurgis Night" by her brother which she planned to present at the next matinee. Here's a description of her by another female musician who attended these matinees:
A Sforzando by her little finger jolted us like an electric current striking our soul and moved us very differently than the wooden knocking of a conductor's stick can. (...) She was small in figure, and had a bit of an uneven shoulder, a legacy from Moses Mendelssohn, though it was hardly noticeable most of the time. The most beautiful about her were her large, dark and very expressive eyes, whom you couldn't tell were short sighted. She had a strong nose and mouth, and beautiful, white teeth. Her hand showed all the piano practice. She was fast and decisive in her movements, the face was very expressive, all her moods were mirrored faithfully in it; deception was impossible for her.
She was happy at that moment; she'd started to publish her own compositions and they were received positively, her son was nearly grown up, she was leaving Felix' shadow as a composer (and patriarchal brother) while still being connected to him as a musician. Her second life had just started when it ended. Felix, who was just returning from another tour abroad when told, had an instant breakdown and spent the remaining six months of his life in grief (and repentance; now he pushed for the publication of more of her work, her Opus 8, 9 and 10, with his own publisher), until he died on November 4th and was buried next to her. Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, couldn't cope, either; he had given his nearly grown up son to Fanny's younger sister Rebecka, and stopped painting for years. He lived much longer, only dying in the 1861, and was buried at Fanny's other side.
Lastly, some of her compositions:
Her cycle "The Year" in its entirety:
Something shorter: Fanny's version of Goethe's poem "Kennst du das Land?"
Schwanenlied, i.e. "Swan Song":
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Date: 2021-04-22 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-23 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-23 12:20 am (UTC)passably?
positively?
I was vaguely aware of Fanny's existence, like that of Wolfgang Mozart's Nannerl, but have never really known much about her before!
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Date: 2021-04-23 07:48 am (UTC)I didn't know much more about her until a few weeks ago, either, including that unlike with Nannerl Mozart, we have her compositions and so many letters (and her diaries) to document her life. (By contrast, Nannerl may or may not have composed more than once - there is one letter from brother Wolfgang where he mentions a composition of hers, but that's it -, but if she did, the music doesn't exist anymore. That she was a gifted performer is well testified. Otoh what letters of hers still exist don't tell us much about her inner life, and are notably lacking in argueing against her fate of being left at home with the onset of puberty, so biographers have to speculate much much more.)
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Date: 2021-04-23 05:42 am (UTC)and the Mendelssohn family, unsurprisingly, the definition of "it's complicated", refusing easy categories.
You know, that's really cool. I absolutely love that they're complicated and it's more complicated than a simple "he was bad and she was good" or whatever, and that you've talked about it in a way that really brings that out.
She and younger brother Felix were regarded as equally gifted by their composition teacher Zelter,
Honestly this actually shocks me a bit (that Zelter was willing to concede both were equally gifted). Go Zelter!
as their father Abraham put it: "Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament, never the basis of your existence and actions".
:( I mean, I see where he's coming from, culturally speaking, and I'm glad that he was otherwise supportive. But still :(
Her husband, Wilhelm Hensel, was an artist as well, a painter, and damn near an ideal spouse for any artist to have.
Do you have any sense from your reading of whether she chose him as a husband (or had any say in it) because of this?
Not least because the same Felix who argued against Fanny going public gave her intense feedback for her compositions, both good and bad (and expected the same from her). They were quintessential to each other's musical development.
I just really love this -- complicated but ultimately loving sibling relationships, as you know, are My Thing <3 And, uh, after Fritz fandom, I'm happy to see a rather more functional relationship.
You have now through confirming your faith fulfilled what society demands of you and are called a Christian. Now be what your duty as a human being demands, be true, loyal and good!
It sucks that they had to convert -- but this is such an interesting passage and says a lot about Abraham and the way he thought about the world. <3
I've always known that nothing could happen which would remove you from my mind even for the tenth part of a second; I'm now glad to have experienced the proof, and will be able to repeat this to you tomorrow, and in every moment of my life, and I don't think I'm wronging Hensel in this.
I... feel... like I'm reading a much less dysfunctional Fritz/Wilhelmine :P (But also Fanny reminds me a bit of Wilhelmine because Fanny is both sweet and witty in her letters <3
I adore the exchange between Felix and Fanny on the Italian music. Listen to the weird modulations created by accident when one unmusical priest after the next takes the booik and sings, one closes in D major, then the next starts in B minor. LOLOLOL. much better than the papal singers who started the Miserere both times in A minor and once ended in G, once in F minor. omg poor Fanny :D
I'm sad she died so young, but I suppose not many people get to die suddenly when they're happy, so there's that. Poor Felix and Hensel, though.
I haven't got all the way through the piano cycle yet (I'll probably finish listening to it tomorrow) but I like it a lot! I like the songs too. I'm glad people are playing them.
Thank you for writing this
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Date: 2021-04-23 07:43 am (UTC)I absolutely love that they're complicated and it's more complicated than a simple "he was bad and she was good" or whatever, and that you've talked about it in a way that really brings that out.
I'm glad. The prefaces to the letters and diaries editions as well as to the biography tell me something about the changes the last few decades made, for it seems there was much black and white ness in the past, only with complete role changes.
Pre ca. 1980s: Felix biographers (especially one super condescending guy with the last name of Werner, who is one of the two bete noirs of the Fanny-and-Felix correspondence editor Eva Weissweiler): Fanny was a mediocre composer and a hysterical woman. I mean, who writes letters like that on their wedding day? Felix (and Abraham) clearly did her a favor when telling her not to publish.
From 1990s onwards: Fanny was an oppressed genius and Felix was the villain of her life, presumably holding her down out of jealousy.
Weissweiler: it's complicated! Except for the part where you're an asshole, Werner. Also you, Elvers, who ran the Mendelssohn family archive for years and refused me and everyone else access to Fanny's compositions until we finally got a new archive director.
Self after reading: I'm with you.
Incidentally, after that first meeting with Felix the boy wonder and after hearing from Zelter about her, Goethe wrote a poem for Fanny, a story that it is told (with a translation of the poem into English here, though that blog post bewilderingly claims Fanny never set the poem written for her to music. In fact she did so, not only once, but twice. Fanny composed all in all 34 songs based on various Goethe poems. There is an entire article (in English) about Fanny's Goethe songs here).
:( I mean, I see where he's coming from, culturally speaking, and I'm glad that he was otherwise supportive. But still :(
There's an interesting compare and contrast to Clara (Wieck) Schumann, who was a bit more than a decade younger than Fanny; in fact, the two met and became friends in Fanny's last years. Clara was the female musical prodigy whose father not just encouraged but pushed for her performing in public, and who drilled her like a Prussian army sargeant. (Check out the German wiki entry on Clara for some gruesome examples the English entry doesn't have.) Clara became definitely the foremost female musician of the era (and one of the most successful performers, full stop), but her own compositions did take a back seat after her marriage. In fairness, though, this had to do with Robert's declining health as much as with anything; same with Clara being the main bread winner of the family through her concert tours throughout her life. One of the writers on Fanny concludes that if Fanny hadn't been a rich man's daughter without financial troubles in her life, economic necessity would have overcome period sexism and she might have been launched on a career from girlhood onwards the way Clara was, too.
Do you have any sense from your reading of whether she chose him as a husband (or had any say in it) because of this?
She did have a say. It's actually quite a romantic story. They met when she was just 16, and her parents, somewhat understandably, thought she was too young to marry. Also he was a young painter without an income, and he was flirting with Catholicism, which was definitely a big No for Abraham and Lea; if Christian, then Protestant was their attitude, and Abraham had issues with his sister Dorothea - nee Brendel - who had converted to Catholicism instead after leaving her husband scandalously to live with and then marry Friedrich Schlegel, one of the two Schlegel brothers; Brendel/Dorothea ended up in her brother-in-law's Shakespeare translation team and thus is co-responsible for the most famous German Shakespeare translation ever which became a literary classic in its own right, but husband Friedrich also had writtten a novel "Lucinda" very obviously about her in which he praised free love and in which the heroine has sexual longings (which in the 19th century that had turned its back on 18th century bawdiness was ZOMG the horror!) which was a big scandalous bestseller, and this backstory was very much on Abraham's and Lea's minds when initially eying young Wilhelm Hensel. They definitely did not want their daughter married to another scandalous Catholic artiste! Also he'd gotten a scholarship in Rome. So they decided to test him. There was to be no correspondence with Fanny during the five years of his Roman scholarship (though he was allowed to write to her mother), and if upon his return, when they were both older, Fanny's feelings were still the same, one would see. Hensel agreed to this. After his return, he and Fanny rekindled their relationship, plus he secured an appointment as court painter which made him financially indepedent, but now she was initially afraid she might lose her musician mojo if she married, and he had to reassure her this would not happen, and that he wouldn't want her to give up music. All in all, it was seven years between their initial meeting and their marriage, which is a biblical span. And one can say Fanny never regretted her choice. (BTW, Hensel never became a Catholic, but one of his own sisters became a nun, so Lea and Abraham weren't just imagining things.)
I... feel... like I'm reading a much less dysfunctional Fritz/Wilhelmine :P (But also Fanny reminds me a bit of Wilhelmine because Fanny is both sweet and witty in her letters <3
There are similarities! Mind you, there are also darker, dysfunctional bits (to name the most obvious, if she hadn't cared so deeply about her brother's opinion, she'd have gone public far sooner), but not least because these two grew up in a far different family situation, and hadn't been each other's sole source of unconditional affection as children, the overall relationship was much more functional.
ETA: Almost forgot: I also wanted to point you towards this article, which opens with speaking about Felix' musical tribute to Fanny after her death, the ixth String Quartet in F minor, and the emotional effect it had on the listener.
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Date: 2021-04-23 08:49 am (UTC)Lovely -- I'm always impressed by the perfect Pushkin-like simplicity of that school of 19th-century poetry that is so closely rhymed and with such short lines that it is almost impossible to emulate in English. German doesn't even have the excuse of declension of nouns to make rhyming easier (or, at least, it does, but not in the same helpfully limited set of ending syllables that Russian has...)
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Date: 2021-04-24 05:10 pm (UTC)That is a lovely story about Zelter and Goethe and Felix and Fanny, and a very sweet poem and I'm glad she did set it to music. I'm annoyed Fanny didn't get to go, but extremely pleased that Felix stuck up for her :)
That's interesting about Clara Schumann -- I was aware of her as she's just about the most well-known female musician in non-modern times, but (as usual, lol) I didn't know any details.
That is a lovely romantic story about Wilhelm and Fanny, and I really like that she did think about her musician mojo and he was always committed not to come between her in music, and that she never regretted her choice <3 I mean, that's rare enough today, much less back then...
Mind you, there are also darker, dysfunctional bits (to name the most obvious, if she hadn't cared so deeply about her brother's opinion, she'd have gone public far sooner)
I guess so, although I would say it needn't be a dysfunctional relationship overall for one party to have a mistaken opinion and the other party to listen to them because, well, the other 90% of their relationship works really well.
but not least because these two grew up in a far different family situation, and hadn't been each other's sole source of unconditional affection as children, the overall relationship was much more functional.
<3
The Guardian article is interesting to me and also sort of personally infuriating because having never read Wagner's article AND having played Mendelssohn's violin concerto, which is just a fabulous piece of music and possibly my favorite concerto (and loving one of his string quartets as well when I encountered it in college), I still had managed to internalize the idea that Mendelssohn was a bit of a lightweight until just a couple of years ago (when
(btw, I forgot to mention in my previous comment but I think it's a bit a triumph for Felix and Fanny that they're both known as Mendelssohn and not Bartholdy -- I'd seen Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in various places, but it was definitely not in my active memory and if you'd asked me a few weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to provide the name without some memory jogging.)
[ETA: I haven't read the article on Fanny's Goethe songs yet -- I think I should listen to the songs first; I think at least some of them are on Spotify, though.]
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Date: 2021-04-23 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-23 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-31 01:14 pm (UTC)Bookmarking this to read all of later!
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Date: 2022-01-31 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-01 10:36 am (UTC)Do you have recommended books to read about her? (In English, as alas my German is only at the level where I can kinda sorta read math papers, on the other hand, I do have access to an excellent university library.) I read Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn by R. Larry Todd some years ago, and it was good but kind of dry. Last night I was looking at the Google books preview of the English translation of her letters to Felix, and I'll be getting the rest of them once I get a chance. (There was an article, or maybe a book intro, somewhere that I read that was really good at explaining the history of her place in feminist musicology and Mendelssohn studies, but sadly I can't find it now. I think it had a comment about the German Mendelssohn scholars being annoyed at all the enthusiastic young American women who saw themselves in Fanny?)
Lovely that you got to visit the Mendelssohns' graves -- I looked it up, and no, Kurt was buried in Marburg, where he spent all his life as a professor (he died in 1941, so not a good time for remembering members of that family). He seems to have had a fairly uneventful life -- in math he's known for having one big idea (the p-adic number system), which was tremendously useful and influential in parts of number theory, but also kind of a niche thing, so he's not so famous outside those areas. He clearly experienced anti-Semitism throughout his life (his mother was a baptized Jew), but mostly in pretty quiet ways, and he was emeritus by the time that the Nazis took power.
There's a BBC documentary Mendelssohn, the Nazis, and Me, which used to be available on YouTube but now seems hard to find, made by Fanny's descendant Sheila Hayman, whose father, Walter Hayman, was Kurt's grandson, who got out of Germany on a Kindertransport. It talks about how the Nazis treated Mendelssohn's legacy and Fanny's descendants, though I don't think it mentions Kurt by name. Probably mostly wouldn't be news to you, but was very effective for me in a "make me want to punch a Nazi" sort of way. It looks like she's working on a Fanny documentary now!
(anyway, that got long, thanks for letting me blather!)
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Date: 2022-02-01 12:38 pm (UTC)The graves of Fanny, Felix, Wilhelm Hensel, Cecilie Mendelssohn, and the childern who died as infants as well as Fanny's surviving son:
In totem:
Fanny and her men:
(The reason why Felix has a wreath on his grave is that I was there only a day or so after his birthday.)
Detail from Fanny's tombstone, which has music on it:
All again:
Not all Mendelssohns, naturally. Abraham and Lea, who were the first Mendelssohns to be buried in this cemetery instead of the Jewish cemetery where Moses is buried, have a separate grave:
Yet more Mendelssohns - Fanny's youngest brother Paul and descendants:
And in the same cemetery Rahel Varnhagen (born Levin, changed to Robert) and husband - Rahel was possibly the most famous Jewish letter writer of the Enlightenment and one of the most famous salonieres; young Hannah Arendt wrote her thesis about her:
English language books: alas, I've only read German ones (and a Swedish one) so far. But the editor of the German Fanny/Felix correspondence mentions that the previous head of the Mendelssohn archive was one of the all time biggest jerks to Fanny scholars, especially but by no means solely to the editor of the English translation of her letters, and there was great rejoicing among Mendelssohn scholars of all nations when he finally left. (Which is why we know have much of Fanny's compositions online.
There are several great radio features on Fanny, with and without Felix, with her letters and music performed, which are available on Audible as audio books, but again, in German.
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Date: 2022-02-03 02:55 am (UTC)Thanks, anyway! I will have to look into what other Fanny books are in English, or maybe French (the one I read I picked because it was available online through the university library, and yay instant gratification) -- since learning German to pursue my minor obsessions is probably not the next step... But I'm glad there's som much out there in German!
When I made the search that led me here, I was feeling the inclination to write Fanny fic after having looked at some of her early letters... which is still tempting, though writing RPF is intimidating when there's so much out there to read about her...
(I actually have written Mendelssohn fic before, when I was 13 I wrote a time travel story where one protagonist went back in time to take the place of Fanny Mendelssohn. But really Fanny deserves better than to be overwritten by a teenage girl! I didn't actually hear any of her music until about 10 years later, when I set up a Pandora channel for Felix Mendelssohn, which played a movement from her Piano Trio, and I was like, this is really good, who wrote it -- and then, OMG how have I never heard any of her music, and wait, don't I know the name Hensel?)
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Date: 2022-02-11 02:38 am (UTC)Asked why so much of Hensel’s music was
still in manuscript, Elvers is described as saying that ‘qualified musicologists are
not interested’ in doing the needed checking of sources towards producing an
edition of Hensel’s works. In Elvers’s own words, ‘I am waiting for the right man
for the job to come along’, after he complained about ‘all these piano-playing
girls who are just in love with Fanny’.
Aaargh, I can see why everyone was so happy when he left!
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Date: 2022-02-11 07:28 am (UTC)