Fanny Mendelssohn - A Subdued Voice
artikel
• David Hackett
If you ever wanted to make a powerful study of gender inequality in 19th century music – and its practical and psychological effects on talented, creative women – then Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel would be a pretty good place to start.
By dint of living under the shadow of a very famous brother, her own music was largely hidden from view during her lifetime. In the 175 years since her death its ensuing neglect has been almost criminal.
In her youth, Fanny was regarded by several fine judges as just as talented as her brother Felix. Having shared an impressively diverse education, both musical and otherwise, the young Mendelssohn siblings were nothing less than spiritual and musical soulmates.
And yet when they reached adulthood, it was as if an iron curtain was suddenly dropped between them. The many doors which now opened to Felix were just as promptly shut in Fanny’s face. While Felix went out into the world to make a highly successful career from his unusual talent, his equally gifted sister was left to languish at home. The devoutly Lutheran Mendelssohns believed that the professional music world was no place for a woman.
The innately good-natured Fanny would adapt to these constraints as gracefully as possible. She loved her family and did not care to displease them. But still the desire to write serious music was too strong not to cause a certain inner conflict.
As a way of offsetting her ambitions, she continually persuaded herself that her family were right, that it didn’t matter if no-one heard the music she wrote, that she was not ambitious and that she knew her place as an upper middle-class housewife. But at other times a certain frustration would boil over in her letters. Sometimes that frustration would even find its way into her music.
According to her mother Lea, Fanny was born with “Bach fugue-playing fingers” – a prescient observation as Fanny was already an authority on the (still unfashionable) music of JS Bach by the time she was thirteen. When she and Felix later took composition lessons from Carl Friedrich Zelter, a well-connected director of the Berlin Singakademie, the latter immediately observed of Fanny, “this child really is something special.” Zelter’s later praise for Fanny would confirm only too well the misogynistic culture of the time: “she plays [the piano] as well as any man.”
When Zelter began to take Felix on a series of European tours, in order to show off his precocious musicianship, Fanny was surprised to find herself left behind in Berlin. Now in her late teens, she eventually complained about this to her father Abraham, who implacably explained that the issue was not about talent but gender. “Music will perhaps become [Felix’s] profession”, he told her,
while for you it can and must only be an ornament, never the root of your being and doing. We may therefore pardon him some ambition and desire to be acknowledged in a pursuit which appears very important to him, because he feels a vocation for it, while it does you credit that you have always shown yourself good and sensible in these matters; and your very joy at the praise he earns proves that you might, in his place, have merited equal approval. Remain true to these sentiments and to this line of conduct; they are feminine, and only what is truly feminine is an ornament to your sex.
When Abraham noticed his daughter still wavering over the matter a year or so later, he drove home his point more forcibly: “you must become more steady and collected, and prepare more earnestly and eagerly for your real calling, the only calling of a young woman – I mean the state of a housewife.”
Perhaps such instruction was less shocking coming from a conservative and religious-minded parent, and Fanny might still have been able to break free from it in time. But when her beloved brother Felix would come to take much the same line as his father, particularly upholding it after Abraham’s death in 1835, it would leave a much deeper impact on her, and not least her creative confidence.
Largely owing to Fanny’s good grace, both father and brother believed she was perfectly happy with the status quo. While suffering post-natal depression after the birth of her son a few years later, she lamented to Felix that she hadn’t had the energy to write any music for months. Felix replied that Fanny should joyfully embrace her motherly duties instead. He also presumed that she would now give up composing: “you must often now have other things to occupy your thoughts besides composing pretty songs, and that is a great blessing.”
Felix did not appear to consider that behind Fanny’s essentially easy-going nature was a restless young artist who simply wanted an opportunity to do what every restless young artist wants to do – to prove themselves, to be performed, to test themselves against the highest standards, and even to be appropriately recognized for their efforts. And this creative restlessness was something Fanny could never quite let go of as she admitted herself, “That I stick with it [composing] in the face of such a complete lack of stimulation from outside, I interpret to myself again as a sign of talent.”
She did indeed stick with it, making time to write almost every day. As she could not expect to have her works performed publicly (“the home is stage enough for a woman”, declared her father), much of her output would consist of songs (lieder) and piano music. Even with these, her originality of thought and the quality of her craftsmanship were striking. She would create a new type of piano miniature, known as Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words). Although it was a musical genre that her brother would then develop and become famous for, the evidence now strongly suggests that it was Fanny who invented the form.
Felix particularly admired Fanny’s vocal Lieder and would sometimes have them printed in his own collections, though solely under his name. This would lead to an awkward incident many years later when Felix met the young Queen Victoria, who expressed an interest in singing one of Felix’s songs which she particularly liked: Italien. Slightly red-faced, Felix had to admit the song in question had been written by his sister.
But there were other ways in which Fanny could help herself. Not least, she could find herself a spouse who would support her in a way neither her father nor brother could. When she met Wilhelm Hensel, a dashing former soldier turned court painter at the age of around 18, she was instantly smitten. Despite some initial family resistance, they were married five years later and for Fanny it was one of the best life-decisions she ever made.
Far from expecting her to devote all her time to wifely duties, Wilhelm had already made it a pre-condition of their union that Fanny must have unlimited access to her music. Before heading off to his painting studio each morning, Wilhelm would set out music paper and writing materials on his wife’s desk and encourage her to compose something before dinner time. Unlike Abraham and Felix, Wilhelm always urged his wife to publish her music. Sadly, Fanny’s strong loyalties to both brother and father had left her head addled over the whole issue, and it would be many years before she took up her husband’s advice.
Felix’s own attitude towards Fanny’s professional aspirations would only harden over the years. When even his own mother took him to task over his unbending mindset, Felix told her: “from my knowledge of Fanny, I should say that she has neither inclination nor vocation for authorship. She is too much all that a woman ought to be for this. She regulates her house, and neither thinks of the public nor of the musical world, nor even of music at all, until her first duties are fulfilled. Publishing would only disturb her in these, and I cannot say that I approve of it.”
But there were still options open to Fanny, not least as she realized she could still achieve something as a musician on a more domestic level. In 1831, she revived an old family tradition of private concerts, with a series she called the Sonntagmusiken (Sunday music), held in the Mendelssohns’ spacious Berlin residence near the Tiergarten. She set the programmes herself, played the piano, organized her own choir and conducted. Most importantly, the concerts allowed her scope to perform her own music.
Private these events may have been, but they were far from parochial. Her guest-list would be full of distinguished names such as Franz Liszt, Niccolò Paganini, Clara and Robert Schumann, the young French composer Charles Gonoud and the German poet, Heinrich Heine. While the guests listened in rapt silence, Wilhelm would often make impromptu sketches of them, or else invite them to sit for their portraits afterwards.
Taking encouragement from her success with the Sonntagsmusiken, Fanny also tried her hand at writing some larger scale works for the first time, which she could then programme into the concerts.
Her Oratorium nach Bildern der Bibel (Oratorio based upon Pictures from the Bible) is the third and largest of three cantatas she wrote in 1831. The music takes pre-classical models as its starting point – JS Bach and Handel – but then transforms these into an expressive, early romantic context (in much the way her brother would do with his later oratorios, St Paul and Elijah). Employing an eight-part chorus accompanied by full orchestra (augmented with extra trombones), the music positively fizzes with invention as it races from movement to movement, while its rapidly changing moods are handled with a deft and lithesome touch. In all, one would expect great things to come from any other 26-year-old composer demonstrating the same technical and musical assurance.
But when Fanny showed her cantatas to Felix, he was uncharacteristically critical, nit-picking over details in the orchestration. Could he possibly have felt that Fanny was straying too far into his territory? Whatever the case, his sharp reaction would have a damaging consequence: Fanny wrote no further cantatas – in fact she would write almost no further orchestral works of any kind, despite having demonstrated a clear aptitude for such music.
A similar thing would happen when she wrote a String Quartet in E Flat Major in 1835 – possibly the first string quartet ever written by a woman, and one ranking highly with any other work in the genre at the time. But again, Felix’s reaction was surprisingly negative. And while defending the work in a somewhat supplicating letter to her brother, Fanny managed to persuade herself that she could not write in longer forms. “I lack the ability to sustain things properly and give them the needed consistency”, she wrote, quite wrongfully as it happens.
In a more despairing moment, Fanny would ask herself, “what do my compositions matter? After all, no one cares about them, and no one dances to my tune.” She once complained that her music was ignored, even in her home city. “Once a year, perhaps, someone will copy a piece of mine, or ask me to play something special – certainly no oftener… If nobody ever offers an opinion, or takes the slightest interest in one’s productions, one loses in time not only all pleasure in them, but all power of judging their value.”
But if the 1830s had been a long period of frustration and self-doubt for Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel the composer, the 1840s would bring some long-overdue recompense. A major turning point in her life was the nine-month journey she and Wilhelm took to Italy between 1839 and 1840 – also the first time that Fanny had spent any significant time away from her family. Even better was the genuine admiration and respect Fanny felt from many of the musicians they encountered along the way.
In Rome they met the young French composer Charles Gounod, a recent winner of France’s prestigious Prix de Rome, and quickly struck up a warm friendship with him. Gounod was in fact genuinely dazzled by Fanny (the evidence suggesting he may even have been in love with her): “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. She had rare powers of composition, and many of the ‘Songs without Words’ published among the works and under the name of her bother were hers.”
To an extent, Gounod was able to install the older woman with a level of self-confidence she had not felt before, and nor was he alone in his admiration for her. Looking back on her time in Italy, Fanny observed that “in my early youth I have never been so courted as now, and who can deny that this is very pleasant and gratifying.”
One of the first fruits of this creative renewal was the set of piano pieces she wrote in 1841 depicting all 12 months of the year, Die Jahr. The score was written on specially tinted paper, besides fragments of poetry, to which her husband added a series of charming illustrations. It would prove to be one of Fanny and Wilhelm’s most beautiful collaborations.
Word was gradually beginning to spread about Felix Mendelssohn’s gifted but largely unknown sister. Further encouragement would arrive in the form of Robert von Keudell, a young amateur musician and future diplomat, who would become a trusted advisor and confidante. Then in the mid-1840s, Fanny met the virtuoso pianist and composer Clara Schumann (the wife of Robert) for the first time, with the two women taking an almost immediate liking to one another. Clara would describe Fanny as “congenial” and the “most distinguished female musician of her time.”
They probably had much to talk about, not least as both were currently working on piano trios. But while Clara’s own Trio in G Minor would be exquisitely crafted and full of classical balance, Fanny’s D Trio Minor takes more harmonic risks while embracing an almost wild and ferocious energy. In all, this is music that shows us a very different side to the woman who could be so diffident about her creative gifts; it demands our attention, while its emotional arc is touched by something close to outright anger.
A major piece of chamber music for the 1840s, the Piano Trio seemed to herald a new phase in Fanny’s creative development, and it remains one of her crowing achievements.
Her reputation continued to rise. And rather than go after any publishers, they eventually came after her, with two Berlin publishing houses approaching her in 1846 and inviting her to put together a package of her works. At long last, Fanny decided to defy Felix and take up their offer, writing to her brother soon after:
Laugh at me or not, as you wish: I’m afraid of my brother at age 40, as I was of Father at age 14—or, more aptly expressed, desirous of pleasing you and everyone I’ve loved throughout my life. And when I now know in advance that it won’t be the case, I thus feel RATHER uncomfortable. In a word, I’m beginning to publish…
After allowing her brother a moment to take a deep breath, she went on:
I hope you will in no way be bothered by this, for as you see, in order to spare you every possible unpleasant moment, I have proceeded entirely on my own, and I hope you won’t think badly of me. If it succeeds, that is, if people like the pieces and I receive further offers, I know it will be a great stimulus to me, which I have always needed in order to create. If not, I shall be at the point where I have always been, and not be upset; and then if I were to work less, or stop working altogether, nothing would be lost by it either.
Although Felix took a full month to respond, as if needing time to absorb the information, his better self then prevailed: “only today, do I, hard-hearted brother, get round to answering your kind letter,” he told her. “I send you my professional blessing on becoming a member of the craft … may you have much happiness in giving pleasure to others; may you taste only the sweets and none of the bitterness of authorship; may the public pelt you with roses, and never with sand.”
Such words meant the world to Fanny. “Felix has written”, she wrote in her journal, “and given me his professional blessing in the kindest manner. I know that he is not quite satisfied in his heart of hearts, but I am glad he has said a kind word to me about it.”
Three sets of Lieder, plus another three sets of Songs without Words (for piano solo) were duly published as ops 1 to 7 under Fanny Hensel’s name. They would all receive unanimously positive reviews.
It looked as if Fanny was finally emerging from her brother’s shadow. She began to prepare more manuscripts for the publishers. By the following spring, Felix recorded that he had never seen his sister appear “so hale and hearty”.
Sadly, time was also rapidly running out for her, and in a manner that no-one could have foreseen.
On the morning of the 14th May 1847, she read a very complimentary review of her Gartenlieder song cycle (op 3) in a prestigious German music journal. Later that day she was taking another Sonntagsmusiken rehearsal at home, when she suddenly lost the feeling in her hands. This was something that had happened before, and Fanny was not unduly alarmed, leaving the room to go and massage them with vinegar, while instructing the choir to keep singing. “How beautiful it sounds,” they heard her call out from an adjoining room. These would prove to be her final words – moments later she had collapsed from a ruptured blood vessel in her brain, and within hours she was dead.
When the news reached Felix (currently in London) it virtually destroyed him. He was unable to get back for the funeral in time and having visited Fanny’s grave, wept almost continuously for several weeks. As if now fully recognizing the folly of having helped suppress her music for so long, he immediately began organizing further publication of her compositions, managing to set the wheels in motion for two more sets of Lieder, some piano pieces and the Piano Trio (all eventually released in 1850). He also took the time out to write his own musical memorial for his sister, his moving and elegiac String Quartet in F Minor op 80.
But Felix was himself not a well man by this point and years of chronic overwork, as well as his own inconsolable grief, would catalyse his own tragically early death six months later, also from a catastrophic stroke. Beforehand he had expressed his hope that death was a place where “there is still music, but no more sorrow or partings.”
Had the two siblings lived another thirty or forty years, as better health really should have permitted, then it is quite probable that Felix would have overcome his prejudices and fully accepted his sister as a fellow composer, while Fanny could have blossomed as never before and written many more major works.
Above all, she could have acted as a role-model and standard-bearer to other female composers attempting to make their way in the later nineteenth century – at a time in which the world was gradually changing its attitude to women composers, albeit only very slowly.
But it was not to be - and sadly the vast bulk of Fanny Mendelssohn's music remains unpublished, unperformed and entirely unknown today.
To read more from David Hackett, go to www.musicbytheyear.com