There, in 1816, Fanny and her younger brother Felix were baptized as Lutherans. The two talented youngsters were brought up in an exceptionally stimulating atmosphere and both became highly accomplished composers and pianists. Based on contemporary accounts and her music, she had talents as a composer that were fairly comparable to those of her brother. However, her father opposed a professional career as unsuitable for a young gentlewoman.
Felix carried on this opposition after their father's death. At the age of 17 she fell in love with a struggling painter, Wilhelm Hensel. After some years of familiar opposition due to his lack of wealth, they were married and moved into a house in the family compound.
Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel: Comparing the works of these sibling composers (Presented as a lecture with sung examples at Watchorn Hall on 25 April 1998.). Fanny wrote over 250 lieder. Because the compositional styles of each composer developed very early in their careers, it is not.
In 1839 and 1840 the couple visited Italy. There Fanny found herself the center of a circle of young musicians who admired her music. She blossomed under this attention and composed with renewed confidence. She wrote piano music, oratorios, and chamber music. In the mid-1840s she informed her brother that she intended to begin to publish her music and he apparently dropped his opposition. However, at about that time she began to suffer recurrent nosebleeds, which we recognize now as a sign of high blood pressure. On May 16, 1847, while rehearsing a performance of one of Felix's oratorios, she felt her hands go numb, then fell over, struck by a fatal stroke.
Her music never had its just debut during her lifetime and much of it remained unheard and unpublished. It was only in the late 1900s that recordings brought evidence of her exceptional gifts as a composer to the general public.
Grave of Fanny Hensel in BerlinFanny Hensel died in Berlin in 1847 of complications from a stroke suffered while rehearsing one of her brother's,. Felix himself died less than six months later from the same cause (which was also responsible for the deaths of both of their parents and of their grandfather Moses), but not before completing his, written in memory of his sister.In recent years, her music has become better known thanks to concert performances and a number of CDs being released on labels such as.
Her reputation has also been advanced by those researching female musical creativity, of which she is one of the relatively few well-documented exemplars in the early 19th century. Music. See also:Fanny Mendelssohn composed over 460 pieces of music.
Her compositions include a and several books of solo piano pieces and songs. A number of her songs were originally published under Felix's name in his 8 and 9 collections. Her piano works are often in the manner of songs, and many carry the name Lied ohne Worte ( Song without Words).
This style (and title) of piano music was most successfully developed by Felix Mendelssohn, though some modern scholars assert that Fanny may have preceded him in the genre.She also wrote, amongst other works for the piano, a cycle of pieces depicting the months of the year, Das Jahr ('The Year'). The music was written on coloured sheets of paper, and illustrated by her husband Wilhelm. Each piece was also accompanied by a short poem. In a letter from Rome, Fanny Mendelssohn described the process behind composing Das Jahr:I have been composing a good deal lately, and have called my piano pieces after the names of my favourite haunts, partly because they really came into my mind at these spots, partly because our pleasant excursions were in my mind while I was writing them.
They will form a delightful souvenir, a kind of second diary. But do not imagine that I give these names when playing them in society, they are for home use entirely.Amongst her works is the written in 1828, which was unpublished in her lifetime, then discovered and attributed to her brother in 1970, before examination of the manuscript and a mention of the work in her diary finally established that the work was hers in 2010.
It was debuted in her name on 8 March 2017,. Grandchildren She was the grandmother of the philosopher and the mathematician.Notes.