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I JUST FOUND OUT TODAY IS FANNY MENDELSSOHN HENSEL’S BIRTHDAY please hold while I get some more caffeine in myself and then I will tell you what I know about this brilliant wonderful force of nature
Okay! Let's talk about Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, born on this day (in this thread I'm just going to use "Fanny" because character limits, I don't mean any disrespect)
I don't know nearly as much about Fanny as I do about other composers, so the majority of info I have on her is from Anna Beer's excellent book Sounds and Sweet Airs. (I will tag her at the end of the thread bc the last time I did this I ended up spamming people's mentions)
It's hard to talk about Fanny without also talking about her brother Felix (guy who wrote Midsummer Night's Dream, Songs Without Words, that octet, some banging piano concertos) bc their fame and creative outputs were so intertwined
They were both gifted child prodigies, often compared to history's other famous brother-sister duo Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart (except with a much less crappy dad)
Fanny had perfect pitch (of course), could play all 24 preludes from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier from memory at age 13 (why not), and was regarded by some teachers/friends as being more gifted than her brother Felix (girl was talented AS HELL)
She was also funny AF, here are excerpts from her letters in which 1) she is super relatable and 2) dunks on Berlioz
And one of my favorite Fanny stories is the time Queen Victoria invited Felix to Buckingham Palace, told him how much she loved his work, and it turns out it was actually Fanny's
Queen Victoria: thanks for coming, I'm a big fan of your music
Felix Mendelssohn: wow no thank you, it's an honor, love the english empire
QV: I particularly love "Italien," it's just amazing
FM: oh. um...actually my sister wrote that
FM: you're still a fan of me, right
Felix Mendelssohn: wow no thank you, it's an honor, love the english empire
QV: I particularly love "Italien," it's just amazing
FM: oh. um...actually my sister wrote that
FM: you're still a fan of me, right
In a lot of the narratives about women composers, there are two tropes: either they were 100% discouraged from pursuing music at all, or they bucked all the trends and did what they wanted. Fanny's story is...a lot more complex than that
Her family was super musical! She was encouraged to compose! She collaborated with her brother! Everyone talked about how talented she was! For a composer in the 1800s that was a great situation...EXCEPT for the little tiny fact that she was discouraged from going pro
As Anna Beer points out, part of it was a class thing: the Mendelssohn family was wealthy and it was not a good look for their daughter to pimp out her talents for money
Also they were Jewish in 1800s Germany and that was a whole thing
(The Mendelssohns eventually converted to Christianity and adopted the surname "Bartholdy" which is why you sometimes see Felix referred to as "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy." The more you know!)
Very luckily for Fanny (and for us), marriage did not put an end to her composing bc she married the Ben Wyatt of Prussian dudes: Wilhelm Hensel, an artist who insisted she keep composing, and later (spoiler alert) encouraged her to publish her music
(This is super special because historically a lot of women had to stop composing when they got married. See: Alma Mahler, Nannerl Mozart, and even my girl Clara Schumann got some of that splashback)
The Mendelssohn family actually didn't think Wilhelm was all that great when he first showed up so they told him to bug off to Rome for 5 years (he did) and not to write letters to Fanny (so he sent drawings instead)
When they got married Fanny wrote her own goddamn wedding music JUST BECAUSE SHE COULD (and also Pachelbel's canon is overrated)
Throughout their lives, Felix and Fanny's creative processes were highly collaborative: they bounced ideas off each other, edited each other's music, and quoted each other's melodies in their own compositions. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME THAT YOU KNOW THIS because:
A lot of people talk about Fanny's music in the context of Felix's (hell I'm doing that right now) but we still study Felix's music like it was created in a vacuum AND THAT'S NOT OKAY
This woman wrote 460+ pieces of music! Her Wikipedia list of compositions is longer than a freaking CVS receipt! How people handwave the influence of a major composer in the family is beyond me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Fanny_Mendelssohn
So she wasn't supposed to perform, conduct, or compose outside of the home. For most people this is where their career goes to die, but Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was not most people. She solved the problem by just opening up her goddamn home.
The Mendelssohn family lived in this massive mansion (look I'm not gonna lie to you, it helps to be rich) so Fanny started hosting these musical gatherings at her house that ended up being the hottest tickets in Berlin
These events were the real deal! There were rehearsals, full audiences, and official printed programs! It was the first stop for any international artist hoping to make it in Germany. Franz Freaking Liszt was in frequent attendance because Fanny RAN THIS TOWN
She even had a higher standard of etiquette than most concert halls. She required that the audience remain quiet during performances (which was not common at the time, people were used to eating and drinking and gossiping throughout concerts)
She was also a major figure in the Clara Schumann Cinematic Universe: the Mendelssohns were close friends with the Schumanns, although Clara once said Fanny had a "rather brusque manner" which is rich coming from the woman who once said this: https://twitter.com/doodlyroses/status/1130567663145512960
Anyway Fanny gained a LOT of musical power and influence this way, although there's no sugarcoating it: she did the best with what she had and was still closed off from the public musical life her brother got to live. AND she had to work with a lot of amateurs:
So after decades of writing music (song cycles! choral works! a symphonic overture! sonatas! a massive piano work that defies labels!) she finally plucked up the courage to say "f the system" and publish her music under her own name
I say "under her own name" because previously she worked with Felix to publish some of her music under HIS name, which is what led to the whole Queen Victoria debacle
At the age of 40, she published her Opus 1 in her own goddamn name. She wrote, "I feel as if newly born." It was a new chapter in her life, the start of a long, brilliant career as a great composer—
Sorry, my Fanny Mendelssohn Alternate Timeline script got away from me there.
She had a stroke while rehearsing a new piece of music and died at age 41.
She had a stroke while rehearsing a new piece of music and died at age 41.
I'M STILL HEARTBROKEN OVER THIS
(And so was Felix, who died six months later)
The fact that she (and one of her only professional advocates) died so young, the overwhelming sentiment that women couldn't compose, the rise of anti-Semitism: all these contributed to the burying of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's legacy
So on this day, her 214th birthday, I invite you to give her music a listen:
Here's her Piano Trio Op. 11, one of her few published works:
Here's "Italien," the song that Queen Victoria liked so much:
Here's a Spotify playlist of her music: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E4wtMqqoq6l29?si=prH0eq-4RDazhCClpZ7j7g
And an Apple Music playlist of her music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/fanny-mendelssohn-essentials/pl.640354efb24444f98a3026e58315991b
Finally, all the quotes (and most of this thread) are from @annarosebeer's chapter on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, from her excellent book Sounds and Sweet Airs https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26113835-sounds-and-sweet-airs
Happy birthday Fanny, we still don't deserve you.
P.S. This is a portrait of Fanny, as drawn by her husband 
Because this is apparently a thing I do now, here are previous threads on music history bosses—
The Clara Schumann birthday megathread https://twitter.com/doodlyroses/status/1172567659361099776
The Cécile Chaminade birthday thread https://twitter.com/doodlyroses/status/1159521159546716161
