Fanny, of course, was the older sister (by four years) of Felix, and her musical talent was as remarkable as that of her brother. The two were inseparable in their youth, and spent their hours together pursuing their mutual interests in diverse activities. They were born into a distinguished family of Jewish bankers and philosophers, and raised in a warm, intellectual, highly supportive artistic family. Fanny and Felix were incredibly precocious, and the two were probably among the best-educated composers of all time. Voracious readers, interested in science and philosophy, and daily conversationalists with the leading minds of Germany, the siblings even started their own literary magazine in their early teens. Obviously, they matured quickly, and a stream of musical compositions soon flowed from them both.
Both the siblings received first-rate musical training with recognized teachers, and enjoyed frequent opportunities to demonstrate their skills, both as performers and youthful composers, in the frequent family musicales. Fanny, being the older, was first to be recognized for her talent, and her reputation as a pianist was formidable. By the time Fanny was fourteen she was able to perform all of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by memory. Nevertheless, she performed publically rarely in her life, focusing on composition. The two siblings had great mutual respect for each other’s talents, soliciting and giving frequent advice and analysis of their respective compositions—even into adulthood. Nevertheless, as was the overwhelming social convention of the time, it was soon made clear to them both that Felix could pursue music as a profession, but for Fanny it could only be an “ornament.” And it must be said, Felix shared the conviction, despite his deep respect for her talent. His support for her included the gesture of allowing some of her early compositions to be published under his name! She married the artist, Wilhelm Hensel, at the age of twenty-four, and continued to compose extensively for most of the rest of her life, dying young of a stroke when forty-two. Her husband was strongly supportive of the publication of her compositions, and she published her first collection of works under her own name in 1846. Whereupon, Felix proffered his (it must be said) rather lukewarm blessings—but she was nevertheless grateful.
Despite the obstacles, Fanny was an assiduous and productive composer, with over four hundred and fifty compositions to her credit. Most of her work focused on German Lieder (over 250) and works for solo piano. Although she did compose a piano trio, a piano quartet, and several cantatas. Her only purely orchestra work is the Overture in C, composed around 1830-32. Not much is known about its origins, but reasonably could have been intended for one of the famous and numerous family musicales that often included small orchestras. It was only recently “rediscovered” and published, based upon manuscripts found in the Mendelssohn Archive in Berlin.
Though Fanny composed so little for orchestra she was nevertheless more than conversant with the medium. She had frequently conducted her brother’s works, and is known to have made very strong recommendations about the orchestration of some of them during performance preparations. Accordingly, this little overture is evidence of her deft mastery of the orchestra—no matter that she never studied or played an orchestral instrument. It is scored for a modest ensemble that would have been typical of that of decades before in the works of, say, Haydn: strings, woodwinds, horns, trumpets and timpani.
It opens with sustained horns and a charming call and response between the strings and the woodwinds. The graceful and lyrical exchange is repeated, this time with the woodwinds taking the lead. An apparent recapitulation of this material quickly yields to a frenzied outburst by unison strings that leads us to the brisk tempo of the movement proper. Couched in the usual sonata form, but with creative touches throughout, Fanny provides a multiplicity of ingratiating themes—even the transitions are borne by significant ideas of their own. The composer is on record as denigrating her ability to develop ideas—so important in abstract instrumental music—and offering that as reason for dedicating the preponderance of her oeuvre to Lieder. Not so! The development section here is eloquent evidence of her skill at creative elaboration of musical ideas. Not only that, but the ear is diverted by a harmonic language that refreshingly moves through varied interesting keys—early German romanticism at its best!
–Wm. E. Runyan
©2021 William E. Runyan