Fanny Cäcilie Hensel, born Mendelssohn (November 14, 1805 – May 14, 1847), was a German composer and pianist from the early Romantic era. She is also known as Fanny Mendelssohn Bartholdy. She created over 450 musical works, including a string quartet, a piano trio, a piano quartet, an orchestral overture, four cantatas, more than 125 solo piano pieces, and over 250 lieder (German art songs). Most of these compositions were not published during her lifetime. Although she was praised for her skill on the piano, she rarely performed publicly outside her family.
Fanny was born in Berlin and studied music thoroughly, learning from teachers such as her mother, Ludwig Berger, and Carl Friedrich Zelter. Her younger brother, Felix Mendelssohn, who was also a composer and pianist, shared the same education, and the two had a close relationship. Because of her family’s concerns and social rules about women’s roles at the time, six of her songs were published under her brother’s name in his Opus 8 and 9 collections. In 1829, she married artist Wilhelm Hensel, and in 1830, they had their only child, Sebastian Hensel. In 1846, despite some family members’ uncertainty about her musical goals (though her husband supported her), Fanny published a collection of songs as her Opus 1. She died of a stroke in 1847 at age 41.
Since the 1990s, more research has been done about her life and works. Her Easter Sonata was incorrectly credited to her brother in 1970, but new document analysis in 2010 corrected this. The Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn Museum opened on May 29, 2018, in Hamburg, Germany.
Life
Fanny Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the oldest of four children, including her brother Felix Mendelssohn, who was born four years later. She was from two important Jewish families. Her father was Abraham Mendelssohn, the son of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and her mother was Lea Salomon, the granddaughter of the businessman Daniel Itzig. In 1816, Fanny was baptized as a Christian and became known as Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Even after this, she and her family still valued Jewish traditions and beliefs. She strongly disagreed when her father changed the family name to "Mendelssohn Bartholdy" to hide their Jewish heritage. She wrote to her brother Felix about how much she disliked the name "Bartholdy."
As a child, Fanny lived in Berlin with her family. She showed great musical talent and began writing music. Her mother taught her piano, and may have learned from the writings of Johann Kirnberger, a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the age of 14, Fanny could play all 24 preludes from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier from memory. She performed them in honor of her father’s birthday in 1819. In addition to her mother, Fanny may have been inspired by her great-aunts, Fanny von Arnstein and Sarah Levy, both of whom loved music. Fanny von Arnstein was a patron of a famous music salon, and Sarah Levy was a skilled keyboard player.
After briefly studying piano with Marie Bigot in Paris, Fanny and her brother Felix received piano lessons from Ludwig Berger and composition lessons from Carl Friedrich Zelter. At one time, Zelter believed Fanny was more talented than Felix. In 1816, he wrote to the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, introducing Abraham Mendelssohn, saying, "His oldest daughter could give you something of Sebastian Bach. This child is really something special." Both Fanny and Felix studied composition with Zelter starting in 1819. In October 1820, they joined the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which was led by Zelter. Later, in 1831, Zelter praised Fanny’s piano skills, saying, "She plays like a man." Visitors to the Mendelssohn home in the 1820s, such as Ignaz Moscheles and Sir George Smart, were also impressed by both siblings.
The music historian Richard Taruskin wrote that Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s life shows that women’s lack of success in music during the 19th century was due to social prejudice and rules that gave men more power in families. Her father shared these views and was not fully supportive of her work as a composer. In 1820, he wrote to her, "Music will perhaps become his [Felix’s] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament." Although Felix supported her privately, he was cautious about her publishing her music under her own name. He wrote:
The music historian Angela Mace Christian noted that Fanny Mendelssohn struggled with the conflict between wanting to be a composer and the expectations of her high social class. Her hesitation was influenced by her respect for her father, her close relationship with her brother, and her awareness of how society viewed women in public roles. Felix’s friend Henry Chorley wrote that if Fanny had been born into a poorer family, she might have been known as a top pianist, like Madame Schumann or Madame Pleyel. He suggested that both her gender and her class limited her career.
Fanny’s son, Sebastian Hensel, wrote a biography of the Mendelssohn family using family documents. The musicologist Marian Wilson Kimber noted that this biography may have portrayed Fanny as someone who did not want to perform publicly. Kimber observed that Fanny’s "longing for a professional music career" is not clearly supported by her diaries, which say little about her musical life.
Fanny and Felix shared a strong bond through their love of music. Fanny’s compositions were often played alongside Felix’s in a Sunday concert series (Sonntagskonzerte) at their family home in Berlin. This series was started by their father and later continued by Fanny. In 1822, when Fanny was 17 and Felix was 13, she wrote, "Up to the present moment I possess his [Felix’s] unbounded confidence. I have watched the progress of his talent step by step, and may say I have contributed to his development. I have always been his only musical adviser, and he never writes down a thought before submitting it to my judgment."
In 1826–1827, Felix arranged for some of Fanny’s songs to be published under his name, three in his Op. 8 collection and three more in his Op. 9. In 1842, this caused an embarrassing moment when Queen Victoria, meeting Felix at Buckingham Palace, said she wanted to sing one of his songs, Italien. Felix admitted it was actually written by Fanny.
Fanny supported Felix’s music clearly during the 1838 rehearsals in Berlin for his oratorio St. Paul. She attended the rehearsals at the invitation of the conductor, Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen. In a letter to her brother, she described hearing the rehearsals and feeling frustrated by the poor performance. She gave instructions to the conductor about the music, including telling him not to add a tuba to the organ part. She insisted, "I assured them that they should be ruled by my word, and they’d better do it for God’s sake."
Fanny and Felix had a lifelong musical relationship. Fanny provided helpful feedback on his work, which he always considered carefully. Felix would change his music based on her suggestions and called her "Minerva," after the Roman goddess of wisdom. Their letters from 1840–1841 show they both planned an opera based on the Nibelungenlied, though it never happened. Fanny wrote, "The hunt with Siegfried’s death provides a splendid finale to the second act."
In 1829, after several years of courtship (they first met in 1821 when she was 16), Fanny married the artist Wilhelm Hensel. The next year, they had their only child, Sebastian Hensel. Later, Fanny experienced at least two miscarriages or stillbirths in 1832 and 1837.
In 1830, Fanny received her first public recognition as a composer. John Thomson, who had met her in Berlin
Compositions
Fanny Mendelssohn composed over 450 musical pieces. Her works include a string quartet, a piano trio, a piano quartet, an orchestral overture, four cantatas, more than 125 piano pieces, and over 250 lieder (art songs). Six of her songs were published under her brother Felix's name in his Opus 8 and 9 collections. Many of her piano works resemble songs and are named "Lied für Klavier" (Song for Piano). Felix developed this style of piano music successfully, publishing his first set (Op. 19b) between 1829 and 1830, and a second set (Op. 30) between 1833 and 1834. Fanny wrote her sets of Lieder für Klavier between 1836 and 1837, around the same time as Felix's Op. 38.
Most of Fanny's compositions were lieder and piano pieces because she believed she lacked the skills to create larger, more complex works. She also did not study or play string instruments, which would have helped her write chamber or orchestral music. In 1835, after completing her string quartet, she wrote to Felix, "I lack the ability to sustain ideas properly and give them the needed consistency. Therefore, lieder suit me best, in which, if needed, a simple idea without much development can suffice." Fanny was one of the first women to compose a string quartet. She also wrote a piano quartet in 1822 with help from Zelter, and despite her doubts, she composed a piano trio (Op. 11) in her final year. Her Easter Sonata, written in 1828, was not published during her lifetime. It was mistakenly attributed to her brother in 1970, but later research confirmed it was hers in 2010.
After her marriage, Fanny Hensel focused on smaller works, such as songs and piano pieces. In 1831, she composed a cantata called Lobgesang (Song of Praise) for her son's first birthday. She also wrote two other large-scale works that year: Hiob (Job) and an oratorio titled Höret zu, merket auf (Listen and take note). In 1841, she created a cycle of piano pieces called Das Jahr (The Year), which depicted the months of the year. Each piece was written on tinted paper and illustrated by her husband, with a short poem accompanying each. Some scholars believe the poems and artwork represent stages of life, while others think they reflect Fanny's own experiences. In a letter from Rome, Fanny described the process of composing Das Jahr.
After Das Jahr, her only large-scale work was the Piano Trio Op. 11, composed in 1847.
Angela Mace, a musicologist who confirmed Fanny's authorship of the Easter Sonata, noted that Fanny's lieder were more experimental than Felix's, with a "harmonic density" that helped express emotion.
R. Larry Todd pointed out that both Fanny and Felix were strongly influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven's later music, particularly in terms of form, tonality, and complex musical techniques. This influence is evident in Fanny's string quartet.
Stephen Rodgers, a musicologist, observed that Fanny's music has not been widely analyzed, leading to the overlooked use of a specific rhythm called triple hypermeter in her songs. He explained that this rhythm changed the speed of singing and reflected emotions by breaking from standard patterns. Rodgers also noted that Fanny's lieder often lacked a central musical key, a feature he linked to themes of loneliness and unfulfilled love in songs like Verlust (Loss). Fanny frequently used word painting, a technique that highlights emotions in the lyrics, and strophic form, where the same melody repeats. Her piano accompaniments often mirrored the vocal lines, a style shared by her teachers Zelter and Berger. As her style developed, Rodgers noted that Fanny increasingly used through-composed forms, which allowed her to better match the poetic text in her music.
Legacy
From the 1980s, there has been more interest in Fanny Mendelssohn and her music. In November 2017, the Mendelssohn-Haus museum in Leipzig opened a permanent exhibit about her life and work. The Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn Museum, which focuses on the lives and music of both siblings, opened in Hamburg on 29 May 2018.
A minor planet, numbered 9331 Fannyhensel [fr], is named after her.
On 14 November 2021, Google honored Fanny Hensel’s 216th birthday with a special Google Doodle in several countries, including North America, Iceland, Germany, Greece, Ukraine, Israel, Armenia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Before his death, Felix worked to ensure his sister received recognition for her music, which had been ignored for much of her life. He collected her compositions and planned to share them with the public through his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel. In 1850, the publisher began releasing her previously unpublished works, starting with Vier Lieder Op. 8. Since the late 1980s, Fanny Mendelssohn’s music has become more widely known through concerts and new recordings. Her Easter Sonata for piano, which was once mistakenly credited to Felix, was played for the first time in her name by Andrea Lam on 12 September 2012.
Fanny Mendelssohn did not publish any writings during her lifetime. Some of her letters and journal entries were published in the 19th century, including a book by Sebastian Hensel about the Mendelssohn family. A collection of her letters to Felix, edited by Marcia Citron, was published in 1987.
In the 19th century, Fanny was often only mentioned briefly in biographies about her brother Felix, usually as an example of a supposed "feminizing" influence on his art. In the 20th century, the focus shifted to describe Felix as disapproving of Fanny’s musical work, while the idea that she had a "feminizing" effect was no longer used. Since the 1980s, many academic books and articles have studied Fanny Mendelssohn’s life and work. Kimber notes that the story of Fanny, the "suppressed" composer, fits into traditional ideas about male composers, but with a modern twist: Fanny’s identity as a woman.
A list of Fanny Mendelssohn’s works, created by Renate Hellwig-Unruh in 2000, allows each piece to be identified by its "H-U number."
Sheila Hayman, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Fanny Mendelssohn, released a 97-minute documentary titled Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn in 2023.