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Summary:

Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) -- child prodigy, virtuoso pianist, and prolific composer of well over four hundred compositions -- was an extraordinary musician and astute observer of European culture. ... Sister of ... Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, she has in recent decades finally secured her place as the leading woman composer of the nineteenth century. She excelled in short, lyrical piano pieces and songs of epigrammatic intensity, but the expressive range of her art also accommodated challenging virtuoso piano and chamber works, orchestral music, and cantatas written in imitation of J.S. Bach. Her gender and social position excluded her from her brother's professional world, even as he published some of her songs under his name. Hensel's own sphere of influence revolved around her Berlin residence, where she directed concerts that attracted such celebrities as Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann, among others. Here ... Hensel found her own voice as pianist, conductor and composer. Late in life she decided to release her works under her own name and began a career as a professional composer, only to die tragically of a stroke within a year of the first reviews. The vast majority of her music was forgotten for a century and a half before its rediscovery late in the twentieth century. Renowned Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd now offers a compelling, full account of Hensel's life and music, her extraordinary relationship with her brother, her position in one of Berlin's most eminent families, and her courageous struggle to define her own public voice as a composer--dust jacket.

Table of Contents:

• Fugal fingers (1805-1818)
• Musical ornaments (1819-1821)
• Sibling rivalry and separation (1822-1824)
• Leipzigerstrasse No. 3 (1825-1828)
• Becoming Frau Hensel (1828-1830)
• Secret aspirations (1830-1833)
• Youthful decrepitude (1834-1835)
• Demonic influences (1836-1839)
• Italian intermezzo (1839-1840)
• Domestic tranquility (1840-1842)
• The joys of dilettantism (1843-1845)
• Engraver's ink and heavenly songs (1846-1847).

Author/Creator:

Todd, R. Larry , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Fanny Hensel: the other Mendelssohn [by Todd, R.L.]

Other Related Resources:

Electronic reproduction: Fanny Hensel [by Todd, R.L.] (New York : Oxford University Press, 2010 — OCLC Number 646096622)

Subjects:

Hensel, Fanny Mendelssohn, 1805-1847

Women composers — Germany — Biography

Women composers

Germany

Genres:

Biographies

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 395-409) and indexes.
Additional music examples (marked in the text) available online at www.oup.com/us/fannyhensel.
From the Music Department of the Ariel Club in memory of Jean Mainous.

Physical Description:

xxviii, 426 pages : illustrations, music ; 25 cm

Call Numbers:

ML410.H482 T63 2010

ISBNs:

9780195180800
0195180801

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2009003999

OCLC Numbers:

301705955