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Fanny Hensel’s Sechs Lieder op. 9: A Brother’s Elegy
Stephen Rodgers
Forthcoming in Rethinking Mendelssohn,
ed. Angela Mace Christian and Benedict Taylor (Oxford University Press)
In the early summer of 1847, shortly after his sister had died of a sudden stroke, Felix
Mendelssohn wrote a grief-stricken letter to her husband Wilhelm:
If the sight of my handwriting checks your tears, put the letter away, for we have nothing
left now but to weep from our inmost hearts; we have been so happy together, but a
saddened life is beginning now. You made my sister very happy, dear Hensel, through
her whole life, as she deserved to be. I thank you for it today, and shall do so as long as I
live, and longer too I hope, not only in words, but with bitter pangs of regret, that I did
not do more myself for her happiness, did not see her oftener, was not with her oftener.
That would indeed have been for my own pleasure, but it pleased her too. I am still too
much stunned by the blow to be able to write as I could: still I dare not leave my wife and
children and come to you, knowing as I do that I can bring neither help nor comfort. Help
and comfort—how different these words sound from all I have been thinking and feeling
since yesterday morning. This will be a changed world for us now, but we must try and
get accustomed to the change, though by the time we have got accustomed to it our lives
may be over too.1
2
Felix spent the months of July and August resting in Switzerland, where he produced a series of
watercolor landscapes and drafted the String Quartet in F Minor, op. 80. After returning to
Leipzig, he ultimately managed to summon the strength to travel to his sister’s home in Berlin, in
the last week of September 1847. At the beginning of October, he headed back to Leipzig,
bringing with him several of Fanny’s manuscripts, which he gave to his principal publisher,
Breitkopf & Härtel. He died only a month later. It would be another three years before these
works appeared in print as Hensel’s op. 8 (Vier Lieder für das Pianoforte), op. 9 (Sechs Lieder
mit Begleitung des Pianoforte), op. 10 (Fünf Lieder mit Begleitung des Pianoforte), and op. 11
(Trio für Violine, Violoncello und Klavier in d-Moll).
The story of the posthumous publication of these works, and of Felix’s role in delivering
them to his publisher in Leipzig, has been repeated often in the Mendelssohn literature. It is a
heartrending story, not least because it reinforces the depth of the connection between the
siblings, a connection that, as Larry Todd has shown, was both personal and musical: there are
important links between their pieces, suggesting lines of influence that go not just from Felix to
Fanny but also in the opposite direction.2
Still, as clear as this story is in its general outlines, many of its details remain fuzzy. Who
selected these pieces for publication? Was it Felix alone, as Todd, Angela Mace Christian, and
Françoise Tillard have suggested?3 Was it Fanny’s husband Wilhelm, as Marcia Citron has
written?4 Furthermore, why were these works chosen over the hundreds of other compositions
Fanny wrote? These questions have only received passing attention, in part because there is no
documentary evidence to help us settle them—no letter in which Felix states his intentions and
activities during the last week of September 1847, no annotation on any of Fanny’s manuscripts
that says “chosen by Felix.” The speculations about who compiled Fanny’s posthumous works
3
and why are really just that—best guesses based on the scant biographical evidence that is
available.
The siblings’ music, however, provides another form of evidence, which clarifies many
of the ambiguities surrounding the posthumous publication of Fanny’s works. A close
examination of these works, as well as of related works by Felix, suggests that it was in fact
Felix who selected which pieces of his sister’s would be disseminated after her death, and in
what form. The music, in other words, tells its own story; it provides vital information in support
of the idea that Felix was the principal actor in the selection and dissemination of his sister’s
music after her death.
This is particularly true of Fanny’s Sechs Lieder op. 9, a group of songs drawn (with only
one exception) from an earlier period in her life, the 1820s—notably, a period when she and
Felix were sharing their music with one another, and when their musical styles were particularly
connected.5 For Christian, the dates of Fanny’s op. 9 songs suggest that Felix had a hand in
putting this opus together: Felix, she says, “selected his favorites of Fanny’s Lieder from the
happiest days of their youth.”6
The evidence, however, extends much further, encompassing not just the dates of
composition but also the content of the songs themselves. Fanny’s op. 9 is strikingly similar to
Felix’s own op. 9, Zwölf Lieder (1830), a group of songs containing three works by Fanny;
Christian calls it a “co-authored cycle,” an opus that she believes was assembled as much by
Fanny as by Felix.7 In fact, both opuses are cyclic, and intimately connected to each other: there
are poetic and musical ideas that recur across the cycles, and even songs from Fanny’s op. 9 that
seem specially chosen to bring to mind songs from Felix’s op. 9. Considering these intertextual
resonances, it is difficult not to see the Sechs Lieder as a brother’s elegy to his departed sister,
4
and a sibling collaboration in its own right, although a rather unusual one. It is a work that defies
easy description. An attempt to characterize it in a single sentence sounds almost absurd: the
Sechs Lieder op. 9 is a cycle of Fanny’s songs assembled by Felix, which evokes an earlier cycle
of his songs that was in part assembled by her and which contains several songs of hers that were
published under his name. Yet for this very reason it demands close analysis. Fanny’s op. 9
emerges as a curious counterpart to Felix’s op. 9—another work that bears the name of one
sibling but shows the hands of both, and an object lesson in the irreducible complexity of
influence, allusion, and memory.
<1> Felix’s op. 9
Conventional wisdom once had it that Mendelssohn didn’t write song cycles, at least not cycles
akin to the cycles of Schubert and Schumann. In recent years, however, a number of scholars
have put pressure on this view. While it is true that Mendelssohn never wrote extended cycles of
songs with the same level of musical and narrative consistency as Dichterliebe or Die schöne
Müllerin, some of his song collections do nonetheless exhibit cyclic qualities: organized key
schemes, recurring poetic images, loose poetic narratives, musical cross-references, and so on.8
Douglass Seaton, for example, has argued that Mendelssohn’s output contains a number of
“phantom cycles”—songs that were not grouped together in published collections but that might
have been conceived as cycles at some stage in their composition, and songs that were grouped
together in published collections and upon closer inspection seem to be more than just an
assortment of tenuously related pieces.9 He argues, for example, that two groups of three choral
songs within published sets of six—nos. 2–4 in op. 41 (titled “Drei Volkslieder”) and nos. 1–3 in
op. 48 (titled “Der erste Frühlingstag”)—are unquestionably cyclic: they have symmetrical key
5
schemes (I–IV–I), as well as a continuity of poetic topic and poetic voice. Seaton then uses these
clearly cyclic opuses as a kind of measuring stick, extracting features from them and looking for
these features in other potentially cyclic groupings of songs.
One such grouping is the Zwölf Lieder op. 9. Seaton cites this opus as one of several
collections by Mendelssohn “that might invite performance as complete, multi-movement
works,”10 noting that the twelve songs were grouped into two halves, titled “Der Jüngling” and
“Das Mädchen.”11 And, indeed, closer inspection reveals a number of cyclic features, even aside
from the presence of these subtitles. As Christian notes, the collection begins in A major and
ends in A minor, and it has a large-scale tonal trajectory, moving from tonic (A major) to
subdominant (D major) to submediant (F<sharp> minor) to dominant (E major) and back to the
minor-mode tonic. For some listeners, this kind of unified, “monotonal” pattern may be difficult
to perceive (in the cycles of Schubert and Schumann as well, hearing these larger tonal patterns
can at times require a certain suspension of disbelief).12 Even skeptics, however, can admit that
the final song, in A minor, creates a sense of coming full circle, and that the third and fourth
songs effect a move to the subdominant of A. (Remember that Mendelssohn’s cyclic quartet
choral Lieder likewise begin and end with tonic and move to the subdominant.)
There are other musical connections as well. Todd writes that the second song,
“Geständnis,” references the opening measures of the first song, “Frage,” reworking what he
calls its “questioning” motive (see Example 1 for the beginning of “Frage” and Example 2 for
the beginning of “Geständnis”).13 The first words of song no. 1 (“Ist es wahr?”) are set to a
C<sharp>–B–D motive, with the first two notes as an upbeat dotted-eighth–sixteenth and the
third note falling on a downbeat. This motive is repeated at the beginning of song no. 2 (on the
words “Kennst du nicht”). (Todd also points out that songs no. 3 and no. 4, “Wartend” and “Im
6
Frühling,” “retain the motivic kernel” of songs no. 1 and no. 2, rearranging its pitches and
altering the motive rhythmically: the first three notes of both songs restate the three pitches of the
motive, but in a different order—D–C<sharp>–B—and without the dotted-eighth–sixteenth
upbeat of the first two songs.14) The connection between the openings of songs no. 1 and no. 2
involves more than just this “questioning” motive, however. Both songs also feature what we
might call an “answering” motive: a gesture that begins with a descending arpeggiated triad and
is followed by one or more steps. I have marked these “answering” motives and some variants of
them in Examples 1 and 2; I count mm. 5–6 of “Geständnis” as a version of this motive since it
outlines a descending D-minor triad in first inversion.
[INSERT EXAMPLE 1 AND EXAMPLE 2 HERE]
Aside from these musical connections, the poems of Felix’s op. 9 are topically and
narratively related. The subtitles alone (“Der Jüngling” and “Das Mädchen”) give us reason to
look for some sort of “extra-musical” narrative that binds together the twelve songs. Christian
does just that: following Seaton’s idea that the songs were not meant to be performed in their
published order but instead “in some sort of alternation,” resulting in “a Liederspiel for two
characters,”15 she argues that in this alternating form there is a strong sense of poetic narrative:
On a global scale, when performed in alternation …, the dramatic progression of the set
changes from loose associations of themes … to a dialogue that has more dramatic
coherence. First, there is the question “can it be?” that there is a love developing,
followed by longing for an answer. The confession of love leads to the springtime
7
flowering of hopes; the romance progresses, but the lovers are apparently parted. Spring
changes to autumn, and the cold winds of loss and separation–possibly death–wither the
budding relationship. The male protagonist departs, the female protagonist renounces her
dependence on the world, and finally proclaims her devotion to God, before perishing
before a picture of the Virgin Mary.16
I hear just as much of a “dramatic progression” in the published order. The first half (“Der
Jüngling”) progresses from youthful passion to old-age resignation: from the expectancy of new
love (“Frage”), to the torment and pleasure of desiring someone who seems not to desire you
(“Geständnis”), to the pain of being distant from the one you love (“Wartend”), to the fulfillment
of love (“Im Frühling”), to the inexorable passage of time (“Im Herbst”), to the loss of youth
(“Scheidend”). The trajectory of the second half (“Das Mädchen”) is likewise from expectancy
to resignation—in fact, to death: from the disturbance caused by love (“Sehnsucht”), to the
recognition that change cannot be avoided (“Frühlingsglaube”), to the longing for a distant
beloved (“Ferne”), to the pain of a broken heart (“Verlust”), to the renunciation of pain and the
desire for heavenly comfort (“Entsagung”), to death and the peace it brings (“Die Nonne”).
For years, scholars and performers viewed this work as principally Felix’s creation—as a
work that he put together, incorporating three songs by his sister. (Some have used stronger
words, arguing that in publishing his sister’s songs under his name Felix was taking advantage of
Fanny and subsuming her artistic voice within his own.17) Yet Christian has encouraged us to see
op. 9 instead as a co-creation. She cites a letter—written on August 13–14, 1829, and only
published in 2008—in which Felix, overworked and feeling pressured by his publisher, says that
Fanny should begin selecting the songs for op. 9 herself:
8
Concerning Schlesinger, there’s no need for him to rage any further, because I
will gladly keep my word to him, even though it is difficult for me to do; ask
him if he is intending to publish the Lieder immediately, and in this case I can
propose the idea of 2 Liederkränzen, for a young man and a maiden, and give
him six colorful pieces for each, which I ask Fanny, without any further
reference to me, to select from my or her things completely without
stipulations, only the accompaniment must be very light, and there should be at
least one enjoyable, cheerful, and fast [Lied] among the selection. If he wants
to wait, however, until I have found a little peace and can arrange everything
prettily, which must happen soon, I believe, he would be much smarter and do
me a favor, because I don’t think that the press is in a hurry; thus I ask all of
you to present him with this alternative, and tell him that he would do me a
favor if he would wait.18
Christian concludes from this evidence that Fanny was an “equal partner” in the creation of op.
9: “[T]his letter proves that Fanny’s Lieder were not stolen or appropriated, as some scholars
believed before this documentary evidence was available. Thus an analysis of the opus—even
though most of the Lieder are by Felix—considering both musical and biographical parameters,
will reveal just as much about Fanny as it does about Felix.”19
The same, I argue, is true of the other op. 9, the six songs of Fanny’s that were published
after her death. Alas, we have no letter comparable to the letter Felix wrote about the 1830 cycle,
no document in which Felix acknowledges that he chose these six songs of Fanny’s and arranged
9
them in this order. But we do have the songs themselves, in which we can detect the
organizational conventions that appear in Felix’s own works. If an analysis of the earlier op. 9
reveals as much about Fanny as it does about Felix, an analysis of the later op. 9 reveals as much
about Felix as it does about Fanny.
<1> Fanny’s op. 9
I base this claim on the presence of several poetic and musical similarities between the opuses,
which are striking enough to seem more than accidental; when I play and sing certain songs from
both works, moving back and forth between those in Felix’s Zwölf Lieder and those in Fanny’s
Sechs Lieder, I find it hard not to conclude that the compiler of Fanny’s op. 9 was glancing
backward at another, earlier op. 9, forging a musical bond between two groups of songs that
were composed around the same time. The fact that the opus numbers are the same is also not
insignificant; in his well-known book on allusion in nineteenth-century music, Christopher
Reynolds points out that many composers used opus numbers as a way of alerting listeners to
intertextual relationships.20 If we grant this as a possibility, then the argument for Felix as the
most likely compiler becomes even more compelling, since he had such an intimate
understanding of the cycle he and his sister co-authored. Fanny’s op. 9 is already a kind of
memorial, seeing as it was published after her death, but it becomes an even more affecting
memorial when heard as Felix’s musical reflection on his youthful collaboration with his sister.
The most general similarity is that Fanny’s op. 9, like Felix’s, is also noticeably cyclic,
and cyclic in similar ways, suggesting that the resemblances are more than just happenstance.
First, the six songs of Fanny’s op. 9 trace a poetic narrative that is roughly analogous to the
poetic narratives in each half of Felix’s op. 9. Table 1 provides a brief summary of each poem.
10
For ease of comparison I have placed the six songs of Fanny’s cycle in the middle and each half
of Felix’s cycle on either side. I use male pronouns to describe the lyric personas of “Der
Jüngling” and Fanny’s op. 9, because in the poems the beloved is clearly a woman; for similar
reasons I use feminine pronouns to describe the lyric persona of “Das Mädchen.” Like the six
songs of “Der Jüngling” and the six of “Das Mädchen,” the six songs of Fanny’s opus begin
from a place of promise and anticipation and end with a sense of loss. Fanny’s cycle has an even
stronger sense of narrative, because it speaks in a single voice—the voice of the lyric persona,
who first expresses his longing for a woman (songs 1–3), then wistfully remembers happier
times he experienced with her (songs 5–6), and ends up alone, envying the nightingales and
doves that sing with their partners in their nests.
Even more, some of the poems in the Sechs Lieder are so similar to poems in the Zwölf
Lieder as to seem like variations on the same theme (see the arrows in Table 1). For example, the
first poem of Fanny’s op. 9 (“Die Ersehnte”) is very much like the first poem in each half of
Felix’s op. 9 (“Frage” and “Sehnsucht”) in that it, too, expresses a yearning for future bliss. The
second poem of Fanny’s op. 9 (“Ferne,” about the pain of being far from a loved one) closely
parallels the third poem in each half of Felix’s op. 9 (“Wartend,” about two lovers who
communicate across the sea with a falcon and a horn, and the identically titled “Ferne,” also
about the pain of separation). The third poem of Fanny’s cycle (“Der Rosenkranz,” about
withering flowers and the passage of time) resembles the fifth poem in Felix’s first half (“Im
Herbst,” likewise about the fading of flowers and days that fly by). And although the final poems
of both cycles (“Die Mainacht” in Fanny’s op. 9 and “Die Nonne” in Felix’s op. 9) are outwardly
different, since the first is about loneliness whereas the second is about death, they use similar
11
imagery: in both poems the poetic persona wanders alone among the trees, bathed in moonlight,
and weeps.
[INSERT TABLE 1 HERE]
Second, both cycles feature fairly organized key schemes that begin and end in the tonic
and move prominently to the subdominant, the same sort of key scheme that Seaton found in
Felix’s choral songs (Table 2). (Granted, as Seaton notes, not all of Felix’s cyclic works adhere
to this broad tonal model, but the fact that both op. 9 cycles do, as well as the unquestionably
cyclic choral songs, points toward Felix’s possible influence.) The key scheme of the Zwölf
Lieder is of course more complicated, owing to the length of the cycle, but even in this complex
tonal layout the subdominant gets special emphasis: aside from the global tonic of A major, D
major is the only key to appear twice in direct succession (and in the Sechs Lieder the
subdominant is the only key to appear in back-to-back songs).
[INSERT TABLE 2 HERE]
Third, like the Zwölf Lieder, with its recurring “questioning” and “answering” motives,
Fanny’s cycle is also bound together by related melodic ideas. If anything, Fanny’s opus is even
more cyclic than Felix’s in this regard. There is a stronger sense of melodic consistency to her
cycle, a more palpable feeling that the songs’ melodies are unified by recurring gestures. One of
the most obvious of these gestures is the melisma that ends five of the six songs, the only
exception being song no. 2, “Ferne,” which ends not with a melisma but with a long sustained
12
note. (Fanny was famous for these melismatic outpourings, these cascades of pure vowel sound
that close so many of her songs; even if we cannot be completely certain that the compiler of the
later op. 9 was Felix and that one of his aims was to refer obliquely to the earlier op. 9, there is
one thing that we can be sure of: the songs of Fanny’s cycle were chosen to highlight this
hallmark of her Lied aesthetic.)21
These common cyclic elements alone might be enough to suggest that Felix assembled
the songs of Fanny’s op. 9 at least in part to pay homage to the cycle they assembled together.
Yet the connections between the cycles run even deeper than that, since there are songs from the
Sechs Lieder that harken back to specific songs from the Zwölf Lieder. These song-specific
connections cluster around two pairs of songs: songs no. 1 and no. 2 in the earlier op. 9 (“Frage”
and “Geständnis”) and songs no. 4 and no. 5 in the later op. 9 (“Die frühen Gräber” and “Der
Maiabend”). Recall that the first two songs of the Zwölf Lieder are the two that are linked by the
“questioning” and “answering” motives. These melodic ideas appear prominently in songs no. 4
and no. 5 of the Sechs Lieder. Notice that song no. 5 (“Der Maiabend”) begins with a version of
the “questioning” motive (^3–^2–^4 on “Umweht von Maiduft”) (see Example 3 for the first two
measures of the song). The relationships between “Der Maiabend” and “Geständnis” are
particularly noticeable because in both songs this longer motive is harmonized similarly, and
based upon a nearly identical voice-leading pattern (compare Example 3 with Example 4, the
opening four measures of “Geständnis”). The structural melodies are in fact identical, and the
supporting harmonies nearly so, as can be seen from a Schenkerian reduction of the opening
phrase of each song (Example 5): both songs are built on the same contrapuntal skeleton,
consisting of ^3–^4–^3–^5–^4 above a tonic pedal, and there is only one real harmonic
difference (the second chord, which is a V7 in “Geständnis” and a IV in “Der Maiabend”). The
13
similarities are strong enough that nineteenth-century listeners could well have concluded that
“Der Maiabend” alluded to “Geständnis,” because Fanny’s op. 9 was published twenty years
after Felix’s op. 9, not to mention because until only relatively recently the assumption was that
Fanny (as the female composer) borrowed from Felix rather than the other way around. Now,
however, we know that the situation is far more complex. “Der Maiabend” was composed in
1827, “Geständnis” most likely in 1829. It would therefore be most accurate to say that, in
choosing “Der Maiabend” for inclusion in his sister’s posthumous cycle, Felix was allowing
informed listeners to sense a relationship between the two songs, and to see that their openings
are based on the same abstract model.
[INSERT EXAMPLE 3, EXAMPLE 4, AND EXAMPLE 5 HERE]
The “answering” motive appears not in “Der Maiabend” but in the song that immediately
precedes it, also in A<flat> major: “Die frühen Gräber.” The connection between “Die frühen
Gräber” and “Geständnis” is particularly strong, in light of the way the “answering” motive is
treated at the end of each song. At the end of “Geständnis” (Example 6) it is expanded (the
falling triad is followed not by a step but by a third) and also extended (as was the case at the
beginning of Fanny’s song, two notes are appended to the motive). The result is a drawn-out
melisma that spans a tenth, from E (^5) down to C<sharp> (^3), leading to an IAC and bringing
the song to a gentle close. “Die frühen Gräber” ends with its own downward-drifting melisma,
and its own gentle IAC (Example 7). I label this as a version of the “answering” motive—despite
its obvious differences from the motive at the beginning of the song—because it outlines a
descending D<flat>-major triad. Fanny’s closing gesture begins from a higher point—F (^6)—
14
but it lands in the same place as Felix’s, ending with the same ^5–^4–^3 motion, not to mention
with the same suspensions over the final tonic harmony.
[INSERT EXAMPLE 6 AND EXAMPLE 7 HERE]
These paired songs are a kind of case study in the siblings’ interdependency, in the
tangled lines of influence that travel in many different directions and assume many different
shapes. Felix, I suggest, seems to be alluding to his own music through his sister’s music—
choosing songs of hers, which bring to mind songs of his, which she may well have chosen for
inclusion in a cycle of theirs.
He seems also to have been selecting songs for the Sechs Lieder that brought to mind
songs of Fanny’s—i.e., those that appeared in the Zwölf Lieder. The earlier op. 9 cycle ends with
a minor-mode song by Fanny, “Die Nonne,” written in 1822, which resembles the only minor-
mode song of Fanny’s cycle, “Ferne,” a song she composed only a year later. On first hearing,
these songs may sound less alike than, say, “Geständnis” and “Die Maiabend,” but closer
inspection reveals several similarities (see Examples 8 and 9 for the songs’ opening measures).
First, both songs are in triple meter and in a similar tempo (3/8 and Andante con moto for “Die
Nonne,” 3/4 and Andante for “Ferne”). Their accompanimental patterns are also related—a
steady stream of shorter note values, with simple chordal arpeggations (and, in “Die Nonne,” the
occasional nonharmonic tone) and a similar contour (both accompaniments begin with upward
arpeggios). This, combined with the fact that the songs begin with static tonic pedals, makes
them sound almost like Baroque-style figuration preludes (hardly surprising, considering
Fanny’s intimate knowledge of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier). Finally, as with “Geständnis”
15
and “Der Maiabend,” the songs open with the same structural melody—5–^<sharp>4–^5–^4–^3,
with some additional melodic elaboration in “Die Nonne” (see Example 10 for reductions of the
songs’ openings).22
[INSERT EXAMPLE 8, EXAMPLE 9, AND EXAMPLE 10 HERE]
To what end, though? What is the text-expressive significance of the musical
relationships that link these pairs of songs? Alas, there seem to be no obvious textual connections
between the three songs from Fanny’s op. 9 and the three songs from Felix’s op. 9 that they
reference; the closest poetic relationships and the closest musical relationships don’t correspond
with one another. For example, “Geständis” and “Der Maiabend,” two of the most musically
related songs, are not all that poetically related: the first song is about the anxiety of desiring
someone who may not desire you; the second is about the peace and comfort of a twilit moment.
Likewise, although the “Ferne” songs from each cycle are poetic mirror images—both about the
pain of being separated from a loved one—they are musically dissimilar: Felix’s E<flat>-major
song has moments of poignant dissonance but is generally more calmly meditative than
agonized, never straying from the tonic key or from easy four-bar phrases; Fanny’s G-minor
song is far more pained, with uneven phrase lengths, wandering harmonies, and open-ended
phrases (even the vocal melody fails to cadence, deferring true closure to the piano
accompaniment).
This shouldn’t entirely surprise us: if we accept that Felix was making a cycle out of his
sister’s songs that harkened back to the cycle they made together sixteen years earlier—if we see
his assembling of the songs as a creative endeavor in its own right, not to mention a form of
16
memory—then we also need to accept that as with any act of creation or remembrance it will
follow its own pathways. The lines that connect these two works are not always straight and
clear; they are just as often curved and crisscrossed, and they vary in thickness. More important
than the consistency of the intertextual relationships between these two opuses is their
pervasiveness, the number and variety of ways that the works seem to be linked.
That said, even if we can’t draw straight lines between the notes and words of specific
paired songs, there is one way in which these musical and textual relationships overlap. It is
significant that the Sechs Lieder allude musically to the first and last songs of the Zwölf Lieder
(“Frage” and “Die Nonne”). These poems both describe scenes in which a woman wanders in a
moonlit garden: in “Frage” the lyric speaker wonders whether the woman waits by a leafy
walkway and, like him, seeks counsel with the moon and stars; in “Die Nonne” the lyric speaker
is the woman—a nun who wanders alone in a convent garden, contemplating the Virgin Mary
and the loss of her beloved, and then dies. After listening to Fanny’s cycle and detecting vague
reminiscences of “Frage” and “Die Nonne”—echoes of the “questioning” and “answering”
motives that emanate from the former, vestiges of the endlessly undulating accompaniment and
chromatic touches that are so characteristic of the latter—I am drawn back to Felix’s cycle, and I
cannot help but hear its opening and closing songs differently. Through the prism of Fanny’s op.
9, the female figures described in Felix’s framing songs look like more than just a paramour and
a nun; they seem somehow like images of Fanny herself: the woman Felix hopes will wait for
him in a distant garden, and the sister who has gone on to that heavenly place.
<1> Conclusion
17
Christopher Reynolds writes that Felix had a predilection for musical commemorations, citing
(among other examples) an especially affecting passage from the first movement of Felix’s F-
minor string quartet, op. 80, which he hears as an homage to Fanny.23 According to Reynolds,
Felix embeds into the end of the exposition a BACH motive, which appears in a musical context
nearly identical to a BACH motive from Fanny’s Sonata in C Minor—a work dedicated to Felix,
which she wrote while he was in Scotland.24 (A note at the end of her score reads, “For Felix in
his absence” [Für Felix / In seiner Abwesenheit].) Felix composed his string quartet in the
summer of 1847, around the same time that he penned the heartrending letter cited at the outset
of this essay. Reynolds’s argument, in essence, is that Felix could just as well have written on
this quartet—and on its BACH citation in particular—“For Fanny in her absence.” “Thus,” he
writes “with the BACH sphinx Mendelssohn alluded to an unpublished work that his sister had
written for him in his absence nearly twenty years earlier, as if, with this private symbol—this
musical Nachruf—to respond to the dedication Fanny had penned at the end of her Sonata.”25
Op. 80 is not the only work of Felix’s that seems to grapple with the shock of Fanny’s
death. Another is op. 71, a group of six songs that Felix compiled in October 1847, the same
month that he brought Fanny’s manuscripts to Breitkopf & Härtel. Most of the songs were
written before Fanny died (one comes from 1842, four from 1845, and one from September
1847). Still, in subject matter and in tone these are songs that express a profound sense of loss:
Seaton refers to them as “songs of loss and comfort,” arguing that they “form a coherent set in
terms of voice—that of the bereaved poet—and emotional position”;26 Cooper calls the opus a
“bereft cycle.”27 Like the F-minor string quartet, this is also a work that remembers Fanny—not
necessarily by alluding to her music, but instead by palpably conveying the pain of losing her.
18
The Sechs Lieder op. 9 deserve to be added to this list of Felix’s compositions that reckon
with Fanny’s passing—paradoxical as it may sound to number among Felix’s “compositions” a
group of her songs. As I have argued, however, this understudied opus requires us to rethink
certain received ideas about musical influence, musical commemoration, and musical
collaboration, and after immersing myself in these two cycles I come away with a more pliable
understanding of musical composition as well. If we construe the term “composition” more
broadly, taking it to mean not just the creation of original music but also the assembling of pre-
existing music, and if we recognize the indelible signs of Felix’s hand in that process, then we
can hear the latter op. 9 as a Nachruf no less poignant than op. 80 or op. 71. In a sense it is even
more poignant, because it speaks with both of their voices, and because it is a joint effort like no
other—an impossibly distant, inescapably final collaboration.
19
1 Sebastian Hensel, The Mendelssohn Family (1729–1847) From Letters and Journals, vol. 2,
trans. Carl Klingemann (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882), p. 337.
2 See especially “On Stylistic Affinities in the Works of Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy,” in John Michael Cooper and Julie D. Prandi (eds.), The Mendelssohns: Their Music
in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 245–62; “Fanny Hensel and Musical
Style,” in Mendelssohn Essays (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 217–31; and Fanny Hensel:
The Other Mendelssohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), passim.
3 Todd expresses this viewpoint most vividly: “[I]t seems likely that [Felix] examined her
manuscripts and became intimately familiar with the piano trio and other recent compositions. …
Presumably he brought with him [back to Leipzig] Fanny’s piano trio and other manuscripts to
share with his principal publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, and to arrange for their publication, in
partial expiation of his gilt over earlier withholding unqualified support for her need to release
her music” (The Other Mendelssohn, p. 351). See also Françoise Tillard, Fanny Mendelssohn,
trans. Camille Naish (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1996), p. 333, and Angela R. Mace
[Christian], “Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and the Formation of the
Mendelssohnian Style” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2013), pp. 289–90.
4 In her groundbreaking article on Hensel’s Lieder, Citron writes simply that “two posthumous
Lieder collections, Opus 9 and 10, apparently prepared by her husband, were issued in 1850”
(“The Lieder of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel,” The Musical Quarterly 69/4 [Autumn 1983]: 575).
5 Compared with Fanny’s other song collections (opp. 1, 7, and 10), op. 9 has received virtually
no analytical attention. Some have even dismissed the opus as subpar. Rufus Hallmark, for
example, writes, “The vocal parts have a certain predictability, relieved occasionally through
20
unusual melodic twists and exuberant melismas, often at the ends of songs” (“Crosscurrents in
Song: Five Distinctive Voices,” in Rufus Hallmark (ed.), German Lieder in the Nineteenth
Century [New York: Schirmer, 1996], p. 193). For a superb analysis of the six songs of Fanny’s
op. 1 collection, as well as the first song of her op. 7, see Yonatan Malin, Songs in Motion:
Rhythm and Lieder in the German Lied (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 69–94
6 Mace [Christian], “Fanny Hensel,” pp. 289–90.
7 Angela Mace Christian, “‘Der Jüngling und Das Mädchen’: Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn,
and the Zwölf Lieder, op. 9,” in Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg (eds.), Women and the
Nineteenth-Century Lied (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 79.
8 For a discussion of related issues in the Lieder of other composers, see especially Michael Hall,
Schubert’s Song Sets (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003), and Inge Van Rij, Brahms’s Song
Collections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For a fascinating study of
Mendelssohn’s cyclic instrumental works, see Benedict Taylor, Mendelssohn, Time and
Memory: The Romantic Conception of Cyclic Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011).
10 Seaton, “Mendelssohn’s Cycles of Songs,” p. 216
11 Todd suggests that the two personae of the cycle—“Der Jüngling” and “Das Mädchen”—may
represent Felix and Fanny themselves (The Other Fanny Mendessohn, pp. 142ff), an idea that
seems even more plausible since, as Christian notes, all three of Fanny’s songs appear in the
second half (“‘Der Jüngling und Das Mädchen,’” p. 69).
12 For two particularly skeptical views of efforts to find unified key schemes and the like in
Romantic song cycle, see David Ferris, Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of
21
the Romantic Cycle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Beate Julia Perrey,
Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Early Romantic Poetics: Fragmentation of Desire (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002). Berthold Hoeckner discusses different perspectives on
organicism and unity in the Romantic song cycle, with special reference to Dichterliebe, in his
article “Paths Through Dichterliebe,” 19th-Century Music 30/1 (Summer 2006): 65–80.
13 See Todd, Mendelssohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 223, and Grove Music
Online, s.v. “Mendelssohn, Felix” [§13: Lieder and other vocal works], by R. Larry Todd,
accessed December 17, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/.
14 Todd, Mendelssohn, p. 223.
15 Seaton, “Mendelssohn’s Cycles of Songs,” pp. 217ff.
16 Christian, “‘Der Jüngling und Das Mädchen,’” p. 73.
17 For a discussion of these earlier analyses, see Marian Wilson Kimber, “The ‘Suppression’ of
Fanny Hensel: Rethinking Feminist Biography,” 19th-Century Music 26/2 (Fall 2002): 113–129.
18 Christian, “‘Der Jüngling und Das Mädchen,’” p. 74; the translation is hers. For a version of
the letter in the original German, see Anja Morgenstern and Uta Wald (eds.), Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy: Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 1 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2008), p. 376.
19 Christian, “‘Der Jüngling und Das Mädchen,’” p. 74.
20 Christopher Alan Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century
Music (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 144.
21 I discuss other hallmarks of Fanny’s Lieder in “Fanny Hensel’s Lied Aesthetic,” Journal of
Musicological Research 30 (2011): 175–201.
22 Another possible connection between the two songs is that both end with prominent
descending fourths in the melody: in “Ferne” the vocal melody ends with a motion from ^8 to ^5,
22
or G down to D (mm. 19–23); in “Die Nonne” it’s the piano melody that ends with this motive,
and with the same scale degrees, A down to E in the context of A minor (mm. 27–30, in the
piano postlude). Granted, the similarity is slight—certainly not as noticeable as some of the other
similarities between these songs—but it does give both pieces a greater sense of
inconclusiveness. As Christian notes, the A–E melodic motion at the end of “Die Nonne” was
the result of a revision to the last four measures—made eight years after the song was written, in
preparation for the publication in op. 9—that substituted this fourth motive for a more decisive
stepwise descent from A4 to A3: the revisions, she says, “temper the sombre finality of the first
version” (“‘Der Jüngling und Das Mädchen,’” p. 78). For more on the revisions to “Die Nonne,”
see Victoria Ressmeyer Sirota, “The Life and Works of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel” (DMA
thesis, Boston University, 1981), pp. 195ff.
23 Reynolds, Motives for Allusion, pp. 131ff. Reynolds is hardly the only writer to have heard
Felix’s op. 80 as a response to Fanny’s death; Eric Werner, for example, calls it “a cry of grief …
of the suffering creature” (Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age, trans. Dika
Newlin [London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963], p. 496).
24 Reynolds notes that when composers allude to pre-existing material as a form of
commemoration or tribute (as with BACH ciphers), they often do so at a remove of one whole or
half step from the original material (Motives for Allusion, p. 136). This is the case with the
BACH figure in Mendelssohn’s op. 80: Felix presents the motive a half step lower than the
representative form of the motive, B<flat>–A–C–B, and a whole step lower than the motive in
his sister’s sonata. It’s also the case with most of the intra-opus allusions that I discuss in this
chapter: in instances when the later op. 9 references a motive from the earlier op. 9, the original
motive tends to be transposed by a half step or a whole step, thus underlining the sense of
23
distance between the source and the allusion, between the thing remembered and the memory of
it. For example, the A-major “questioning” motive of “Frage” and “Geständnis” appears in A-
flat major in “Der Maiabend,” and the ^5–^<sharp>4–^5–^4–^3 motive from “Die Nonne” is
transposed from A minor to G minor in “Ferne.”
25 Reynolds, Motives for Allusion, p. 132.
26 Seaton, “Mendelssohn’s Cycles of Songs,” p. 221.
27 Cooper, “Of Red Roofs,” p. 278.
Mendelssohn, Zwölf Lieder op. 9 (“Der Jüngling”) 1. “Frage” The speaker wonders if a woman pines for him as he pines for her, and if she waits for him also. 2. “Geständnis” The speaker confesses his love for a woman and wonders whether she feels the same way. 3. “Wartend” Two lovers communicate from across the sea, using a falcon and a horn. 4. “Im Frühling” The speaker basks in the beauty and tranquility of spring. 5. “Im Herbst” The speaker ponders the passing of time, the changing of the seasons, and the awakening of longing. 6. “Scheidend” The speaker takes a boat away from his home, longing for the youth and love he experienced there.
Hensel, Sechs Lieder op. 9 1. “Die Ersehnte” The speaker yearns for a woman, longing for a day when she will be in his arms. 2. “Ferne” The speaker longs for his distant homeland and his beloved. 3. “Der Rosenkranz” The speaker watches a maiden picking roses and fashioning a wreath from them, and thinks about how in time the roses will wither and fade. 4. “Die frühen Gräber” The speaker wanders through a graveyard, remembering lost loved ones and happier times. 5. “Der Maiabend” The speaker savors a beautiful, twilit moment with a maiden, awaiting the rising of the full moon. 6. “Die Mainacht” The speaker wanders in a moonlit forest, alone and forlorn, and weeps.
Mendelssohn, Zwölf Lieder op. 9 (“Das Mädchen”) 7. “Sehnsucht” The speaker experiences the stillness of nature and wishes her heart could also be still. 8. “Frühlingsglaube” The speaker, feeling tormented, takes comfort in the fact that everything changes. 9. “Ferne” The speaker wishes she could be with her distant beloved and longs for him to come home. 10. “Verlust” The speaker laments that only one knows the depth of her pain: the man who has broken her heart. 11. “Entsagung” The speaker trusts that when the world is too difficult for her, the Lord will save her. 12. “Die Nonne” A nun wanders alone in a convent garden, contemplating the Virgin Mary and the loss of her beloved, and then dies.
