Fanny Hensel's Lied Aesthetic

Abstract

The bulk of research on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel to date has focused primarily on either the historical or editorial; analysis of her music, however, is rare. Turning the lens on Hensel's songs for solo voice is a step toward rectifying this situation. What defines the Henselian Lied? What makes her songs distinctive and unmistakably her own? What, in short, was her Lied aesthetic? An examination of two of her songs from the late 1820s, “Verlust” (1827) and “Die frühen Gräber” (1828), uncovers three hallmarks of her approach to the Lied: an avoidance of tonic harmony, an emphasis on text painting, and the use of the piano accompaniment as commentary. The most striking of these hallmarks—the absence of the tonic—can be traced through several songs from the middle of her output, including her setting of Goethe's “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh” (1835). All three features are most evident in one of her last songs, “Im Herbste” (1846). These songs reveal a composer with a great sensitivity to textual nuance, a penchant for harmonic experimentation, and a strong interpretive streak. Moreover, they suggest that far from being merely an exemplar of the “Mendelssohnian style,” Hensel was an independent artist in her own right, with a creative voice that was adventuresome, deeply expressive, and, in its own way, as pathbreaking as any in the Romantic era.