Nachtwanderer fanny mendelssohn biography
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Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s biography
The idea that Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy prevented his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, from publishing her compositions is not a feminist reinterpretation of her life; it can be traced to 19th-century publications by the Mendelssohn family that portray both siblings within socially acceptable gender roles. Centering Hensel’s biography on her brother’s influence oversimplifies the historical situation for women composers, replacing issues surrounding gender and class with a single male villain.
Current treatments of Hensel rely on Romantic stereotypes of the neglected genius; her life reveals a need for a feminist biography that balances larger cultural constraints with recognition of individual female agency.
This according to “The ‘suppression’ of Fanny Mendelssohn: Rethinking feminist biography” by Marian Wilson Kimber (19th-century music XXVI/2 [fall 2002] pp. 113–129).
Todays is Hensel’s 210th birthday! Below, Claudie Verhaeghe s
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Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn (1805-47), was an exceptionally gifted musician whose potential was stifled by the gendered social conventions of her upper-middle-class background in mid-19th-century Berlin. She came from a wealthy and cultivated family, distinguished especially by its women. Alongside her brother Felix, she enjoyed an excellent general and musical education throughout her childhood, but while he was encouraged to pursue music professionally, she was prevented from doing so by her father. Nevertheless, music remained centrally important to her within private spaces such as the salon.
In 1825, the Mendelssohns moved to Leipziger Straße 3, a large property which allowed the family to establish one of the most impressive musical salons of the century. In 1829, slang för rumpa särskilt på brittisk engelska Mendelssohn married the painter Wilhelm Hensel, whose active support of her gifts meant that – exceptionally –marriage and motherhood did not spell the end of her compositional life. She collaborated clo
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Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s “Nachtwanderer” is a simple song about a woman wandering in the night.Duh.This fryst vatten nothing more than another crappy, unoriginal piece of vocal music.Its cliché beginning sounds like the fade-in to a corny movie where the woman is drifting aimlessly boo-hooing about her lost boyfriend, career, and pet hamster (about every film found on the Life channel).
Hensel starts bygd doing a mediocre job of painting with text using the words “often out from a dark cover of clouds” while the pianists’ left hand supports the line, effectively setting a mood.Later, however, Hensel digs herself into a hole from measures 14-16; this time, she chooses the words “all is gray and still.”(Side note: I was confused by the anthology’s translation for a while because it seemed like it had completely missed part of that line.Well, it did… kind of.The anthology chose to compress the line “dann wieder alles grau, alles