MASTERWORKS 6
Due to the social expectations related to her highclass status, she struggled her entire life with claiming authorship of her music and only one year before her death she decided to publish her music. Part of her hesitation was a result of her dutiful attitude towards her father, her intense relationship with her brother, and her awareness of the societal views of a women’s place in the public milieu. Her brother’s success overshadowed Fanny throughout her life, and only lately have her compositions (over 450 completed compositions and drafts) became known and appreciated.
FANNY MENDELSSOHN-HENSEL Overture in C (ed. JoAnn Falletta) FANNY MENDELSSOHN-HENSEL: BORN: November 14, 1805, in Hamburg, Germany DIED: May 14, 1847, in Berlin WORK COMPOSED: 1832 WORLD PREMIERE: 1834 in her home; publicly in Berlin on June 15, 1834, with the composer conducting the Königstadt Theatre Orchestra PERFORMANCE HISTORY: Tonight marks the first DSSO performance of any music by Fanny Mendelssohn. INSTRUMENTATION: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. DURATION: 11 minutes. Fanny Hensel née Mendelssohn Bartholdy was one of the most prolific female composers of the 19th century, among the first women to compose a string quartet. She was a life-long proponent of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and her brother, Felix Mendelssohn. She was a very talented pianist and her impressive memory amazed private audiences at her concert series in her Berlin home.
26 D U L U T H S U P E R I O R S Y M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A
Fanny was born into a family that was full of highly educated and musical women. She followed in that vein and received education in humanities and music, excelling in both. At the age of 13, Fanny performed 24 of Bach’s Preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier from memory. This was most likely for her father’s birthday and was enjoyed privately by the family, not violating her approved role in society. However, at her young age she most likely experienced difficulty in understanding why she could not follow her ambitions like her equally talented brother. In the summer of 1820, in a response to a letter from Fanny, her father wrote: What you wrote to me about your musical occupations with reference to and in comparison with Felix was both rightly thought and expressed. Music will perhaps become his profession, whilst for you it can and must only be an ornament, never the root of your being and doing. We may therefore pardon him some ambition and desire to be acknowledged in a pursuit which appears very important to him, because he feels a vocation for it, whilst it does you credit that you have always shown yourself good and sensible in these matters; and your very joy at the praise he earns proves that you might, in his place, have merited equal approval. Remain true to these sentiments and to this line of conduct; they are feminine, and only what is truly feminine is an ornament to your sex. It is indeed sad that, while acknowledging his daughter’s talents, her father extinguished Fanny’s professional hopes and dreams. The awareness of her abilities versus society’s restrictions resulted in Fanny’s eternal struggle.
