Fanny Mendelssohn - Hardcover

Tillard, Francoise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0931340969 ISBN 13: 9780931340963

Publisher: Amadeus, 2003

Synopsis

This is the first English-language biography of Fanny Mendelssohn, the older sister of Felix Mendelssohn and a gifted composer and pianist in her own right. Under pressure to neglect her talents in favor of her brother, Fanny stifled her career, and most of her 400 compositions have only recently become known. HARDCOVER

About this title

About the Author

Françoise Tillard is a pianist and founder of the Trio Brentano. Her CD, issued by Harmonia Mundi, is entitled _Fanny Mendelssohn: Lieder and Trios._ She resides in Paris.

From the Back Cover

Fanny Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1805-1847), like her younger brother Felix, demonstrated prodigious musical talent as a child. In their youth, Fanny and Felix were inseparable friends; they encouraged each other, collaborated in musical endeavors, and received the same education and training from distinguished tutors. But as an adolescent, Fanny was told by her father that her role as a woman was to concern herself with her home and that music could be only secondary, even though she had become a remarkable pianist and composer. She married Wilhelm Hensel, a respected portrait painter who encouraged her musical talents. Fulfilling her domestic role as wife and as mother of their son, Sebastian, she continued to compose - principally lieder - and to organize concerts in her home that became an integral part of the Berlin musical scene. Her talents were warmly received during a journey to Italy, particularly by Gounod, who heard her play from memory the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn. At forty years of age Fanny finally went against the orders of her father and of Felix and published her compositions. She had just begun to receive critical praise when she died suddenly at the age of forty-two. Her death was a devastating blow to Felix, who survived her by barely six months. This book, originally published in French in 1992, is the first and only authoritative biography of Fanny Mendelssohn and contains a complete list of her published compositions. Set against the backdrop of a privileged life in Berlin in the early nineteenth century, Francoise Tillard's vivid portrait describes an exceptional artist - she left behind four hundred works - who could have held her own among thegreatest if she had not been prohibited from venturing into the professional world.

Reviews

Fanny Mendelssohn (1805^-47), like her brother Felix (1809^-47), was a precocious musician who trained with the best teachers. Her parents believed, however, that a woman must devote body and soul to home, family, and motherhood. Her hopes for a musical career thus dashed, Fanny became Felix's confidante. Enter painter and poet Wilhelm Hensel (1794^-1861), who met Fanny in 1821 and, eight years later, married her. Fanny continued composing pieces, including settings of Hensel's poems, that she performed at Sunday afternoon musicales in the couple's apartment in the Mendelssohn home. An 1839 trip to Rome revived her spirit for music. She surrounded herself with French composers: Gounod, Berlioz, and Massenet, from whom she learned the meaning of liberty. In 1845, she began publishing her music. She issued 12 collections by the end of her life, by which time she saw herself as a woman dilettante, "the most alarming creature that can be imagined." Telling her story, Tillard tells that of the Mendelssohns, too, because much of Fanny's life is revealed in their correspondence. Alan Hirsch

Edition details

• Publisher: Amadeus
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0931340969
• ISBN 13: 9780931340963
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 418