Full Description
Fanny Hensel created some of the most imaginative and original music of her era, making her arguably the most gifted female composer of the nineteenth century. While Hensel has finally stepped out of the shadow of her famous brother, Felix Mendelssohn, as scholars have begun to study her life and writings, her music has remained surprisingly underexamined. This collection places Hensel's music at the center, focusing on the genre that not only made up more than half of her creative output but also, as Hensel herself put it, "suits her best": song.
In eleven new essays, leading scholars in the fields of music theory and musicology consider Hensel's songs from a wide range of angles, covering topics such as Hensel's fascination with particular poets and poetic themes; her innovative harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and textual strategies; and her connection to larger literary and musical trends. The chapters also provide insight into Hensel's efforts to break free from the constraints placed on her as a woman and her place in the larger history of the nineteenth-century Lied. Drawing on diverse biographical, historical, cultural, and musical contexts for their detailed discussions of Hensel's songs, the authors underline Hensel's historical importance and deepen our understanding and appreciation of her compositions. This volume, in short, finally gives Fanny Hensel and her songs the stage that they deserve.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Stephen Rodgers
Part I: Nature and Travel
Chapter 2: The Wilderness at Home: Woods-Romanticism in Fanny Hensel's Eichendorff Songs
Amanda Lalonde
Chapter 3: Waldszenen and Abendbilder: Fanny Hensel, Nikolaus Lenau, and the Nature of Melancholy
Scott Burnham
Chapter 4: Songs of Travel: Fanny Hensel's Wanderings
Susan Wollenberg
Part II: Settings of English Verse
Chapter 5: Women's Private Cosmopolitanism in Literary Translation and Song: Fanny Hensel's Drei Lieder nach Heinrich Heine von Mary Alexander
Jennifer Ronyak
Chapter 6: "In this elusive language": A Byron Song by Fanny Hensel
Susan Youens
Part III: Tonal Ingenuity
Chapter 7: "You too may change": Tonal Pairing of the Tonic and Subdominant in Two Songs by Fanny Hensel
Tyler Osborne
Chapter 8: Plagal Cadences in Fanny Hensel's Songs
Stephen Rodgers
Part IV: Responses to Poetic Form
Chapter 9: Working with Words: Revisions of Declamation in Fanny Hensel's Song Autographs
Harald Krebs
Chapter 10: Modulating Couplets in Fanny Hensel's Songs
Yonatan Malin
Part V: Beyond Song/Beyond Hensel
Chapter 11: Reading Poetry Through Music: Fanny Hensel and Others
Jürgen Thym
Chapter 12: Fanny Hensel's Lieder (ohne Worte) and the Boundaries of Song: The Curious Case of the Lied in D flat major, Op. 8, No. 3
R. Larry Todd
Bibliography
