Allegro molto in c minor, H 413 – All Classical Research

This work was not published during Hensel’s lifetime, and as such, it bears no opus number.¹ In R. Hellwig-Unruh’s catalogue of Hensel’s works, it’s H 413.²
Hensel composed this piece on Jan. 20, 1846, at the start of the year in which she decided to publish her music.³⁴
Hensel’s manuscript is preserved at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
A few months before composing this piece, Hensel received a gift from her brother Felix: the autograph of his Piano Trio in c minor, Op. 66. Hensel’s biographer R. Larry Todd suggests that Hensel’s Allegro molto in c minor, H 413, reflects the texture and form of the first movement of Felix’s Op.66, and may have been written as a kind of musical response. Both Felix’s movement and Fanny’s piano piece are in the same key.⁵

Angela Mace Christian, “Hensel [née Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy)], Fanny Cäcilie,” Grove Music Online (November 28, 2018), accessed April 19, 2022, https://ww.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-3000000159.
R. Hellwig-Unruh, Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn Bartholdy: thematisches Verzeichnis der Kompositionen (Adliswil, 2000).
Christian, “Hensel [née Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy)], Fanny Cäcilie,” Grove Music Online.
Caroline Waight, liner notes to Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel: Piano Sonatas / Lied / Sonata o capriccio, Heather Schmidt, Naxos 8.570825, CD, 2010.
R. Larry Todd, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 311.

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