- This is a short etude for piano in C Major.1 Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel completed the piece in 1823, when she was 18 years old.2
- This is one of about eleven etudes for piano which the composer wrote in 1822-23.3
- In 1823, Fanny Mendelssohn was in the midst of a stressful period in which her courtship with Wilhelm Hensel was on hold. Hensel was studying art in Italy, and the Mendelssohn parents forbade Fanny to correspond with him because they were afraid Wilhelm might convert to Catholicism (like his sister Luise Hensel). (The Mendelssohn family’s conversion from Judaism to Protestantism had been partly inspired by a desire to assimilate into German upper-middle-class culture, and marriage to a Catholic would have endangered their daughter’s social status.)4
- 1823 was also the year that the Mendelssohn family began their series of Sunday musicales, a tradition that Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel would lead herself later in life. As a teenager, Fanny Mendelssohn performed mature piano repertoire at the musicales, including concertos accompanied by orchestra, and she drew as much (if not more) praise from audiences as her younger brother did.5
Sources
- “Fanny Hensel, geb. Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Etudes Vol. 2 (F. Hensel piano pieces Vol. 5).” Furore Editions, accessed August 18, 2021, https://furore-verlag.de/en/produkt/uebungsstuecke-und-etueden-heft-2-klavierstuecke-von-f-hensel-bd-5-2/.
- Caroline Waight, liner notes to Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel: Piano Sonatas / Lied / Sonata o capriccio, Heather Schmidt, Naxos 8.570825, CD, 2010.
- Angela Mace Christian, “Hensel [née Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy)], Fanny Cäcilie,” Grove Music Online (November 28, 2018), accessed August 18, 2021, https://ww.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-3000000159.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
Cut IDs
24218