Like Mozart, the composer of the "Songs without Words" had a sister, a
few years older than himself, who was possessed of great musical talent.
Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny, was born in 1805. In 1829 she became the
wife of Wilhelm Hensel, a noted historical and portrait painter.
Probably the most valuable and interesting of his works is the series
of portraits of all the celebrities who, from time to time, were the
guests of the Mendelssohn family. They number more than a thousand
drawings, and include, besides likenesses of poets, painters, and
philosophers, portraits of many people famous in the annals of
music,--Weber, Paganini, Ernst, Hiller, Liszt, Clara Schumann, Gounod,
Clara Novello, Lablache, and Grisi.
Rockstro tells the story of Fanny Mendelssohn's early death in the
following words:
"On Friday afternoon, the 14th of May, 1847, Madame Hensel, the beloved
sister Fanny, to whom, from earliest infancy, Felix, the child, the
boy, the man, had committed every secret of his beautiful art life; the
kindred spirit, with whom he had shared his every dream before his
first attempt to translate it into sound; the faithful friend who had
been more to him than any other member of the happy circle in the
Leipziger Strasse, of which, from first to last, she was the very life
and soul,--Fanny Hensel, the sister, the artist, the poet, while
conducting a rehearsal of the music for the next bright Sunday
gathering, was suddenly seized with paralysis; suffered her hands to
fall powerless from the piano at which she had so often presided; and,
an hour before midnight, was called away to join the beloved parents
whose death had been as sudden and painless as her own. She had hoped
and prayed that she, too, might pass away as they had done, and her
prayer was granted; to her exceeding gain, but to the endless grief of
the brother who had loved her as himself. On Sunday morning, in place
of the piano, a coffin, covered with flowers, stood in the well-known
hall in the Garden House. And the life, of which that Garden House had
so long been the cherished home, became henceforth a memory of the
past."
An English lady, Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, known not only as a
writer, but as an ardent advocate of woman suffrage, has in one of her
books written a chapter which she entitles "A Genius Wasted--Fanny
Mendelssohn." She says: "One of the saddest instances with which the
world has ever become acquainted, of gifts repressed and faculties
wasted because of the sex of their possessor, is that of Fanny
Mendelssohn, the sister of the famous composer, Felix Mendelssohn.
With natural powers apparently fully as great as her brother's, Fanny
was not, indeed, denied all opportunity of cultivating them, but was
effectually prevented from utilising them, and, therefore, from fully
developing her genius or from displaying its force."
These two Jewish children were members of a family in which both
intellect, in its widest meaning, and musical talent, specifically,
were hereditary. Their mother began to teach music both to the boy and
the girl in their early years. Fanny, who was five years older than
her brother, was naturally more advanced than he; and when the two
children were allowed to show off their powers as pianists, it was
Fanny who always won the most applause. They passed from their
mother's elementary tuition to that of superior teachers, L. Berger and
afterward Zeiter, and the former of these indicated Fanny as being, in
his opinion, the future great musician.
But a father and mother with a maiden of genius on their hands were
like a hen whose duckling takes to the water. The difference of the
training of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, as distinguished from their
musical education, is effectually indicated by the following letter
from their father to Fanny, written when she was fourteen years old.
After referring in terms of satisfaction to the compositions of both
his son and daughter, Abraham Mendelssohn proceeded to say to the
latter of his two gifted children:
"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 (Felix was at this time
only nine years old. Fanny was fourteen), whilst for _you_ it can and
must be only 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 to him important, while 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."
Ten more precious years of youth, the years of training and of hope,
passed by; the different ideal was persistently forced by the parents
upon the two, although Fanny, more fortunate than many girls, was,
nevertheless, allowed to study her art as well as she could in
intervals of housekeeping. On her twenty-third birthday, her father
again felt it necessary to check his gifted daughter in her pursuit of
her art. He wrote her a letter in which he praised her conduct in the
household.
"However," he added, "you must still improve. You must become still
more steady and collected, and prepare more earnestly and eagerly for
your real calling, the _only_ calling of a woman,--I mean the state of
a housewife. Women have a difficult task; the constant occupation with
apparent trifles, the interception of each drop of rain, that it may
not evaporate, but be conducted into the right channel, the unremitting
attention to every detail,--all these are the weighty duties of a
woman."
The time came, at length, for Fanny Mendelssohn to love,--that crisis
came which stimulates a man in his work, and nerves him to fresh
efforts to make himself successful, that he may be worthy and able to
establish a home. But to a woman this brings, only too often, yet
another heavy barrier in the way of success in any art or occupation.
So it was to Fanny Mendelssohn.
"Hensel was at first dreadfully jealous . . . even of Fanny's
art. . . . Only _her_ letters have been preserved. With
characteristic energy she refuses to sacrifice her brother to the
jealousy with which Hensel, in the beginning, regards her love for him,
but she consents to give up her friends, and even her music. . . . She
never, in her thoughts, loses sight of that letter of her father's, in
which he calls the vocation of a housewife the only true aim and study
of a young woman, and in thinking of the man of her choice she
earnestly devotes herself to this aim."
What reprobation and what just indignation would be showered upon a
woman who should try to make the man of her choice give up his art, to
attend to her private comforts!
Although Fanny's good father and mother, yielding to the prejudices of
their day, had struggled to make housekeeping her main interest, and
music only her recreation, yet they had not denied her musical genius a
complete education. Fanny was not only taught to play the piano in her
childhood, in company with Felix, but she was also allowed to receive
lessons in thorough bass and the theory of composition. She was thus
rendered capable of the expression of her musical talents; and in
between her household duties, after, as well as before she became a
wife and mother, she often found time to compose. Much of what she
wrote was of so high a character that her brother Felix felt no
hesitation in putting it forth to the world as _his_ own composition!
It is, apparently, impossible to discover which, amongst the works
published as those of Mendelssohn, were really those of his sister; but
references now and again occur in his private letters to the fact,
which thereby becomes incontrovertible, that he has claimed before the
public compositions which are hers exclusively. The most famous of
such passages is one that has became widely known in consequence of its
quotation in Sir Theodore Martin's "Life of the Prince Consort."
Mendelssohn is telling of his visit to the queen, at Buckingham Palace,
in 1842.
"The queen said she was very fond of singing my published songs. 'You
should sing one to him,' said Prince Albert, and after a little begging
she said she would. And what did she choose? 'Schöner und schöner
schmuckt sich;' sang it quite charmingly, in strict time and tune, and
with very good execution. Then I was obliged to confess that Fanny had
written that song (which I found very hard, but pride must have a
fall), and to beg her to sing one of my own also."
As her father had kept her from appearing before the public when she
was young, so her brother strenuously opposed her wish to publish her
work in her maturity. In the spring of 1837, Fanny, in defiance of
him, did issue one song with her own name to it. It had a great
success, and Felix himself graciously wrote to her after it had been
performed at a concert; "I thank you, in the name of the public, for
publishing it against my wish." Fanny's husband urged her to follow up
this success by issuing more of her works. "Her mother was of the same
opinion, and begged Felix to persuade Fanny to publish. The success
had not altered Felix's views, however, and he declined to persuade his
sister; and Fanny, who had herself no desire to appear in print,
readily gave up the idea."
Felix's influence sufficed to debar Fanny from all further attempt to
obtain recognition, after that one song, until the year 1846, when she
was forty-one years old. Then the persuasions of another musical
friend led her to publish a small selection of her best work. "Felix
had not altered his views, and it went against his wishes when he heard
that she had made up her mind to publish. Some time passed before he
wrote on the subject at all, but on August 14th the following entry
appears in her diary: 'At last Felix has written, and given me his
professional blessing in the kindest manner. I know that he is not
satisfied in his heart of hearts, but I am glad he has said a kind word
to me about it.'"
This little volume, too, was warmly received. Encouraged by the
success of her published work,--delayed till so sadly late in
life,--tasting the stimulating elixir of appreciation, and knowing the
fascinating encouragement of public applause, she now began composition
on a larger scale than anything she had before attempted. "I am
working a good deal," she wrote, "and feel that I get on,--a
consciousness which, added to the glorious weather, gives me a feeling
of content and happiness such as I have, perhaps, never before
experienced."
Alas! it came too late. In the spring of the next year, Fanny
Mendelssohn died, aged forty-two. Her grand playing, "which made
people afraid to perform in her presence," went down with her into the
silence of her grave; and the musical genius and originality which
should have left a lasting mark in the world faded, too, leaving but a
few small tokens of what might have been.
The "Songs without Words" are more closely associated with Mendelssohn
than any other of his works. The composer considered that music is
more definite than words, and these lovely songs had as exact an
intention as those which were written to accompany poetry. It was in a
letter of Fanny Mendelssohn's, dated December 8, 1828, that their title
first appeared, and they are referred to as if Mendelssohn had but
lately begun to write them. On the day after his arrival in London,
April 24, 1832, he played the first six to Moscheles. The earliest one
is No. 2, of Book 2, which Felix sent to his sister Fanny in 1830. "In
a Gondola," the last song in the first book, is said to be the earliest
of the six, in date. A few only were given titles by the composer.
Six books, each containing six songs, were published during his life,
and the seventh and eighth after his early death.
[Illustration: Song without Words. From painting by R. Poetzelberger.]
We reproduce the charming picture by a German painter, which, entitled
"Song without Words," is said to represent the young Mendelssohn and
his sister Fanny seated at the piano, side by side. Poetzelberger's
other works, which he has named "Con Amore," "Old Songs," and
"Trifling," are also distinguished by their graceful sentiment.