Review Summary: If only...
Women of Classical Music. No. 3
In Europe during the 19th century there were but three women who in their own lifetimes were able to break through the male barrier to musical superstardom, Clara Schumann, Louise Farrenc, and Fanny Mendelssohn. But, superstardom here is a relative term. What it really means is something closer to that their names were widely known and their opinions on musical matters widely respected; they wouldn’t ever be Liszts or Paganinis. I’ll put it this way: Clara, Louise, and Fanny have made it into the actual history books, which is a lot more than you can say for someone like the great Cécile Chaminade or Amy Beach, let alone someone like Sophia Dussek.
Fanny’s path to musical success is like Clara’s in one major way. Through no fault of her own, and although she was a truly fantastic musician in her own right, Clara’s reputation was heavily aided by the reputation of her husband, Robert, and what Robert was to Clara, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny’s brother, was to Fanny. I, again, won’t go into too many details about Felix except to say a few things: as a child prodigy Felix was second only to Mozart, on the same level as Camille Saint-Saens of a generation later, and a whole-step above Franz Liszt, Chopin, and Brahms—all of which is to say that he was damn good. But most importantly, Felix was the
chief German guardian of “absolute music” in the early Romantic era against the onslaught of the programmatic music of Wagner and his ilk. (Incidentally, the two would have more than just musical quarrels, Felix was Jewish, Wagner a raging anti-Semite.) Basically, in his day, Felix was a really-really-really important guy.
Even though Fanny’s reputation was aided by her brother, there had to be something about Fanny in and of herself to make a reputation out of, right？Absolutely. Born in 1805 into a family of intellectuals that had stretched back generations, Fanny’s first teacher was her mother Lea née Salomon who had been trained by Johann Philipp Kirnberger himself a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. Fanny, therefore, was drilled in “The Learned Style” and by the age of thirteen could play all twenty-four preludes and fugues from the first book of Bach’s
Well Tempered Clavier by heart. In the words of Christian Gottlob Neefe, “Anyone who has studied Bach will know what this means.” In 1820 Fanny and Felix joined the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin led by Carl Friedrich Zelter who at the time believed Fanny to be the superior pianist. High praise indeed for a prodigy of Felix’s stripe. But Fanny was more than just a piano player. She was a wonderful composer; so good, in fact, that Felix published some of her early piano cycles under his own name, purportedly because the prevailing attitudes of the time frowned too furrowingly on a female publishing music. This way, at least, Fanny could see her own music in print. It should be noted, however, that Felix had his own quite staunch misgivings about women publishing music and counseled Fanny against it until the day she died.
One cycle that Felix respected too much to not publish under his own name was Fanny’s
Das Jahr or “The Year”, twelve character pieces for piano each depicting the month of an annum. Written in 1841,
Das Jahr constitutes a musical diary that reflects Fanny’s thoughts, emotions, and observations of her year abroad; the first half having been spent in Rome, the second half her return home to Berlin with stops along the way. That Felix was more of a guardian of the old guard than Fanny,
Das Jahr is, in fact, more original and creative than any cycle Felix would compose. The first thing to notice is the size of the cycle, it’s a mammoth, taking upwards of fifty minutes to perform. That’s a lot of notes. Unless you’re absolutely determined to take the
Hammerklavier at a slower than indicated tempo, which sometimes happens, Beethoven only wrote one piano piece longer than
Das Jahr, the hour-long
Diabelli Variations, Op. 120. For all her brilliance, Clara Schumann never composed a piece over twenty-five minutes. Not that length in and of itself is necessary for “greatness”, there were plenty of trashy half hour plus pieces being circulated in the 19th century, but because
Das Jahr is so good from start to finish, its length is quite exceptional. As a cycle, it’s at the very least as good as any of brother’s, and it should absolutely be considered equal to Liszt’s masterpiece
Annees de pelerinage, his musical diary through the same country a few years prior.
Even though Fanny’s year abroad was one of the happiest of her life, January begins slowly, in the manner of an improvisatory fantasy, and with bleak, ominous octaves in the bass. An interesting choice. Perhaps there’s an element of missing home or simply an observation of the starkness of winter. But the overture quickly makes way for a beautiful, but not quite cheery, melody that foreshadows a later motif used in the month of May. The octaves return before a series of virtuosic arpeggios that cycle through lush keys moving up and down the keyboard that head straight away into February without a break. (The whole cycle is designed to be played without pause.)
Set in a Scherzo, February is a depiction of the Roman Carnival. With its peculiar phrasing and similar flights of fancy, the movement is sisterly kin to the brilliance of Robert Schumann’s bright movements in his piano cycles. That’s an
enormous compliment. Schumann is more unique than even Beethoven, and no one, and I mean no one, was his equal in the genre of piano miniatures. The movement is more than just joyous, it’s bubbly, sparkling from page to page evoking the effervescence of the festive season.
March begins in a nocturnal atmosphere in f#-minor with a beautiful, flowering melody over increasingly difficult accompaniment. Halfway through, the Lutheran Easter chorale,
Christ ist erstanden, is plainly stated in C#-minor, a stark contrast to the nocturne. The choral continues to the end of the piece, again with increasingly difficult accompaniment. But Fanny has our mind turn from the foreboding to the exuberant with the turn from C#-minor to its parallel major. Fanny, herself an avowed Lutheran, paints the joy of Christ’s resurrection.
April is a capricious movement that balances action and emotion. We begin with a beautiful, bittersweet melody in the bright key of E-Major which Fanny manages to make homely rather than bubbly. We quickly transition to a passage full of con moto energy that cycles through uneasy keys reflecting what it must have been like preparing for travel prior to modern transportation. At the time Fanny wrote in her diary, “It will cost us a hard struggle to leave Rome.” Yet, Fanny returns again and again to the beauty of the original melody. April was a time for reflection, a time to say goodbye.
May, the “Spring Song”, was the actual month of departure. It may sound familiar; we’ve already heard the May theme foreshadowed in the opening movement. Here, Fanny’s penchant for the beautiful really shines; May is pleasant and untroubled, a time to soak in Italy’s gorgeous countryside in perfect weather. I’d like to imagine that at the time she was traveling through Etruria, one of the absolutely most gorgeous places on earth.
Whatever Fanny was feeling in May, it’s no more in June. Travel was rough going and utterly time-consuming. It beings with a haunting serenade in d-minor, as beautiful as anything in Chopin’s nocturnes, but less idiomatic. But perhaps now we’ve found ourselves in Venice. A gondolier song with dashing, virtuosic arpeggios in the accompaniment has broken though. You’d think Fanny’s mood would have turned around. It hasn’t; melancholy is the name of the game, and we soon return to the d-minor serenade to close out the movement.
July is even darker than June. During this month Fanny’s diary expresses anxiety and melancholy. The straightforward rhythm and melody suggest reflection perhaps on what awaits Fanny back home in Berlin, the dour life of a woman in the 1840s. Moreover, there are evil, threatening tremolos in the accompaniment that strike a tone of rebellion, even violence.
But if
Das Jahr is a true musical diary, Fanny’s return home in August did the exact opposite; it restored her spirits. The movement is an allegro in ABA form. The first section is excited and set in a march-like fashion. Fanny is happy to be home. The second section begins restlessly, but not in a way that reflects melancholia, in a way that reflects majesty and the
fantastique akin to something you might hear in Schumann or Liszt. There’s a wall of sound with beautifully lush chromatics that wash right over you.
September is the most famous piece of the suite. Nicknamed, “At the River”, September features a rolling melody in b-minor over continual mid-register virtuosic arpeggios that suggest the movement and flow of water. With all its flowing, perpetual energy, the movement reminds me of Schubert’s first masterwork
Gretchen am Spinrade where he mimics the sound of a spinning wheel. Perhaps Fanny’s September reflects the falling leaves and the cooling temperature, or in general her mood that autumnal season.
October is reminiscent of Beethoven’s 18th Piano Sonata in Eb-Major “The Hunt”. Both reflect the autumnal hunting season, full of brown leaves, crisp temperatures, jumping bunnies, and the calls of ducks. Fanny returns again and again to the sound of a bugle call representing the start of a hunt. The movement is full of victorious and brotherly energy, which at first darts this way and that, but ends up evoking the kind of camaraderie you share with friends after spending a gay old time together.
November corresponds with the onset of winter. The mood,
mesto, is slow and icy cold yet not without its beautiful, flatted sonorities. There’s an element of being in flux, searching for something. But in the B section the winds pick up, hurrying us along. The topsy-turvy figurations, straight out of Schubert, almost seem to suggest madness, but perhaps better suggest Fanny, tightly bundled, rushing through the cold and blustery winds to the safety of her fireplace.
The parallels between December and March are evident from the get go; the connecting thread their religious observances. For March this is Lent and Easter, for December, Christmas. The month begins with a rather capricious fantasia, but then, just as in March, a Lutheran Choral,
Vom Himmel Hoch interrupts in the major mode, turning our minds to the exalted and holy in only the way a Bachian choral can. It’s truly beautiful. The month ends in spectacle and bombast, celebrating a year well-spent and a year well-lived amongst the best of friends and the closest of family.
Fanny concludes the suite with a setting of another Lutheran choral,
Das alte Jahr vergangen ist in the postlude which thanks God for the blessings of the past year and rejoices in his forgiveness. Oddly, rather than being uplifting, the choral is set in the minor mode and strikes a tone of sadness. Perhaps this is done to juxtapose the final chord, a Picardy-third roulade that triumphs the major mode over the minor, just as Bach would have done. A perfect way to end the suite.
It really is a sign of the times that two of the three women in the entirety of the 19th century in Europe who succeeded in making names for themselves as composers did so with the aid of a Goliath of a musical male counterpart; just another example of how unequal life was for women back then. Shameful. In Clara’s case, it was her husband Robert, in Fanny’s case, it was her brother Felix. But Fanny’s
Das Jahr speaks so much louder and shines so much brighter than does the aid of her brother, and I’m really not trying to be hyperbolic. To this reviewer,
Das Jahr is a bona fide masterpiece, and I have absolutely no doubt that if it had been written by Felix its position in the repertoire would have been cemented from the day of its publication. I’m as sure about that as I’ve been about anything in my life.
