The Mendelssohn family’s handling of the compositional legacy of the two siblings Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, who died young, could not have been more different: While the brother Paul Mendelssohn put almost everything his brother had left behind into print posthumously, very little was given to the public in the case of the sister. On the one hand, this family strategy reflected the father Abraham Mendelssohn’s assessment of his children’s talents and professional abilities. On the other hand, these decisions distorted the image of the developments and abilities of both artists for a long time. The article traces this development, in particular the role of Cécile Mendelssohn, who as a widow was unable to assert herself against this family dynamic.

This chapter discusses modern approaches to understanding Hensel’s music and future scholarly challenges for its interpretation. Nowadays Hensel’s music is written about and performed widely and she has become one of the best-known woman composers. Yet this was not always the case. What had to happen to transform Hensel – in the eyes of scholars, performers, students and lay listeners – from an overlooked and sometimes maligned figure into someone now regarded as one of the most gifted composers of her generation? What lessons can we learn from considering how she moved from the margins toward the centre of the canon? And what challenges lie ahead? Looking back on the past forty years of Hensel studies reveals three main, interlinked developments that have shaped our understanding of her music: a greater awareness of the relationship and differences between her and her brother’s musical styles; a more sophisticated analytical understanding of her music; and a drastic increase in the amount of her music available for study.

Part of Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s ‘monarchical project’ following his ascension to the throne in 1840 included his goal of establishing Berlin as a leading centre of culture and the arts on par with other European capitals. Berlin had remained Fanny Hensel’s home throughout her life, where her musical salon formed one of the city’s cultural highlights. In the 1840s, at the urging of the king, her brother gave Berlin another chance; his appointment at the Prussian court brought him closer to his family once more, but placed different expectations on him, not least in the composition of new genres for the court (incidental music, liturgical music). Ultimately Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s project must be judged something of a political failure, while Mendelssohn left after an unsatisfactory and frustrating period. Yet while neither Hensel nor Mendelssohn lived long enough to witness the revolutionary upheaval of 1848, each in their own way played an important role in shaping the contours of everyday life in Berlin of the 1840s.

This chapter explores what is surely one of the core questions of the entire volume - how did Fanny and Felix interact as musicians and as composers? Both displayed prodigious musical talent at an early age, and both received a parallel musical education, but social and class boundaries dictated that Felix shuld become a professional composer while Fanny was destined to remain in the domestic spheres. This also largely dictated the genres in which they went on to compose. The chapter also considers convergences and divergences in compositional style.

The number of leading intellectual lights with whom the Mendelssohns came into contact were quite remarkable, and often exerted a lasting impression on their artistic outlook. This chapter reviews some of the figures who belonged to Fanny’s and Felix’s circles. A discussion of the figures in whose worlds they moved as they developed distinct personalities, talents and outlooks up to 1828 is followed by examinations of the dramatically expanded circles of the two siblings, each in their respective spheres, between 1829 and 1840. It closes with a discussion of their respective circles of fame and influence in the last eight years of their lives and a few comments on the ways in which the acknowledged brilliance they enjoyed during their lifetimes was threatened in the years after their deaths.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the family remained the overarching frame of reference for the individual, especially for German-Jewish families. Over generations, marriages consolidated the family threads into a dense network of relationships. The Mendelssohn family can be considered a prime example in this context. This also applies to the nuclear family, which represents only a small section of the Mendelssohn family cosmos, albeit one that is crucial to the family’s self-image. Fanny, Felix, Rebecka and Paul Mendelssohn were aware that they had been born into an extraordinary family. They were also aware that the female members were assigned different social responsibilities than the male members and that these responsibilities were intended to complement each other. All four of them followed the path intended for them.

The chapter explores the Jewish connections, social status, and musical involvement of the extended family on both their maternal and paternal sides, outlining the role in Fanny Hensel’s and Felix Mendelssohn’s lives, and in wider society, of their various aunts, uncles and cousins, as well as their grandparents and great-grandparents. The contexts in which these family members functioned ranged from contributions to Jewish learning (as with Moses Mendelssohn, the siblings’ grandfather), and to the Jewish community (as with their maternal great-grandfather Daniel Itzig), to the influential musical salons of their great-aunts, such as those of Fanny von Arnstein and Cäcilie von Eskeles in Vienna, and Sara Levy in Berlin. The residence at 3 Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin inhabited by Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn and their children was considered by the family, as Sebastian Hensel recorded, not merely as ‘bricks and mortar’, but rather as one of them, sharing their lives.

This chapter examines Fanny’s and Felix’s economic and social relationships with their music publishers, focussing mainly on Felix. Fanny published only a few works late in her life under her own name, which were not widely sold. Building on the premise that relations between composers and publishers were mutually beneficial in the nineteenth century, the chapter summarises the most relevant of Felix’s collaborations with publishers from Germany, England, France and Italy respectively, and their role in the dissemination of his music. To contextualise these relationships properly, the chapter considers both the popularity and potential profitability of Felix’s works as well as his preference for business relations built on trust and respect.

Based on an evaluation of extensive primary and secondary sources, ’Gendered Journeys’ interprets, through the lens of gender studies and in relation to the tradition of ’Bildungsreisen’, the impact of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn’s European travels on their artistic creativity.  Their respective trips to Rome were especially important.  Italy inspired them both to increasing self-reflection, and to further personal and professional development.  Nevertheless, the opportunities and experiences offered to each of them were significantly different, owing to the relatively strict delineation of gender roles during the nineteenth century, but also to their personal choices.

Mendelssohn’s ten visits to England made the country easily his most important foreign destination. Although he was consistently feted by British audiences both as composer and performer, he privately expressed dissatisfaction with the state of music making he encountered, which compared unfavourably in many respects with that in Germany, especially with regard to rehearsals. Nevertheless, he kept on returning, in part because it provided a truly international shop window for his major new works. He was also honest enough to admit enjoying his reception, while he was also able to renew the many personal friendships he formed over the years. At the same time, his early death can be attributed in part to the exhaustion caused by his incessant activity during his final visits to the country, which was posthumously set to honour him publicly more than Germany.

Mendelssohn’s correspondence, the most extensive of any composer up to his time, has always provided essential material for both his biography and study of the music. Fortunately, not only has a high proportion of probably around 6,500 letters survived – helped by their quality as well as the elegance of his script, which invited preservation – but they are importantly complemented by his own careful retention of incoming correspondence. The letters fall into three main groups: some 700 addressed to his family, regular communication with a small number of close friends, and those concerning his professional activities, including publication of his works. The story of the posthumous publication of his letters is traced, which culminated in the recent complete edition of them; this was only made possible thanks to many letters emerging from private ownership into publicly accessible archives since the Second World War.

The city of Berlin was formative for the musical development of the young Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. Although in the early decades of the nineteenth century the city suffered from a degree of cultural insecurity compared to some of its peer capitals in Europe, Berlin’s historicist tendencies, burgeoning musical life, and strong participatory culture of choral music gave the city a unique profile. This chapter traces the Mendelssohns’ interactions with musical historicism, trends in operatic and concert life in Berlin (including leaders in those areas, such as Gaspare Spontini and Carl Möser), other important local music figures in performance and journalism, and – last but not least – with their teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, head of the Singakademie zu Berlin. It shows how the Mendelssohns’ often historicist musical values formed in this special environment, even as both artists would grow beyond these roots as they matured.

A preoccupation with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the constants in the lives of the Mendelssohn family, especially Fanny and Felix. Bach was one of the few composers who were considered exemplary in the Mendelssohn family. The special chorale and fugue-orientated training with Zelter, their membership of the Singakademie and the cultivation of Bach among their family and friends make it clear in which traditions the siblings Fanny and Felix grew up and undertook their first musical steps and expressions. Bach’s works are always present in the musical performances of both of them. In Fanny’s ’Sunday musicales’, works by Bach were just as much a part of the repertoire as in the concerts that Felix conducted or played on the piano or organ. Their lifelong engagement with Bach’s music is reflected in the compositions of Fanny and Felix and includes details of content, form and compositional technique.

The circles of friendship within which Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn moved during their childhood and youth very much revolved around the family; to a large degree their early friends (often slightly older) were selected or encouraged by their parents according to how they might contribute to their personal or intellectual growth. Not a few of these friends shared the children’s passion for music, such as Ignaz Moscheles, Eduard Ritz (or Rietz), Ferdinand David, Eduard Devrient, and Adolf Bernhard Marx, but also included academics, lawyers and artists (notably Fanny’s husband-to-be, Wilhelm Hensel). The physical and spiritual centre of all these friendships was the family home in the Leipziger Strasse 3, the closest group of friends and their relaxed, cheerful and witty intercourse symbolised by Wilhelm Hensel’s drawing Das Rad (‘the Wheel’) with Felix at its centre.