Articles in Books
Abstract:
The subject of this chapter, Fanny Hensel’s Lied in D major for piano solo, Op. 8, No. 3, might seem an anomalous choice for a volume devoted to the composer’s texted Lieder. But one could readily advance the argument that, like Schubert, Hensel was at her core a naturally gifted song composer who gave as free a rein to lyrical impulses in her purely instrumental music as she did in setting the verses of her favorite poets-Goethe, Tieck, Eichendorff, and Heine. Some of her piano pieces, which she typically titled Lieder or Klavierlieder, raise the question as to whether particular poetic sources lay behind their inspiration. Perhaps the most enigmatic of these examples is Op. 8, No. 3, which, when published posthumously in 1850, appeared with the title Lied, to which was added in parentheses “Lenau.” This chapter takes into account the sixteen Lenau settings composed by Hensel and her brother between 1839 and 1847, and considers whether Op. 8, No. 3 might be linked to specific verses of Lenau, or might offer, perhaps, a musical portrait of the poet, who suffered a mental collapse in 1844.