«(…) Il ciclo è composto da dodici pezzi di carattere per ogni mese dell’anno, seguiti da un postludio. L’opera, inedita fino al 1989, è conservata in due manoscritti autografi del 1841 e 1842. Maurizi propone un’analisi multimediale del secondo manoscritto del 1842, in cui ogni brano è su carta di un colore specifico, preceduto da alcuni versi di differenti poeti, e illustrato da Wilhelm Hensel, marito di Fanny. Attingendo a un’ermeneutica musicale meticolosamente informata alle fonti storiche, Maurizi ricostruisce il modo in cui Fanny Hensel ricreò in musica i suoi ricordi del Grand Tour italiano che i coniugi Hensel intrapresero nel 1839–40, intrecciando altri riferimenti, in particolare alla cultura protestante germanica. (…)»
(Catherine Deutsch, Women in Music Analysis, in Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, XXVII/1, 2021, p. 12).
Abstract
Fanny Hensel (1805–1847), an excellent musician and composer no less gifted than her brother Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, has a collection of 460 compositions, but until a few years ago only a small amount of her music had been published. Up until 1989, when the first manuscript (MA Ms. 47) was published in Furore Verlag, Das Jahr (1841–1842) was also unknown. However, it was only in 2000 that the first piano calendar in the history of music could be fully appreciated, when the same publishing house published the finished copy (MA Ms. 155). This copy contains, in addition to Fanny’s music, illustrations on coloured paper sheets, made by her husband Wilhelm Hensel (1794–1861) and poetic verses by various authors. This study intends to highlight some specific features of the collection that can be ascribed to Fanny’s compositional style and artistic personality, in particular with reference to her tendency towards autobiography. In the first part, by Paola Maurizi (on the MA Ms. 155), the theme is examined in relation to the original multimedia character of the work and the internal narrative of the Charakterstücke. In the second part, by Maria Grazia Sità (on the edition of the MA Ms. 47), it is instead treated in relation to her brother’s production and other intertextual references present in some passages.