H314

Klavierstück. Andante con espressione in B-flat Major

This work is one of several Fanny Hensel wrote in the years after the death of her father, a period in which her works grew in scope and ambition. Fanny wrote this piece at home in Berlin on March 28, 1837, the day her brother Felix Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud in Frankfurt. None of the Mendelssohn family were able to travel to the wedding due to illness.

When the siblings were later able to exchange some of their recently written scores, they were surprised to notice that two were eerily similar: this work by Fanny and Felix’s Prelude in B-flat Major (Op. 35, No. 6).

Fanny Hensel’s Andante con espressione in B-flat Major (H314)

Felix Mendelssohn’s Prelude in B-flat Major (Op. 35, No. 6)

After reviewing Fanny’s piece, Felix wrote to her:

[…] Really, it is the same inside out, and the similarities captivated me. […] In this case it’s not merely the same figures, motion, and form that astonish me, but namely certain details that appear not at all to lie in the theme (i.e. in the notes), but nevertheless are there (i.e. in the mood), and replicate themselves so conspicuously in each of us. […] It’s simply too wild—and, it’s lovely that our ideas remain so close.

Around this time Fanny had been considering publishing her works under her own name for the first time, but upon noticing the similarities, believed if she published this piece she would be seen as a plagiarist. This experience may have discouraged her; she did not publish her first opus until a decade later.

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HenselPushers edition notes:

• This work appears in MA Ms. 44.

• Dec 22, 2022: Version 1.4 uploaded. The A flats in measures 17 and 21 have been removed to be in alignment with the manuscript.