A Cappella Mixed Choir (SATB)

Hensel’s complete SATB works

Fanny Hensel composed 23 songs for a cappella SATB choir, all included in this collection. The earliest two (H100 and H161), written at ages 17 and 19, are based on the same text by Fleming, “Lass dich nur nichts nicht dauern”. At age 20, she set two poems by Voss for mixed choir (H169 and H171), right around the time of the poet’s death. The latter of the two songs—titled “Am Grabe” (“At the grave”)—so impressed her composition teacher Zelter that he sent a copy to Voss’ widow and admitted to Goethe that his student’s version was better than his own setting of the poem.

The most substantial work in this collection is H237, “Nachtreigen” (“Night Rounds” or “Night Dance”), a ~7 minute work for SSAATTBB choir based on a poem by Fanny’s then-fiance Wilhelm Hensel. Wilhelm had suggested that she set this poem to music, which she had been planning to do as a birthday gift. To maintain the surprise, she had to trick him into thinking it couldn’t be done. (Wilhelm was exceptionally unmusical and seemed to believe her explanation.) The couple married later that year.

While in Italy in 1840, Hensel composed H361 on a text by Heine. Back in Berlin in 1841, Hensel wrote H370 using Tieck’s translation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

In 1846, Hensel composed an astonishing 18 works for a cappella voices, including 16 for SATB. (That same year she also completed 17 works for piano and 16 lieder.) SATB works from 1846 included a choral arrangement of “Nacht” (H225), a lied she had written 18 years earlier, plus settings of texts by Eichendorff, Hensel, Geibel, Goethe, Lenau, and Uhland. Fanny Hensel published six of these works from 1846 at the end of the year in her opus 3, Gartenlieder, which were the only choral works she ever published.