Keyboard Exercises 1822-1824

Early technical exercises

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel composed these piano exercises between the ages of 16 and 18. The inspiration for most of these works have been lost to time—Fanny would not begin maintaining a diary until years later. But what we do know of these pieces paints the picture of a talented teenager reflecting on her natural, emotional, and musical environment. She notes H74 was written “in the rain”. H69 was a turbulent response to a tense argument between her, her then-fiancé Wilhelm, and her mother Lea, which threatened to end the couple’s engagement. And H103 was written in the style of Friedrich Kalkbrenner, a piano virtuoso who had recently visited the Mendelssohns and was impressed by Fanny’s skills as a pianist and a composer.

Collection update, November 2023:

The last of Hensel’s 15 keyboard exercises, Allegro di molto in C Major (H108), has been added. This piece is not in the Berlin library’s digital collection, but thanks to your donations I have been able to purchase a scan of the manuscript to make the edition available to you.