Neobaroque 1827-1834

Bachian Influence

The day after she was born, Fanny Hensel’s father noted his first-born child’s “Bach fugal fingers” in a letter to her grandmother, presaging both her musical abilities and her affinity for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Fanny’s lifelong admiration of Bach was instilled by her mother Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy and maternal aunts, who were early champions of the largely forgotten German Baroque composer. One of the earliest references to Fanny’s music practice in family letters was her performance of 24 preludes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier by memory shortly after her thirteenth birthday. Though Fanny’s brother Felix is widely credited with launching the Bach revival of the 19th century with his performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Lea and her aunts were instrumental in preserving Bach’s music and cultivating Fanny and Felix’s appreciation for it.

Around the time Felix was beginning work on the St. Matthew Passion, Fanny explored her creative relationship to Bach and his Passion during a yearlong Neobaroque period in 1827-1828. The most substantial piece of this period was her Klavierbuch (H214), a six-movement keyboard suite in e minor (a seventh movement was left uncompleted). In this work she employs a variety of quintessentially Baroque compositional techniques, demonstrating proficiency in a style of counterpoint that is starkly different from her lyrical romantic pieces.

Collection update, March 2023:

Two more pieces in the Neobaroque style from this era of Hensel’s compositional career have been added and released for J.S. Bach’s birthday in March, 2023: Fugata in E-flat (H193) and a piano piece in e minor (H216).

Collection update, April 2024:

One new work has been added: a Bach-inspired fugue (H273) written in 1834, several years after the other pieces in the collection.