Conference Agenda

While it is well-known that Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorales fascinated Felix Mendelssohn, who set dozens to music (Koch 2003), the chorale settings of Fanny Hensel remain relatively unstudied. The Mendelssohn siblings shared significant connections with Bach’s music via their maternal grandmother Bella Salomon, great-aunt Sara Levy, and parents Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn. This paper examines two instances of chorale transformation in the work of both Mendelssohn composers: Mendelssohn’s youthful play with “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” in Sinfonia VI and Hensel’s artful treatment of the Easter chorale, “Christ ist erstanden,” in Das Jahr.

As Armin Koch has demonstrated, chorale and chorale-like music appear with frequency in Mendelssohn’s oeuvre. In the sixth of 12 string symphonies composed before he became a teenager (1821–22), Mendelssohn alluded to the melody of “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,” which would come to be known familiarily as the “Passion Chorale.” In the second Trio of the middle movement of Sinfonia VI, Mendelssohn invested the melody with new turns of phrase, leading to a triumphant climax.

A set of 12 Charakterstücke für das Pianoforte, Fanny Hensel’s masterpiece Das Jahr (1841) incorporates chorales at three inflection points of the liturgical year: Easter (March), Christmas (December), and New Year (Postlude). Consisting of a Prelude and Chorale, “March” builds up from a quiet minor-mode harmonization of “Christ ist erstanden” to a loud presentation of the chorale melody in the major mode, marked “Allegro moderato ma con fuoco.”

Recent scholarship by R. Larry Todd and Angela Mace Christian emphasizes “sibling exchange” in the music of Mendelssohn and Hensel. For example, Mendelssohn wrote a cantata based on the chorale “Christe, du Lamm Gottes” as a Christmas gift for his sister in 1827, which she quoted in the last movement of her Easter Sonata (1828). The notion of sibling exchange suggests that we should consider more often the chorale’s role in the corpus of works by both composers, not just by Mendelssohn. This corpus ultimately reveals the profound influence of Bach on Mendelssohn and Hensel, and the triumph of their shared Protestant faith and music.

Social class, a significant factor in nineteenth-century women musicians’ career trajectories (Reich 1991; Krebs 2007), has received little attention in studies of Robert and Clara Schumann’s marriage. Most commentators assume that both enjoyed middle-class (bürgerlich) upbringings, and that theirs was a “love-match” (Liebesheirat) in which they came together exclusively because of mutual affection, which also tided them over difficulties in their marital and familial life. Indeed, in the period leading up to their union, the lovers – led by Robert – had embraced the educated Bürger’s discourse of Heimat as idealized “home,” “homeland,” and “belonging” (Blickle 2002). They invoked rustic settings, complimented each other as Volk-like simple individuals with noble dispositions, and envisioned Heimat-infused imagery as a prototype for their life together. But those who have studied Clara’s life frequently remind us about one of the couple’s starkest differences: her strong desire to continue her career after marriage, which conflicted with Robert’s deep-seated belief that she should be a stay-at-home mother (Hausfrau). As yet, no-one has explained the roots of this fundamental disagreement or closely studied its profound ramifications on their marital and family life. This paper explores Clara’s and Robert’s dissimilar attitudes to “home” in light of their respective backgrounds. By applying analytical frameworks devised by historians of the European family and social biographers, historical research on working women, and theories of social class to the couple’s respective genealogies, I show that Clara and Robert contracted what would have been understood as an exogamous marriage in the mid-nineteenth century. They came from noticeably different social classes, each of which imparted a distinctive viewpoint about women’s work and family, among other things. While the Schumanns found much common ground in music and mutually shared the advantages and privileges of their respective talents, class-based conflicting perspectives also divided their understandings of Heimat in the gendered dynamics of their daily reality and underlay their private behaviours and motivations towards each other as well as their progeny.

Franz Liszt’s affinity towards St. Francis of Assisi was an integral part of the composer’s identity. His devotion to the saint, cultivated from an early age, served as a constant source of spiritual guidance and musical inspiration. On his travels across Europe, Liszt established relationships with Franciscan monasteries and renewed acquaintances with Franciscans he had known since childhood. These connections—maintained across the years through correspondence with individual friars, and donations to their monasteries—ultimately led to Liszt’s installation in 1857 as a confrater: an honorary member of the Franciscan order entitled to certain privileges but exempt but corresponding responsibilities, such as taking religious vows or living in community. Vague and speculative press reports about this event, together with the public’s unfamiliarity with the Franciscan hierarchy and its various entry points, have resulted in the widely held belief that Liszt was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, the secular branch of the Franciscans. Despite efforts by Vševlad Gajdoš to debunk such a notion in 1964, this unverified claim continues to turn up in reputable sources and has earned a firm place in the Liszt mythology. As recently as 2009, scholar Nicolas Dufetel remarked that the matter still needed definitive clarification.

Citing nineteenth-century Franciscan manuals, this paper offers new evidence that Liszt could not have joined the Third Order, for he neither followed the established initiation procedures nor adhered to the rules and restrictions imposed on Tertiaries. Importantly, the study considers the extent to which Liszt’s own words may have helped to propagate the myth of his Tertiary status, and whether he purposefully abstained from setting the record straight as he crafted his public persona. The paper further argues that, although Liszt never joined the Third Order, he fashioned himself as a Franciscan Tertiary, asserting his status in private correspondence and allowing individuals to fall under the impression that he indeed was a secular Franciscan. In Liszt’s mind, the study posits, membership in the Third Order would have elevated his stature, drawing him spiritually and symbolically closer to prominent Tertiaries he idolized—particularly Dante.