Fanny Mendelssohn’s Divan

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers Fanny Mendelssohn’s 1825 settings of poems from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan in their manuscript context. I argue that Mendelssohn draws out narratives from Goethe’s ‘Buch Suleika’. She composes a cycle of six songs with two revolutions, each charting the path of love from separation through union to separation again. Investigation of Mendelssohn’s cycle brings her teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, into view. The article concludes with a Stammbuch presented by Felix Mendelssohn to his wife, Cécile, in 1844, which featured illustrated musical settings of the Divan by Wilhelm Hensel and Fanny (now) Hensel.