More On Fanny Mendelssohn’s Das Jahr

From left to right: Illustrations by Wilhelm Hensel for Fanny Mendelssohn’s cycle Das Jahr. Shown here are February, March and April.  With thanks to Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.  Click on each image to see a larger version.

While it is very clear now how much interest and fascination I have with Fanny Mendelssohn as well as her cycle Das Jahr, there seems to be no shortage of wonderful information about the history of the work itself.

First, there are actually two versions of the work, one written in 1841, and the other in 1842. The first version is slightly longer, almost an hour in length. The 1842 version might be described as a “multimedia” version, as it represents a collaboration between Fanny Mendelssohn and her husband, the artist Wilhelm Hensel. 

Fanny would go on to write the 1842 version of the cycle on colored paper, for which Wilhelm drew vignettes on the first page of each piece. They both then selected poetry excerpts to put between each work in the cycle, such as the one I described from Goethe in my post of February 23, 2026, “Enjoying Das Jahr.”

While the 1842 version is somewhat shorter, approximately 45 minutes, most of the changes incorporated into the versions were minor, with Fanny only removing some of the more demanding passages.

Describing the 1842 version, Sarah Austin, a translator and friend of Fanny, wrote the following:

She had composed a series of beautiful pieces of music for the pianoforte, called after the months. These were written in an album, and at the head of each month was a charming drawing illustrative of it by Professor Hensel. And all this was simple, dignified, free from the ostentation and sensibleries [excessive sentimentality] which sometimes throw doubt or discredit on such manifestations.

Fanny describes this new version of the work in a letter to August Elsasser, a professional painter and friend, dated November 11, 1841:

Now I’m engaged on another small work that’s giving me much fun, namely a series of 12 piano pieces meant to depict the months. […] When I finish, I’ll make clean copies of the pieces, and they will be provided with vignettes. And so we try to ornament and prettify our lives—that is the advantage of artists, that they can strew such beautifications about, for those nearby to take an interest in.

While it seems hard to imagine, Das Jahr was not published in Fanny’s lifetime. The manuscript was not printed until over a century later in 1989. Reading this, I could not help but think of the more than 300 compositions by Florence Price, another great female composer who is only now receiving attention, after many of her manuscripts were found in her abandoned summer house more than a half century after her death.

Given that works by both Mendelssohn and Price are in my repertoire, I am very grateful for the scholars and musicians who have helped to bring these wonderful works before a wider public.

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