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Of ‘Bumps’ and Biography: A Response to Marcia Citron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2011

Marian Wilson Kimber
Marian Wilson Kimber
Affiliation:
The University of Iowa
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Abstract

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Type
Letter to the Editor
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 2008 , pp. 171 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

References

1 Kimber, Marian Wilson, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn: Rethinking Feminist Biography’, 19th-Century Music 26 (2002): 113–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Citron, Marcia J., ‘Feminist Waves and Classical Music: Pedagogy, Performance, Research’, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 8 (2004): 47–60;CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘A Bi-centennial Reflection: Twenty-Five Years with Fanny Hensel’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 4/2 (2007): 7–20Google Scholar.

3 Kimber, Wilson, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn’, 113.Google Scholar

4 Citron, , ‘Feminist Waves’, 57.Google Scholar

5 Citron, , ‘A Bi-centennial Reflection’, 17.Google Scholar

6 Rebecca Grotjahn, ‘Die “story” der unterdrückten Komponistin – ein feministischer Mythos? Anmerkungen zu einigen neuen Publikationen über Fanny Hensel’, Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 7 (2004): 27–31, www.fzmw.de/2004/2004_3.pdf (accessed on 30 June 2008).

7 In his review of Tillard's book in Notes 53 (Mar. 1997): 800–801, Jeffrey Sposato points out her ‘reluctance to establish consistently the cultural norms for each of the periods she evaluates. People and events are often viewed from a modern day perspective'. He adds, ‘In general, Tillard expects defiance of the dominant culture – a particularly unrealistic expectation for the Mendelssohns, who for generations did their best to comply with mainstream society – and then judges harshly when it does not occur'.

8 Tillard, Françoise, Fanny Mendelssohn, trans. Camille Naish (Portland, OR: Amadeus, 1996): 315.Google Scholar

9 In just one recent example, the latest edition of the popular textbook A History of Western Music continues to blame Abraham and Felix Mendelssohn for Fanny's musical life in the domestic sphere, although it does take class into account: ‘Few [pieces] were published during her lifetime, because her father and brother opposed publication on the grounds that a musical career was inappropriate for a woman of her class. Their objections minimized the influence she had outside her circle and confined her mostly to the small genres appropriate for home music-making.’ Burkholder, J. Peter, Grout, Donald J. and Palisca, Claude V., A History of Western Music, 7th edn (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005): 619Google Scholar.

10 Citron, Marcia J., ‘Women and the Lied, 1775–1850’, in Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950, ed. Bowers, Jane and Tick, Judith (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986): 231.Google Scholar

11 The story seems to have taken a far stronger hold in English-language writings than in those in German, many of which are more occupied with the reception of the entire Mendelssohn family after National Socialism. Nonetheless, it persists in Sparre's, SulamithEine Frau jenseits des Schweigens: Die Komponistin Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Widerständige Frauen, 1 (Lich, Hessen: Verlag Edition AV, 2006): 59–60Google Scholar.

12 Although Citron has carefully read my footnote about Fanny's last name, she has my last name wrong. It is ‘Wilson Kimber' not ‘Kimber'.

13 Wilson Kimber, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn’, 118 and 114, n. 4.

14 Kamen, Gloria, Hidden Music: the Story of Fanny Mendelssohn (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).Google Scholar

15 Citron, , ‘Women and the Lied’, 226–7.Google Scholar

16 Wilson Kimber, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn': 113, emphasis added. See this mere handful of examples: Peter G. Davis, ‘Music by Women Composers’,New York Times (13 April 1980): D26; Notes for Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Klavierwerk, Vol. 2; trans. Jeremy Roth; Liana Serbescu, piano (Classic Produktion Osnabrück CPO 999015– 2, 1987); Danielle Roster, Notes for Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn [sic], Das Jahr (1841); 4 Klavierstücke (1836); trans. Claude Thill; Béatrice Rauchs, piano (Bayer Records BR 100 250 CD, 1995); Tobias Fischer, ‘CD Feature/Lauma Skride: Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel – The Year’, www.tokafi.com/newsitems/cd-feature-lauma-skride-fanny-mendelssohn-hensel-the-year (accessed 7 Jan. 2008).

17 The Great Composers: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Quatuor Claudel ([Leeuwarden, The Netherlands]: Brilliant Classics, 2007). For example, Fanny is introduced in a confined domestic space, longing for Felix's return, but after a joyous reunion, Felix becomes furious and disdainful when he finds Fanny's scores on the piano.

18 In contrast to Kamen's biography is the wonderful way in which Nancy Reich's scholarly work on Clara Schumann has been incorporated into her daughter Susanna Reich's children's biography: Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso (New York: Clarion Books, 1999).

19 Citron, , ‘A Bi-centennial Reflection’, 18Google Scholar ; Kimber, Wilson, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn’, 120Google Scholar.

20 Citron, , ‘A Bi-centennial Reflection’, 17.Google Scholar

21 Kimber, Wilson, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn’, 125, second italics added.Google Scholar

22 Citron, , ‘Feminist Waves’, 58.Google Scholar

23 Kimber, Wilson, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn': 123.Google Scholar Since my article was published, this situation is beginning to change, due to the important work of Hans-Günter Klein, who has produced scholarly editions of Fanny's diaries and letters, providing reliable material for additional interpretations: Hensel, Fanny, Tagebücher, ed. Klein, Hans-Günter (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2002)Google Scholar; Hensel, Fanny, Briefe aus Rom an ihre Familie in Berlin 1839/40, ed. Klein, Hans-Günter (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2002); andGoogle ScholarHensel, Fanny, Briefe aus Venedig und Neapel an ihre Familie in Berlin 1839/40, ed. Klein, Hans-Günter (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004).Google Scholar See Nancy B. Reich's interpretation of Fanny's diaries in ‘The Diaries of Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel: a Study in Contrasts’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 4/2 (2007): 21–36. Reich notes, ‘Music, however, does not dominate her diary. Rather, family seems to be of the greatest importance' (p. 32). See also Harald Krebs's ‘The “Power of Class” in a New Perspective: A Comparison of the Compositional Careers of Fanny Hensel and Josephine Lang’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 4/2 (2007): 37–48, in which Fanny's supposed ‘imprisonment' in the domestic sphere is more accurately depicted as the privileged life of a woman of her class.

24 Citron, , ‘Feminist Waves’, 58.Google Scholar

25 Gordon S. Wood, ‘Star Spangled History’, The New York Review of Books (12 August 1982): 8, quoted in O'Brien, Sharon, ‘Feminist Theory and Literary Biography’, in Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, ed. Epstein, William H. (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991): 123.Google Scholar

26 O'Brien, , ‘Feminist Theory and Literary Biography’, 131.Google Scholar

27 Weldon, Fay, Rebecca West (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985),Google Scholar quoted by Iles, Teresa, Conclusion to All Sides of the Subject: Women and Biography, ed. Iles, Teresa, The Athene Series (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992): 162Google Scholar.

28 Kimber, Wilson, ‘The Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn’, 126.Google Scholar

29 It is perhaps worth repeating that Ruth A. Solie has made a similar point: ‘… postmodernism's positing of an unstable and fragmented subjectivity seems to put into question the category “women” in a way that would disable feminist work, and to make inaccessible the notions of authority and intention that are central to the historical interpretation of women's productivity'. ‘Feminism’, in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Sadie, Stanley and Tyrrell, John (London: Macmillan, 2000): vol. 8, 665Google Scholar.

30 Citron, , ‘A Bicentennial Reflection’, 19.Google Scholar

31 For example, ‘Zur frühen Wirkungsgeschichte Fanny Hensels’, in Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn: Komponieren zwischen Geselligkeitsideal und romantischer Musikästhetik, ed. Borchard, Beatrix and Schwarz-Danuser, Monika (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1999; 2nd edn, Kassel: Furore, 2002): 248–62;CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘From the Concert Hall to the Salon: the Piano Music of Clara Wieck Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’, in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, 2nd edn, ed. Todd, R. Larry (New York: Routledge, 2003): 316–55;Google Scholar‘Fanny in Italy: the Female Composer as Travel Writer’, in Musical Biography: Towards New Paradigms, ed. Pekacz, Jolanta T. (London: Ashgate, 2006): 111–33;Google Scholar‘Fanny Hensel Meets the Boys in the Band: the Brass Transcriptions of the Gartenlieder, op. 3’, Historic Brass Society Journal 18 (2006): 17–36;Google Scholar and ‘Fanny Hensel's Seasons of Life: Poetic Epigrams, Vignettes and Meaning in Das Jahr’, Journal of Musicological Research 27 (2008): 359–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 For other reactions to my article see Jolanta Pekacz, in ‘Memory, History and Meaning: Musical Biography and its Discontents’, Journal of Musicological Research 23 (Jan.–Mar. 2004): 41n., and Poriss, Hilary, ‘She Came, She Sang … She Conquered? Adelina Patti in New York’, in European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840–1900, ed. Graziano, Johan, Eastman Studies in Music (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2006): 219– 20.Google Scholar Poriss writes, ‘By reevaluating a dazzling array of primary and secondary sources, however, Kimber [sic] demonstrates that the men in Fanny's life did not directly impede her compositional pursuits'.