“The Advantage of Artists”

In 1841, the composer Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) presented her husband Wilhelm with a remarkable Christmas present: a cycle of thirteen short pieces for piano, entitled Das Jahr (The Year). The cycle contains one piece for each month of the year, and closes with a postlude.

In 1841, Fanny Hensel had written to an artist friend about her project:

“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; I’ve already progressed more than half way. 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.”

Quoted and translated in R. Larry Todd, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 275.