All language subtitles for Fanny.The.Other.Mendelssohn.2023.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX]

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(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(DISTANT CLIP-CLOP OF HORSES)

(DISTANT BELLS RINGING)

(BIG BEN CHIMES)

(HORSE NEIGHING)

SHEILA HAYMAN:
Buckingham Palace, London, 1842.

(BIG BEN BONGS)

SHEILA: 'The superstar
German composer, Felix Mendelssohn,

is invited here
to play his famous songs.'

(BELLS CHIMING)

(WOMAN SINGING)
# Schoner und schoner
# Schmuckt sich der Plan

# Schmeichelnde Lufte
# Wehen mich an

# Fort aus der Prosa
# Lasten und Muh'

SHEILA: 'The singer is
Queen Victoria herself.'

# Goldner die Sonne
# Blauer die Luft

'And the song she chooses as
her favourite is called Italien.

It's a huge honour for Felix.'

# Dort an dem Maishalm
Schwellend von Saft

# Straubt sich der Aloe
Storrische Kraft

# Olbaum, Cypresse
Blond du, du braun

# Nickt ihr wie zierliche

'But Felix has a problem.

He didn't actually write this song.

It was composed by his sister,
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.

Fanny was
my great-great-great grandmother

but I knew very little
about her musical genius.

Her story had been overshadowed
by her brother

and overlooked by
a male-dominated musical world.

But looking for clues,

I discovered she has
nine Twitter accounts.

Unusual for somebody
who's been dead for 175 years.

So, I realised I wasn't the only
person interested in her.'

Third clap.

Roland Schmidt-Hensel
in the Staatsbibliothek.

'And I discovered an army of fans

determined to rescue her
from oblivion.'

They have all of these, yes.
Oh, that's amazing.

ROBERT LEHMAN:
Wow.

What is THAT?

Holy crap.

I've never heard anything like it.

ISATA KANNEH-MASON:
I imagine her to have been

very stubborn, thinking,
you know, "This is how I feel.

This is what I want to write."
And not being held back

and just writing something
really expressive.

'The search for Fanny
took me from London to Berlin,

and Paris to New York.

And revealed the hunt
for a long-lost masterpiece,

the Easter Sonata.

I discovered a story of intense
sibling drama, joy and tragedy.

A woman who defied convention
but dared not defy her family.

This is Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel,
a very modern woman,

who just happened to live
two centuries ago.'

(SWEEPING PIANO NOTES)

TIM PARKER-LANGSTON:
Every time she sat down to write,

she was doing so
in a sort of creative vacuum.

The idea of what a composer was,
was exclusively male.

A composer was a man
who wrote music.

She wanted to be a good wife,
a good daughter,

a good sister, a good mother.

At the same time, there was
this fire burning inside her,

intellectual, rigorous,
critical, creative.

That is what gets me
every time with Fanny.

(DRAMATIC PIANO CHORDS)

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

SHEILA:
'When I began looking for Fanny,

all I had of her
was this music stand

and the painting of her music room
where it stood.

I realised I didn't even know
what she looked like.'

Did she look like this?

Or this?

Or this?

They're all radically different
from each other, these pictures.

'There were no photos in those days.

Most of the pictures we have
of her are imaginary ideals,

not real people.

Including these ones,

which put her firmly in her place
as her brother's support act.

Even the official portrait
isn't accurate.

She was horribly short sighted.

And none of them
shows her as a musician.

That side of Fanny,

as for creative women throughout
history, was just painted out.

So, my job seemed clear,

to find Fanny, the musical genius,

and give her the recognition
she has always deserved.

The first Mendelssohn
was the famous philosopher

of the German Enlightenment, Moses.

His son Abraham
had four children,

including the Mendelssohn
we've all heard of, Felix.

Fanny's born in 1805
and Felix three years later.

From the start,
they're inseparable.'

(PIANO PLAYING)
(DISTANT CHATTER)

SARAH ROTHENBERG: She and Felix
and all of the children

really took great fun in coming up
with nicknames for people,

making fun of people socially.

I mean, there was
tremendous laughter

and fun in the household.
You get that sense all the time.

Yeah!

(DRUM ROLL)

(CYMBAL CRASH)

'But the thing that's central
to both their lives is music.'

(PIANO PLAYING)

'They are two prodigies
who live and breathe it together

and for the first few years
they're taught together as well.

Both dreaming
of their future musical careers.'

Fanny's musically brilliant
and Felix is musically brilliant

but she's three years older

and of course,
as children that means a lot.

So, she has almost a parental
kind of relationship to Felix

with music and it's something
that they developed together.

(TRIUMPHANT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)
(HOOVES CLIP-CLOPPING)

(DOG BARKING)
(HORSE NEIGHING)

'Their father, Abraham,
is a wealthy banker

who converts the family
from Judaism to Christianity,

adds the Protestant
surname Bartholdy,

and moves them into
this enormous Berlin mansion.

All to cement the family's
reputation in society.'

Their place in European society
was really a new one.

The conversion from Judaism

was a way of becoming
a modern European citizen.

And the family had become
extremely wealthy,

so they were entering
into a social world

that Jews were not
frequently in before.

And so, as a result,
they were extremely careful

about what was proper,
what was not proper.

# Es fallt ein Stern herunter

# Aus seiner funkelnden Hoh

'What's proper for young ladies
at this time is 'Lieder,'

lyrical songs
with keyboard accompaniment,

that Fanny and her sister
Rebecka, a singer,

can perform in private,

without damaging
the family's reputation.

So from the beginning,

this is where Fanny
pours her creative energies.'

Fanny, as a child,

really wanted to fulfil
the ideals of her father,

of her brother,
of what it meant to be a woman.

She always wanted to please,
always wanted to succeed.

She presents
a composition of a song

to Abraham for his birthday.

I think she internalises
all of this.

PARKER-LANGSTON:
I'm going to begin where she did.

This is her first known composition

and this is essentially
her version of "Happy Birthday".

It's quite different.

I'm going to just sing to you
the first section of that.

(SINGING IN GERMAN)

(FAST PIANO SOLO)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

'But as Fanny enters her teens,

she begins to be excluded
from Felix's musical education.

And when she's 14,
her father writes her a letter

making clear that her future
is to be very different

from her brother's.'

"Music will perhaps
become his profession,

while for you it can
and must be only an ornament,

never the foundation of your life.

Your joy when he is praised

proves that you might,
in his place,

have deserved the same approval.

Stay true to these values
and this behaviour.

They are feminine.

And only the truly feminine
is appropriate to women."

(DRAMATIC PIANO ENDING)

Abraham at this point
is saying to her,

from now on she is not going
to have the same life as Felix,

she is going to be a woman,

she's going to do things
that women do.

She is allowed to cheer him on

and she's probably
allowed to help him,

but she's not allowed
to have a career in music.

She's terrified of her father
because he's a German father,

and she's a young lady
and because the year is 1819.

And you do not go
against your father's wishes.

'She won't defy her father.

But, even at 14, she won't
give up composing either.

This is the beginning
of a balancing act

that will last all Fanny's life.

But at that time,

music by women wasn't thought
to have any value.

So what survives
was buried in archives

or forgotten in attics.

Until the 1970s,

when a new generation
of feminist scholars

went looking for traces of Fanny.'

MARCIA CITRON:
She fascinated me.

I got very interested in her,
the quality of her music.

I knew that there was a lot there

that hadn't been looked at

at the Staatsbibliothek,

at what was then West Berlin.

And when I went to the library,
it was a shock.

There was a functionary
who was there at the table

and I had the feeling
talking to him

that he had just about
no respect for me.

Women were not studied much
at that point,

he hadn't encountered anybody
who was interested in Fanny Hensel.

She wasn't important.
She was nothing like Felix.

I did have the feeling
there was a whole lot more

in the way of other
kinds of material,

letters, diaries,

but there was no way to know
what was there.

What he said I could do
is copy out by hand in pencil.

That summer I copied out
maybe 12 or 15 songs.

And so, the next summer I went back.

Let's see.

I got about 50 more songs.

How long did that take you?

Oh, I don't know,
weeks, weeks and weeks.

Three or four weeks I was there.

But how did it feel
to be the first person

for maybe 140 years
to actually be interested?

It must have been extraordinary.
It was extraordinary.

I think, probably, though,
I was so focused on,

"I need to get this done."

(MUSIC FADES OUT)

'50 years on,

Marcia's pioneering work
remained unfinished

and Fanny largely unknown

until one young singer
took up the challenge.'

I'm ashamed to say
that, before 2020,

I actually had never heard
of Fanny as a person,

as a composer.

She wasn't someone that
I was even aware existed

until the lockdown.

And it was during that time
I started looking at composers

whose songs
had maybe been less well known

and I began with her brother, Felix.

But I then read
about this elder sister, Fanny,

who had written nearly 250 songs.

And it was within
a couple of minutes

of being sat at the piano
with one of her scores,

I was absolutely blown away.

It wasn't long until I discovered
that nearly 100 songs

there still weren't scores
available in print.

So I decided that that was
what my task was going to be,

to get them all out there

so that would never
be the case again.

This is the first one,
so you have three titles.

Wow, amazing.

I can help you load up
if you wish.

Yeah, thank you very much,
let's do it.

Yeah, we're good.
We're gonna be good.

Huzzah.

Purpose made.
Yeah.

Fits in.

It's a lot of music.

I think there's something about

this being an actual object,
an artefact.

The only kind of remnants
we have of Fanny's musical life

are a handful of letters and diaries

and then her original manuscripts.

And this is hopefully

an immortalising
of those quite fragile things

into something
you can hold in your hands.

I mean,
this is just a third of them.

And it's just amazing to think

how many reams of paper
she has filled with ideas

in a relatively short creative life.

It's pretty amazing to see,
pretty amazing to see.

'Fanny's musical voice first emerged
with the songs in Berlin.

Her personality lay hidden
in another treasure trove.

Her letters to Felix,

all preserved in a collection
known as the Green Books

in the Bodleian Library in Oxford,

which today are being
carefully restored.'

CITRON:
The summer of 1980,

I decided I needed to go to Oxford.

And the tone was so...

forthcoming and helpful.

I have here one of the three boxes,

where there are probably in here
maybe 60 or so letters.

I was looking through the letters

and I found them
absolutely fascinating.

It was getting inside the mind
and the emotions, the voice,

of a very talented and bright
and musical woman

in the past.

And it was breathtaking.

FANNY: "I couldn't write
to you last week

because I was too busy
practising your rondo.

Yesterday it was
officially launched

with an accompaniment of
double quartet and double bass.

I was so enthusiastic
about the piece

that I was mad enough
to play it twice

in spite of a bad cough
and a weak body."

CITRON:
One can feel like a snoop.

(LAUGHS)

What is the distance
between yourself

and the historical subject?

So I worked on this
over several years.

This took quite a bit of time.

And so finally, this brick came out.

And I'm very, very proud of it.

This is the first time
that we hear Fanny's voice

in a very intimate and full way
through these letters.

(GENTLE PIANO)

"Yesterday, we went all out
for Mozart's birthday.

You see how musical we are.

The symphony in G major
went down very well.

What a brilliant, lively work.

But the vocal pieces
weren't well chosen

and the pianist played
a not very beautiful concerto.

Not very beautifully."

(DISTANT SIREN WAILS)

(HUM OF STREET TRAFFIC)

'Fanny and Felix's
entangled creative lives

seeded a musical mystery
that only surfaced 150 years later

when acclaimed French
concert pianist, Eric Heidsieck,

was contacted by a music publisher
with an exciting offer.'

(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)

ERIC HEIDSIECK:
That was in '71.

I received a phone call
from a record company,

a French record company, Cassiopee.

He said, "We have a manuscript
of a sonata by Mendelssohn

who has never been played by nobody.

Will you be interested
to make the first recording?"

I said, "Of course. I would like
to see the manuscript."

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

'At this point, most people
had never heard of Fanny.

So it was assumed to be a lost work
by Felix Mendelssohn.'

(HEIDSIECK, IN FRENCH)

(CLASSICAL MUSIC)

(SINGING THE MELODY)

(LAUGHS)

(CLASSICAL MUSIC CONTINUES)

(MUSIC ENDS)

(IN ENGLISH)
Beautiful work.

I think that, really,
the first movement is perfect.

(FOOTSTEPS)

(DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES)

KANNEH-MASON:
I stretch a lot.

So normally every,
probably, half an hour

I tend to get up
and I just stretch.

Then, I tend to put
my leg on the stool.

I already feel more loose
and relaxed and flexible.

And then, when I sit down
the next bit of practice can start.

'In June, 2022,

the brilliant young pianist,
Isata Kanneh-Mason,

sat down for the first time

with a new edition
of the Easter Sonata,

in preparation for its
world premiere performance.

I was first drawn
to the first movement.

Well, I thought it sounded
very spring like,

which is very fitting
with the title Easter Sonata.

There's lots
of hymn-like stuff in the piece.

I see that it has
four movements and...

it looks like the first
movement's not too difficult

but the ending
might be a bit tricky.

So I'd already be making
a mental note of that.

I'll probably
first do the beginning

just because understanding
the opening phrase,

it sets up the premise
for the whole movement.

(# "Easter Sonata")

So this chord
feels like an arrival,

which means after that
I'd want to have more movement

and fall away from it.
So I would want to go...

You want to have a quiet
singing cantabile sound.

So the weight
doesn't come from...

banging the fingers down more.

It's more
the shoulders and the arms.

They push the weight into the keys

and so that's
how I get more sound.

So I just work through
each phrase like that,

really working out
where the harmony's going

because for me that's
the only way to make sense

of the dialogue of the piece.

(MUSIC ENDS)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(DUCKS QUACKING)

'In 1823, the 16-year-old Fanny

meets and falls in love with
a penniless artist,

Wilhelm Hensel.'

ANNA BEER: I'm looking at a rather
dreamy portrait, of Wilhelm.

Wilhelm was a struggling artist,
11 years older than Fanny.

He made his own paints from plants
because he was so poor.

Not quite the husband that
the Mendelssohns might have thought

for their precocious daughter.

He was packed off, in effect,
to Rome for five years.

It turned out to be five years,

during which time he was not allowed
to write to young Fanny.

So he wasn't allowed
to write words to her

but he could send pictures,
and he did.

Fanny with goodness knows
what on her head,

definitely flowers.
(LAUGHS)

Another cabbage or a hedge.

'Wilhelm eventually
returns with a job

as Court Painter to the King,
which wins over Fanny's family.

But joining the brilliant
Mendelssohn circle is not easy.

BEER: The wheel is a remarkable
image of the Mendelssohn family.

But where is Wilhelm?

He's clinging on to the edge
of the portrait of a wheel

of the Mendelssohn family.

Fanny holding him by a string.

And in the centre is
this remarkable, hunched figure

of the music-playing Felix.

The centre of everything.

And it just encapsulates
how Wilhelm felt.

He's joined this remarkable family,

he's won Fanny but he's not
at the centre of things.

He's clinging on for dear life.

And so, those two men,
Felix and Wilhelm,

will be the compass points,
as it were, of Fanny's life.

And she wants both of them.

She tells Wilhelm
she wants both of them

and he has to accept that.

"You must love him
unconditionally,

with no boundaries or barriers
or fights between us.

Then, I'll be happy
for the rest of my life."

Then, Wilhelm responds to Fanny,

"Then there's no need
to parcel out your affections.

We'll both have all your love

and the three of us
can never be divided."

What a situation for
the poor man to be plunged into.

Here he is,

he's not just marrying Fanny,
he's marrying Felix as well

and he has to love both of them.

And he has to put up with Felix
having half of Fanny's love.

It's a very weird situation
that they find themselves in.

He becomes this kind of cross
between a rock and a cushion

on which she can depend
for the rest of her life.

(HARPSICHORD PLAYING)

'So how's Fanny to express
all these complicated emotions?

In the early 1800s,
her options are limited.

There aren't many musical
instruments she's allowed to play.

Ladies can't put anything
between their legs,

so no cello or double bass.

Anything in their mouths
is too suggestive,

so no flute or clarinet,
or any woodwind or brass.

Basically, the only thing
Fanny's allowed to do

is sit demurely at a keyboard.'

(LOUD TAPPING)

(PIANO MUSIC)

'But when Fanny's still
in her teens,

the keyboard's sound is transformed

by the arrival
of the first modern pianos.

Big beasts
with a sturdy metal frame,

that can express every emotion.'

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)

'And Fanny takes
full advantage of it.'

(MELANCHOLIC PIANO)

LARRY TODD:
When I was studying as a pianist

I always had an affinity
for Felix's music

and I was just
sort of drawn to it.

At that time we hardly knew
anything about Fanny at all.

Just a few of her pieces
were occasionally performed.

Music was absolutely her outlet,
that is her private space

and that's where she can explore

and come up with
these wonderful ideas.

As a composer, it's like a writer,
you write every day.

It's a very lonely,
solitary existence.

It's you, and in the case of music,

it's you and the piano
and the music paper.

But is it going to get out there?

Is it going to have an afterlife?

She didn't expect it would.

'Larry shared his enthusiasm
for Fanny with his students

and gave one of them a hint
that would consume her life

for the next 12 years.'

I was in a graduate seminar at Duke
where I was PhD student,

and my advisor, Larry Todd,

he'd told me before,
as I was exploring Fanny Hensel,

"Oh, there's this work
that we don't know a lot about.

This is lost, this Easter Sonata."

And the hint, I guess, was,

"Wouldn't it be nice
if someone found it?"

So I kind of filed it away.

'Until now, Fanny's had access
to the musical world,

at least indirectly, through
Felix's blossoming career.

But when she's 23 and Felix is 20,

he leaves
for a grand tour of Europe

which will take him
onto the international stage.'

TODD: When he left in 1829
to go to England,

that was the first great separation
between the siblings.

It's as if this trusted companion,

musical companion, who looked
at all of her music and vice versa,

was suddenly gone.

And there's this gaping
absence in her life, and...

which had to be very, very difficult
for her to overcome.

'Angela went to Berlin to find out
all she could about Fanny.

By now, Fanny's diaries had been
made available to scholars.

And one of the first entries
Angela found

was Fanny's account
of Felix's departure.'

OK. This is the diary from 1829.

This was a very emotional
moment for her.

FANNY MENDELSSOHN:
"We got up at 04:00.

I stayed upstairs with Felix
as long as I could

and helped him to dress
and do some last-minute packing.

It was cold.

We watched them as they went
down the street to the East.

Until we could see them no longer."

(RUNNING STEPS)

(DOOR SLAMS)

'But as soon as Felix leaves,
Fanny's writing to him.

Letters so personal

that just reading them
feels like eavesdropping.'

"I've been alone
for two hours at the piano.

I get up, stand in front
of your picture and kiss it.

And you feel
so completely present

that I have to write to you
just to say I'm extremely happy

but love you very much.

Very much."

It seems like Fanny
is really realising now

how much she misses Felix,
how much he meant to her,

how much he was in her life
and how important he was to her.

It's like sending out a sonar,
she wants the echo back.

She wants him to write back saying,

"Yes, yes, it's the same.
I feel the same.

I will always be there for you."

She wants reassurance that
getting married to somebody else

isn't going to change anything

and that somehow she will still
have that incredibly deep

and vital companionship
that she's always had with Felix.

'Felix doesn't write back.'

ANGELA MACE:
At some point in the seminar,

Larry received a recording
of a Sonate de Paques,

Easter Sonata,
from a tiny little French label.

The recording that I had
was a cassette.

We used cassettes in those days.

I put it in the machine
and turned it on and listened to it.

(# "Easter Sonata")

And Larry and I
looked at each other.

And my immediate instinct was...

..this has to be Fanny.

The moment I heard that music

and recognised
Fanny's voice in it,

I wanted to prove
that it was her music.

There was a certain freedom,
a certain spontaneity of form

in this Easter Sonata
that didn't sound like Felix,

a certain heightened
dissonance level.

If I were to compare it
to Felix's music,

I would say Fanny's
plumbs the emotions

in a little more forthright manner.

And also because she was
composing really for herself,

she was able to take risks,
she was able to compose something

simply because
she liked the sound of it.

KANNEH-MASON: So this is
a section of the fourth movement

of the Easter Sonata.

And one of my favourite
moments in the piece.

I love the drama of it
and I've been looking at it

and just seeing how it's going.

And then I'm going to be
honing in on some bits.

It's below
the final tempo that it will be

and it's still a bit
rough round the edges.

This movement is really...

It's a very brave composition.

It's very out there
harmonically and technically.

There is so much going on,
it's very dramatic.

It changes all the time.

You can see such
an emotional release

in this piece and in this music.

I mean, this movement
in particular is full of anger

and it's also full
of excitement and agitation

and all of the kind of less
socially acceptable emotions.

She has this diminished chord
for ages that...

And then, instead of resolving,
she ends on this chord...

So there's an F in the base

and you're not really sure
where it's going harmonically.

It changes each beat.

And it almost seems at the end

like it might go to F major
with the...

but then she changes it again.

And then this feels like, OK,

we're going back
to the home key to A minor.

But she still doesn't,

she still ends
on this new chord,

this new diminished chord.

So it's not until there
that we finally land somewhere

and that was E minor.

(CHURCH BELLS RINGING)

'In October, 1829,
a few months after Felix leaves,

the 23-year-old Fanny
marries Wilhelm

in this church in Berlin.

But she also does something
no woman has done before.

Felix is in London.

He's supposed to have sent
some music for the wedding

but he has an accident

and neither he
nor the music arrived.

So the night before the wedding,
in the middle of the party,

Fanny sits down to compose.'

(CORK POPS)

"At 08:00 the family gathered
for a quiet prenuptial celebration.

Then, at around 09:00,

Hensel suggested
that I write a piece

and I had the nerve
to start composing

in the presence of all the guests."

"I finished at half past midnight,
I don't think it's bad.

I sent it to the organist
this morning

and I hope he'll agree to play it.

It's starting to get very lively
around here now."

I mean, I think it's completely
typical of Fanny

that she does this thing
that no-one had ever done before,

which is writing
her own wedding music.

Particularly not doing it
the night before the wedding,

particularly not doing it
in the middle of the party.

It's Fanny.

It's who she is.

I have performed this
actually myself

and I also had it played
at my wedding.

This is not her handwriting,
by the way.

Why is it not her hand writing?

This would have been
a clean copy made really quickly

so the organist could read it
quickly the next day.

So at some point

between 01:00 o'clock in the morning
and 12:00 o'clock...

And when she got married, yeah,
someone copied it out.

He basically sight read this
for her wedding.

And the cool thing about it then,

is the assembled party
at her wedding

got to hear her music
performed by a man

on the instrument
she wasn't allowed to play.

She wasn't allowed
to learn the organ.

Because?
Because it was unfeminine.

Because?

Because one must spread
their legs to play organ...

That's extraordinary.

..and good women
keep their legs closed.

(ORGAN MUSIC)

'Since then, millions of brides
have walked down the aisle

to Felix's Wedding March.

The one piece of classical music
everybody knows.

But Fanny celebrates
her marriage in her way.'

(ORGAN MUSIC CONTINUES)

(MUSIC ENDS)

(CHOIR SINGING IN GERMAN)

'Fanny and Wilhelm
move into the summerhouse

of her parents' home

with its vast and beautiful garden,

where she'll stay
for the rest of her life.

It's a very happy marriage
and soon Fanny is pregnant.

BEER: Fanny, since the age
of 14 had been told

that her destiny was to be
a wife and then a mother.

And she did fall pregnant.

Trouble began when Fanny,
as she writes in her diary,

she had a bad night.

"On the 24th of May,
I had an accident in the night,

which caused fears of an early birth

and it took all of my courage
and strength to prevent it."

(HEAVY BREATHING)
(HEART POUNDING)

She knew something was seriously
wrong and the decision was

complete bed rest
or else she would lose the baby.

And so, that is what happened.

"In the following three weeks

my beloved Wilhelm
was constantly by my side.

I'll never forget it."

BEER: She goes into labour
on June 14th,

two days of labour,

and finally,
a premature baby boy is born.

(BABY CRYING)

Remarkably and gloriously,

Sebastian, Babsen
as he was called, survives.

But for me, the...

There's also a very clear
psychological toll

of the confinement.

I mean, it is confinement
and it's in its strictest sense.

She's confined to a space,

utterly unable to do
the active things,

the creative things
that make her who she is.

'Like many new mothers,
Fanny is terrified

that she'll never get
her old self back.

She writes to Felix
hoping for reassurance

but that's not
what she gets in return.'

FELIX:
"If you wanted to,

you would already be composing
with all your energies.

And if you don't want to,
why work yourself up about it?

If I were nursing a baby,
I wouldn't want to compose as well.

Seriously, the child
isn't yet six months old

and you already want
to think about other things?"

It's one of those things
that still continues for women

that being a woman is enough.

You know, being a woman,
having children,

you can be creative in the home,

that there's a lot to do
and it can be enough.

But if you add to that

the kind of self-doubt
that every artist has,

nobody is making you spend
hours a day finishing a piece

that you don't even know
where it's going to get performed.

And when the child is crying,

the house needs to be taken care of,

all daily life
can take over very easily.

"The fact that one is reproached
for one's miserable feminine nature

by the Lords of creation
every day

and on every step of one's life,

could send a person into a rage

and rob her of her femininity.

But that, of course,
would make things even worse."

Fanny didn't usually
let her feelings

about her allotted
feminine role in life out.

But when you have a brother
and you see him being given things

that you're not being given yourself
and there's no obvious reason for it

apart from the fact that
he's male and you're female,

I think anybody with half a brain
would be very frustrated.

But she was stuck
in this terrible bind

that the only way to please
her family and to be loved,

which was very important to her,

was to behave in a way that was
completely alien to her nature

and moreover, to suppress
her musical creativity.

And that was a bind
and a struggle and a paradox

that dominated her life.

(WHOOSHING)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)

(# Die Hebriden, Op. 26)

'While Fanny is in Berlin
tied to domestic duties

and barely leaving the house,

Felix is travelling around Britain,

where the beauty
and majesty of nature

inspire some
of his most famous music.'

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

(SEAGULLS SQUAWKING)

(MUSIC SWELLS)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(MUSIC QUIETENS)

(MUSIC SWELLS SUDDENLY)

(MUSIC ENDS)

(METRONOME CLICKING)

'Travelling is also
the only way to hear music.

Fanny's cut off from that too.'

It's easy for us to forget
how much was lost

by not being able to travel,
by not being able to hear

Beethoven's Symphonies
all over the place,

to hear the latest operas.

Fanny really was in a situation.

There are no recordings.

In order to hear music, you have
to either make music yourself

or be in a room
with someone who's making it.

There's no other way.

(DISTANT CHATTER)

'So Fanny decides that if
she can't go to where the music is,

music shall come to her.

And luckily,
her gilded cage is big enough

to accommodate an impressive
series of concerts.'

(GLASSES CLINK)
(PIANO PLAYING)

Fanny started these Sunday
musicals in the family home.

These were elaborate affairs
and Fanny really grew them.

It was really
like running a festival

because she would
hire the musicians,

she would programme large pieces,

she would conduct,
which is really surprising,

and great musicians
came to these concerts.

And most of the reports
that we have from great musicians

about how impressive she was

come from the performances
that they did at their home.

(GRAND FINALE MUSIC)

(CHEERING) (APPLAUSE)

(WHOOSHING)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)

'Fanny's concerts, however grand,
are still held in private

but Felix is out in the world,
meeting the Queen of England.'

(WALTZ MUSIC PLAYING)

TODD:
In the summer of 1842,

Felix was received
at Buckingham Palace

by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Queen Victoria was a singer,
a soprano,

and she wanted to sing
one of Felix's songs.

"While they were talking,
I rummaged about in the music

and soon found
my first set of songs.

And which did she choose?

Italien.

Sang it quite charmingly
in strict time and tune

and with very good execution."

'But the words in the song
are a young girl's dream

of a place she longs to visit.'

# Fort aus der Prosa

# Lasten und Muh'

# Flieg ich zum Lande

# Der Poesie

ALISON LANGER: This song, Italien,
it's split into three verses

so she is describing
her love of Italy

and her longing to go there.

She's talking about
how everything is just richer.

So she says the sky is bluer,
the grass is greener,

the smells are more fragrant,

oranges being
really inviting to pick.

# Blond du, du braun

# Nickt ihr wie zierliche
Grussende Fraun?

# Was glanzt im Laube
Funkelnd wie Gold?

It's in a waltz time,

so you can imagine if you're
really excited about something,

usually you would dance
around the room

and that's how I feel
when I sing this song.

# Warest du dies

# Der unten scherzt
Und murmelt so suss?

# Und dies halb Wiese halb
Ather zu schaun

# Es war des Meeres
Furchtbares Graun?

# Hier will ich wohnen!

The accompaniment
is really like a heartbeat

and at the end
there's a really long note.

She elongates the note

because she wants to have
that final outpouring of emotion.

And I think that really reads
in the final part of the song.

# Die Wogen

# Auch dieser Brust! #

'This is the favourite song

of the most powerful woman
in the world

and she thinks it's by Felix.

After all, it does have
his name on the front.'

TODD:
So here we have two facsimiles

of the title pages of Felix's,

quote-unquote,
Opus Eight and Opus Nine.

And it says 12 songs
with accompaniment of the piano

set into music by in his name,
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,

is given on both pages.

There's no reference
to Fanny at all.

And Italien had been published
under Felix's name

in his Opus Eight and in fact
it was composed by Fanny.

So Felix writes
a humorous letter to Berlin,

where he says that he had
to confess the mistake.

"Then, I was forced to confess
that Fanny had written the song,

which I found very hard
but pride must have a fall,

and to beg her to sing
one of my own as well."

It doesn't look great, does it?

I mean, it doesn't
make him look great.

No, it doesn't.

It makes it look as though
he's practising piracy

stealing her music and so forth.

History is rarely black and white.

It's usually filled
with subtle nuances

and so, it is in this case.

There is a letter
where Felix asks her

basically because he's being
hounded by the publisher

and he says, "If Fanny
could choose some things

either mine or hers
according to her discretion,"

is what he writes,
"that would be a big help."

So I think Fanny's assumption was

that this was a way
of getting her music out

even though her name
was not attached to it.

So the irony of this trip
of Felix to Buckingham Palace

and the confusion about who
had composed these songs

was that, in fact,

their music could easily
be mistaken for each other's.

As an example,

the Easter Sonata
has a scherzo that Fanny writes

and the main theme of it
something like this...

(UPBEAT MELODY)

Now, this is 1828.

If we go fast forward to 1832,
just a few years later,

Felix writes a piece
for piano and orchestra called

the Capriccio Brillante,
Opus 22,

and the second theme

of his capriccio is this...

(PLAYS SIMILAR UPBEAT MELODY)

So again, Fanny's.
(PLAYING MELODY)

It's as if Fanny
got to the idea first.

Felix adapted
and tweaked a little bit,

turned it into a march
for his Capriccio Brillante.

So in this case,
the line of influence

is from Fanny to Felix,
not Felix to Fanny.

There are examples both ways.

KANNEH-MASON:
This is the scherzo,

which is the third movement
of the Easter Sonata.

And I particularly like
this movement

because I think it's also
the most difficult movement.

I think here
Fanny is really showing

what she can do on the piano

and she skips around
the instrument a lot.

And I think to write
a piece of music like this,

with so much light and shade,

shows that she was a very
multi-dimensional woman

and also
a fabulous pianist, obviously.

But it's very complicated music.

I think learning this music
has taught me that about her.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)

MACE: I never expected
to actually find

the Easter Sonata manuscript.

What I was going to do is,
and what I did at first was,

hunt for all of the little details

that hinted at the existence
of this manuscript

throughout letters
and diaries of Fanny,

records from archives
and those kinds of things.

To put together
sort of a negative space

around this lost manuscript.

'As Angela read on,

in Fanny's diary entry
about Felix's departure

she came upon four vital words.'

MACE: Yeah, this is her writing
on the 13th of April.

As she's writing about
'Ostermontag', Easter Monday,

she gives so many details about
that morning three days ago

when she writes it.

So that emotional impact
is definitely really evident.

Right there, she says,

"Ich spielte meine Ostersonate."

"I played my Easter Sonata."

It's very matter of fact,
she just drops it right in there.

Nothing else about it.

'But that's not all Angela found.'

OK.
Thank you.

Here we are.

OK.

Oh, you can see
something was cut out.

So this volume
is quite a thick volume

and it contains pieces

that were really important
to Fanny throughout her life.

Very careful with the corners.

86.

Not sure why it goes
to 87, 88 and then 111.

So we are missing
something right here,

which gave me the clue
to start looking here.

'The volume had had
a complicated history.

But luckily the archive
had kept a detailed record.'

ROLAND SCHMIDT-HENSEL: The Fanny
collection today is in Berlin.

It's mostly based on the collection
of Hugo von Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

In this notebook,

we have a short catalogue
of these 21 volumes,

and here is number six.

There's a Capriccio
and there's Hero und Leander

and there is
Ostersonate fur Klavier,

page 89 to 109.

And we have
another note by a librarian

that this special volume
was ripped from the donation.

It doesn't say why
but it didn't arrive here.

Then, in 1973,

the volume appeared at
an auction house here in Germany

but without these pages,
without the Easter Sonata,

because this was removed.

I knew that pages
89 through 110 were missing

and that any manuscript
I'd be looking for in the future

would hopefully have
89 through 110 on it

to prove that it was the work
missing from this volume.

'The one thing nobody knew

was why the Easter Sonata manuscript
had been removed from the volume.

But Angela realised

that the manuscript
must have been in Paris

when the recording was made.'

MACE: As part of my research
I found out,

the pianist who had recorded
this Easter Sonata,

this Sonate de Paques
for the French label,

was a man named Eric Heidsieck

and I looked him up.

I found out he still lives in Paris.

(PIANO PLAYING)

(VOCALISING)

And was able
to get his contact information

and one of the questions
I had for him was

if he'd ever seen
the manuscript and he said,

"Absolutely, I did
once back in the early 70s."

But he hadn't seen it since then.

So a week or two before
I actually got on the plane

and flew to Paris,

I, as a last ditch effort,
gave him a call

and asked him if he had any idea

if the manuscript owner
would let us see it.

A short time later
he called me back and said,

"Yes, we have
an appointment on Sunday

to go see the manuscript."

# Le-le, la-di-da

# La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

# Dee-ahh, pa-pa-pa, pim

I'd never been to Paris before.

I don't speak French
very well, really, at all.

So I was just following him
as best I could.

(CLASSICAL MUSIC)
(HUM OF TRAFFIC)

MACE: When we arrive
at the building,

we walk into Coudert's office

and it's just masses
of papers and records.

I'm thinking, "Where is
the manuscript in all of this?"

(COUDERT, IN FRENCH)

It's completely chaotic
and he hands me this folder

and I don't know
where to put it down.

Very surreal experience
holding this manuscript in my hands

that A, I never expected to find

and B, no-one had seen
at least a good 40 years.

It was a heart-stopping moment

because I recognised it
as her handwriting.

That would establish that this
really was the Easter Sonata.

(COUDERT, IN FRENCH)

MACE: I wasn't there
to get his opinion

'cause he clearly thought
it was Felix.

Time stretched in weird ways
in that moment.

But I did get a chance
to turn every page over

and there were numbers

on the lower right-hand
corner of the pages.

And the numbers
on the lower right-hand corner

of the manuscript,
89 through 110,

matched the missing pages

in the volume that is now
in the Staatsbibliothek.

'Angela had now seen

both Fanny's handwriting
on the manuscript

and the page numbers matching
the gap in the Berlin volume,

but she had no photos
to prove Fanny's authorship.

And then, it vanished again.'

(WOMAN, IN FRENCH)

(COUDERT, IN FRENCH)

(WOMAN, IN FRENCH)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

'Still barely 30,
Fanny is busy with her concerts,

but she also adores
her son Sebastian

and wants another child.'

(CLOCK TICKING)

BEER:
Fanny fell pregnant again,

and again was confined to bed

for reasons
that we're not entirely sure of

but clearly the situation
was precarious.

It was September.

She stayed in bed
week after week after week.

And then, in November,

there's this stark, painful to read
entry in her diary

where she writes, "I was delivered
of a dead baby girl."

And that for me
is Fanny Hensel's life.

She's expected,
she expects herself

to soak up these experiences,
these traumas, these losses

and keep the brave face going,
stay strong and she did it.

She did that again and again.

We're now moving to a song

from slightly later
in her career as a composer.

And this is called
Abschied, which is Farewell.

Not only has this
never been published

and, as far as I know
or anyone knows,

maybe never sung, maybe never heard.

It shows what I think
is really special

about Fanny's voice as a composer,

which is this extremely
emotional quality to it.

Emotional in the sense that,
as a singer,

and an opera singer especially,

the length of the phrases,
the breadth of the phrases,

actually allows for a sort of
outpouring of a very raw

and very earnest emotion.

Something that actually really
physically comes from within.

(# "Abschied")

# Was ist das Leben?

# Kommen nur und Schwinden

# Ein Wechsel...

The theme, the text of this poem,

"Was ist das Leben?"

"What is life?"

Big philosophical questions.

"Von Nacht und Tagesheller,
Verlust und Schmerz."

"From night and day's brilliance,

pain, sorrow, loss."

She's expressing things

that not only could a woman
not express in public society

but actually no-one in this era
of a conservative Germany

could express this sort
of feeling outside of poetry.

# Durch Traum

# und Wachen hin die Welle

Probably as far as she knew,
she was the only person,

only woman that was sitting down
and being a composer.

That act of writing down,

fulfilling this restricted role

that was laid out by her society
that she could not be.

And yet, she sat down,

she defied,
she was brave, she chose.

Not only did she do it,
but she excelled.

And it makes me think of her
as this really political figure.

Every time she sits down to write

being an act of defiance
or an act of desire.

(ORCHESTRA PLAYING)

'Two centuries on,
still only 5% of the music

in the world's concert halls
is by women,

and the barriers Fanny faced
have been compounded by others.

We all have this sort of dance
around the whole idea of equality

but things aren't equal.

I'm always trying
to undo the injustices.

And so we always have
female composers, Black composers,

people who've been
overlooked and neglected

for no good reason.

And when you come to London,

it's arguably the most
diverse city in the world.

So everywhere you go
it's multinational.

And then the minute
I stepped into my place of work,

everything changed.

I would always be the odd one out.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

When I was beginning to create
the Chineke! orchestra,

the more I spoke to people,
I heard people saying,

"But you'll never
be able to do it, Chi-chi,

because it's not really
your sort of music, is it?

It's not really
Black people's music

and the Black people who
do play classical instruments,

they're not very good at it."

I just heard this from a few people
and I just thought,

"You know what?
I'm going to look anyway."

What was really clear
and extraordinary,

which I will never forget,

is the first moment
of coming into a rehearsal room

with all these people of
different nationalities and colours

just carrying a flute
or a violin or a bassoon

as though
it's the most normal thing.

I think it's probably the first time
in all of our lives

that the only thing we had
to think about was the music,

nothing else.

Everyone belongs,
which is a basic human need.

'Realising that Fanny's
childbearing days are probably over,

her mother Lea,
herself a gifted musician,

understands her daughter needs
something else to live for.

And it finally changes her mind
about Fanny's longing

to be a published musician.

Lea writes to Felix,

but she can't share
her reasons with a man,

even her own son.

"Now, permit me to pose
a question and a request.

Shouldn't Fanny publish
a selection of her songs

and piano pieces?

The only thing holding her back

is that you haven't suggested it
or encouraged her to do so.

Wouldn't it be reasonable
for you to cheer her on

and help her find a publisher?"

BEER: She handles him very,
very carefully with kid gloves.

She flatters him.
She massages his ego.

But she's sending
a very important message,

"Your sister is in trouble.
Your sister is struggling.

Please, could you support her now?"

'Felix replies to Lea

but specifies she's not
to show the letter to Fanny.'

"I can't encourage her to publish

since it's against my principles
but also my views.

People should only publish
if they commit to it for life.

That means a stream of works
one after the other.

To send out just one or two
is, in effect,

a vanity project for friends.

A horrible idea.

Fanny has neither
the drive nor the vocation

for professional authorship,

because she's too much
a proper wife as she should be."

I mean, this is just completely mad
and completely unfathomable

and probably
the single greatest mystery

in their entire relationship.

This is the man who spent
the first 20 years of his life

side by side with her.

This is the man who knows

that she has been writing
up until this point,

probably 300 pieces of music.

He says he doesn't think
she's serious.

A completely beggars' belief.

I have no idea
what was going through his mind

and I don't think I ever will.

'Fortunately,
the other man in her life

understands Fanny better.'

Wilhelm is an unsung hero
of the 19th century

because he was that rare beast.

A husband, an artist
in his own right,

who supported 100% his artist wife,
Fanny Hensel.

What he gave Fanny Hensel

is permission to continue composing.

And then, year after year,
the encouragement to take her music

out into the wider world against
every single wish of her family.

Wilhelm had enough confidence
in his wife.

Her music was good enough
and she was strong enough.

(# "Italien")

# Schoner und schoner
Schmuckt sich der Plan

'All her life, Fanny
has longed to go to Italy,

dreamed and written songs about it

but she's never managed
to get there.'

# Flieg ich zum Lande
Der Poesie

'Finally, in 1839,
Wilhelm takes her there

and it blows her mind.'

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

# Dort an dem Maishalm
Schwellend von Saft

# Straubt sich der Aloe

# Storrische Kraft

ROTHENBERG: Her happiest time
was perhaps the year

that she spent in Italy

and I think we all
still feel like that.

Everyone wants to go to Italy

and it's a place where just
the joy in life is so important.

And I think it's tremendously
liberating for Fanny, this trip.

(CRICKETS CHIRPING)

"The stars above
and the lights of the city below,

the glow worms
and a long trailing meteor

which shot across the sky,

all combined to stir
the deepest emotion in us.

All these experiences
have made me younger, not older.

Even as a child I was never praised
as I have been here

and that it's pretty enjoyable,
nobody can deny."

She brings with her not just
her tremendous pianistic abilities,

but her knowledge of German music,
of Bach, of Beethoven.

She performs five, six
enormous Beethoven sonatas

in one afternoon for the group
of musicians there.

She's also being appreciated

as a remarkable musician
in her own right.

And she returns to Germany

knowing much more
who she is as a musician.

(PIANO MUSIC)

'Back home in chilly grey Berlin,

Fanny cheers herself up
by composing a song cycle

she calls Das Jahr, The Year.

Over an hour of music,
which Wilhelm illustrates

with beautiful vignettes
of their trip.'

This is extraordinary
with these images.

Yes.

I love this opening, like a dream.

You can see the references to Italy
that go throughout it.

So even though it is composed
a year after Italy,

the experience of Italy
certainly stays.

So it seems like this meant
a lot to both of them.

It's a big piano cycle
in 12 movements,

there's one
for each month of the year.

The first movement, January,

also has the subtitle The Dream

and it really works
as a kind of overture.

And what I think is so
remarkable is from the start,

you can tell that this is
the beginning of a big story.

(# "Das Jahr")

ROTHENBERG: There's something
so incredibly romantic

and daring about Das Jahr.

She doesn't perform
Das Jahr for anyone

and I don't know whether she thought
it was too out there,

too wild.

It's hard to say.

She ends the first movement
on a big heroic note

and gives you a sense
of the kind of virtuosity

that's going to come afterwards.

"Now I'm engaged
in another small work

that's giving me much fun.
Namely a series of 12 piano pieces

meant to depict
the months of the year.

I'll make clean copies

and they'll be ornamented
with vignettes

for the pleasure of others."

This is the only time
she mentions Das Jahr,

which is an unarguable masterpiece.

And she just basically throws out
this little remark about,

"I'm doing this little thing
and it's going to be a lot of fun."

And I think
it's something about Fanny

that I think
is incredibly important,

incredibly familiar
and completely infuriating,

which is that she cannot
take herself seriously,

at least in public,
as a creative artist.

In private, when she's working,

obviously she puts
everything into it.

But as soon as
she's with other people,

she wants to defang
her formidableness.

She wants to defang and minimise
the power and the force

of her creativity and her energy
and her brilliance,

because somehow that might be
threatening to people

or it might be alarming

or it might be,
God forbid, unfeminine.

And yet, at some level,
just like Fanny,

I think any woman
who is seriously aspiring

to be a creative artist

takes it very, very seriously
when they're at work.

(GENTLE STRINGS)

'Not long after Fanny
returns from Italy,

her mother Lea dies.

Her father had died
seven years earlier.

Fanny, not yet 40,
wonders if she'll be next.'

BEER: In one of the letters
from this time,

she's sorting through
her mother's papers

and a mother who had come
around to support her desire

to publish her work, her music.

And she says, "Who will remember me
when I am forgotten?"

I think that's one of the things
that pushed her

into getting this public identity,

to getting her music out there.
"Who will remember me?

Not just remember me as a wife
and a mother but as a composer?"

But in that same letter she writes,

"I hope I have a bit more time."

(# "Notturno in G minor")

TODD: I have here a facsimile of
Fanny's autograph of the Notturno.

And what's remarkable about this

is that she actually notated
a specific instruction

telling the pianist how to use
the pedal in the Notturno.

One wonders,
"Why did she write it down?

Who was going to be playing
this music

if it weren't herself?"

So that to me tells me
that she was a composer

who wanted her music
to be heard and understood.

So it's like
an instruction to a pianist

who someday would play this piece.

'By now,

Fanny doesn't have
to go looking for a publisher.

After the success of her concerts,

publishers are coming to her
begging for her works.

Finally, she makes up her mind
to defy Felix and accept.

SCHMIDT-HENSEL: This is
the diary from 1840 onwards

which she wrote.

I would try to find
the page from 1846.

It should be there.

MACE: I'm also looking
at the way she wrote it.

The importance of these words
jumps off the page.

So what's she saying here?

She's saying that she has decided
to accept the offers

of some Berlin publishers

who have been
approaching her for a while

asking her to publish.

So a huge moment.
Huge moment.

(SOFT PIANO MUSIC)

CITRON: "I wouldn't expect you
to read this rubbish now,

busy as you are,

if I didn't have
to tell you something.

But since I know from the start
that you won't like it,

it's a bit awkward to get underway.

So, laugh at me or not
as you wish,

I'm afraid of my brother at age 40

as I was of Father at age 14.

I thus feel rather..."

there she wrote that
in English, "uncomfortable."

"In a word,
I'm beginning to publish."

And then she goes on to say,
and this is really interesting,

that if things go well
with the publishing

that everyone
in the family should know

that she was not looking
for professional fame.

It's amazing, really.

It's an apology to say,

"Don't worry, I didn't cause this.
I just want you to know that."

So it says a lot
about the role of a woman,

an educated, talented woman,
that this seemed improper.

BEER: She's 40
and she acknowledges

she's as nervous
standing up to Felix

as she was when she was 14

and she didn't stand up
to her father, Abraham.

And that tension
between the girl of 14

and the woman of 40,
the journey she's been on there,

and finally, she's ready
to step up and say,

"This is important to me.
I'm standing up to you."

She's on her way
Felix or no Felix.

(# "Das Jahr, August")

'Having made up her mind to publish,
the floodgates open for Fanny.

She writes 51 works in a year.

She begins by publishing songs,
as this is where the market is.

She writes in her diary,
"I feel newly-born."'

(UPBEAT PIANO MUSIC)

And here we have
a facsimile of the title page

of the first edition
of her Opus One,

which are six songs for a voice
with the accompaniment of the piano.

Her name, Fanny Hensel,

but then there is this 'geboren'
of Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

But at least there is her name

and it is in bigger print
than Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

She is emerging
as a published composer.

This must have been extraordinary
for her to see this.

'The Easter Sonata manuscript
had been auctioned,

but nobody knew where it was.

Angela had almost lost hope of
ever proving Fanny's authorship.

Then, years later, in 2021,

she got a call
from Rochester, New York.'

LEHMAN: Well, I used to do
a lot of painting.

So I'm painting away to
Percy Faith and his orchestra.

(# Serenade For Strings
in C Major, Op. 48)

Wow.

What is THAT?

Holy crap!

I've never heard anything like it.

On came a piece
of classical music.

I was about 15, I guess.

I'd lived that long

without ever hearing a note
of classical music.

It turned out to be Tchaikovsky.

I can't remember what piece.

So I started to listen
to classical music

and I discovered that composers
put a great deal more on paper

than notes.

And so, for over 50 years now,

I've collected music manuscripts.

I would peruse the sales rooms

three or four times a year,

so I looked
at the Drouot auction site

and here was this Mendelssohn thing.

What the heck is that?

So to make a long story short,
I bought the manuscript.

And the rest of the story is,

my dear wife, Marie, went to work.

'Robin's wife Marie
is a musicologist.

And she'd spent eight years

working on the manuscript
in their home.

Comparing every detail
to Fanny's other works,

to prepare a definitive edition,
for publication in Fanny's name.

Finally, Angela has a chance
to see the manuscript properly

and prove to the world
that it's Fanny's work.'

MARIE ROLF: Here she is.
It's a special day for Fanny Hensel.

Yes it is.

May I have a look?
Yeah.

On the other side
you may see a package

from the people who...
The auction house.

Yeah, who sold it.

And then,

we have the mylar cover

and a bunch of acid free paper
to protect it and there she is.

(INHALES SHARPLY)
Wow.

(BOTH LAUGH)

When I saw this
for the first time in 2010,

I had just
45 minutes to look at it,

so a very short amount of time.

I knew I had to go in
with four really specific questions

to prove what I believed was true.

And the first one was,
does it have a title?

And yes, it does,
"Ostersonate" right there.

Another thing I was looking at

was where she writes
in the top corner

the dates of when she started
and finished movements.

That was an absolute joy to find

because I didn't know
I was going to find that.

I love that she gave us those clues.

Felix didn't do that kind of thing.

At the very end she writes...

I don't wanna...
I'll be very careful with it.

The 10th of May, 1828,
'abends', evening, half to ten.

So she is at home,

she tended to write and play
in the company of other people,

just like we saw
in that diary entry from 1829.

She gives this huge list
of what they did,

who they saw,
the baptism they went to,

who came over for lunch,
who came over for dinner,

who stayed for a while.

And then she writes at the very end,

"I played my Easter Sonata."

"I played MY Easter Sonata."
Yes.

And then,

I wanted to look at the bottom
right-hand corner of the pages

because that was one of the biggest
clues in the records.

And there's my number, 89.

ROLF:
Yes, until 110.

That's right, oh, my goodness.

So when I saw that, I really knew.
It just hit me like a ton of bricks.

This is the missing manuscript.

This is the Easter Sonata
that we're looking for.

(PIANO TUNNING)

'In October, 2022,

Isata was preparing to perform
Marie's brand-new edition

of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's
Easter Sonata.'

Here we are.
KANNEH-MASON: Yes.

194 years after Fanny wrote this.

Yes, we are.

And 14 years since Angela
started looking for it.

Yes.

And eight years since Marie
started working on it.

And how many months
have you been working on it?

Yes.
And here we are.

Yes, yeah.

It's been such a journey
in so many ways.

I feel very excited, a bit nervous,

but those two things
go hand in hand.

And I can feel the weight of all
that's gone into this piece

in terms of composing it

and then rediscovering it
and working on it.

I'm just so excited
to finally be performing it

in front of a live audience
as well.

I just wonder whether you ever
think about what you want to do

or be in your life
in the longer term,

or are you just young enough

that you are just focused
on what is happening now?

I think I feel a sense of panic
a lot of the time

because I know
very much what I enjoy.

I know I enjoy performing,
I know I enjoy composing.

I know that I care a lot
about the people in my life.

And, strangely, I tend to worry
about death quite a lot

maybe since I was about 20,

I've often felt
that life was really short

and that anyone
could die at any point.

'Cause often I feel very stressed

that there's so many things
I want to do in my life

and there's not really enough time.

(STOPS PLAYING)

(SOFT CLASSICAL MUSIC)

'In May, 1847,

Fanny is rehearsing
her choir for a performance,

when her arms go numb.

This has happened to her before,
so she's not too worried.

But this time,
it doesn't go away.'

TODD:
She suddenly felt faint

and she had to leave the rehearsal

and she told them to continue
rehearsing, which they did.

She listened to it
from an adjacent room

and felt progressively more
and more ill and died that night.

She has a stroke, like her mother
did just a few years earlier,

and she's 41.

And Wilhelm is devastated,

I mean, broken, broken by this.

He does what he does
at these moments,

he can't speak but he can
pick up his pen and he can draw.

And he sketches his beloved wife
in peace, in death.

It is such a beautiful portrait.

But there's such love in that
and such grief.

# Finsternisse...

'In this final portrait,

Wilhelm gives Fanny
a laurel wreath,

symbol of the artist triumphant.'

# Herz hinein #

(MUSIC ENDS)

Felix at the time was in Frankfurt

and he received
the news a few days later.

And when he received the news

he shrieked
and collapsed to the floor.

For a while
he couldn't compose a note.

He writes to Wilhelm to say,

"If my writing
causes you to shed tears,

put away the writing, we have
nothing to do but shed tears."

(# String Quartet No. 6,
In F Minor, Op. 80)

"We have nothing left now
but to weep.

We've been so happy together

but a sadder life is beginning now.

You made her happy always.

I thank you for it.

But with bitter pangs of regret

that I did not do more myself
for her happiness,

did not see her oftener.

This is a changed world
for us all now

but we must try to get
used to the change.

Though by the time
we've got used to it,

our lives may be over, too."

(CHOIR SINGING IN GERMAN)

'Less than six months later,
Felix too is dead.

When he missed
Fanny's last birthday,

he promised,
"Next year we'll be together."

He keeps his word.'

(CHOIR SINGING IN GERMAN)

LEHMAN: People, when they own
manuscripts, they think,

"Well, if somebody lays eyes on it
now, it's less valuable."

And I've always
found that quite odd.

I think it's the opposite.

The manuscripts are too important

for me to keep in a drawer.

And 50 years ago
I went to the Morgan Library

and put all these things on deposit

and they've been there ever since.

(GENTLE PIANO)

'The critical edition
of the Easter Sonata

has finally restored Fanny
to her rightful place

among the musical greats.

Meanwhile, the manuscript joined
Bach, Beethoven,

and her brother

in the world's biggest
private manuscript collection,

in the Morgan Library in New York.'

ROBINSON McCLELLAN:
Very excited to have

this Fanny Mendelssohn manuscript

revealing for the first time
here at the Morgan Library.

And it's always fun
unpacking these new arrivals.

Let's see here.

It's so beautiful.
1828.

I love seeing these manuscripts.

The careful pen strokes
and of course corrections,

when you see
the wonderful paste overs

where they made a mistake
and corrected it.

It's wonderful to have
this manuscript here.

We're going to be sharing it
with everyone that we can.

We're very proud
that Fanny's manuscript joins

an august and full collection

and really takes its place
among all these treasures.

We are very happy.

(PIANO MUSIC)

(SUSTAINED CHORD)

(MUSIC ENDS)

(DISTANT CHATTER)

PARKER-LANGSTON: There's a beautiful
term in landscape gardening,

'desire line',
which is when people deviate from...

the prescribed path

and their footsteps
start to forge a new path

that other people can follow
that begins really faintly.

But then, as people walk it
time and time again,

it becomes more and more
well-established

and then people have a choice.

And she's one of the first
footsteps on this path

for a woman in music
to be a composer,

or a serious composer,

that she not only broke
that ground during her life

but has continued to inspire
people to do ever since.

(APPLAUSE)

(PLAYING FASTER)

TODD: Just that she could produce
nearly 500 compositions

in just a few short decades
against the various odds

that she had to contend with.

And, when you play it and listen
to it and come to know it,

you know that it is
authentic genuine music,

and that's the best
that music can be.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

'My great-great-great grandmother

would probably be amazed
and delighted

that the labour of so many people
has brought her music back to life.

And she's just one
of countless women

whose stories and creative works
have been overlooked

in the established histories.

I still can't quite believe

that she managed to write
so much astonishing music

in so few years
and against such odds.

But now that Fanny's
back in the world,

her example is there to inspire
and encourage others.'

(# "Easter Sonata")

(GENTLE MELODY)

(SUSTAINED CHORD)

(APPLAUSE)

(APPLAUSE FADES OUT)

(# String Quartet In E Flat Major,
H-U 277: IV. Allegro Molto Vivace)

(MUSIC FADES TO SILENCE)

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