Fanny mendelssohn songs without words
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19b) in 1832, it was quickly embraced by both amateur and professional musicians. 19b (1832) – Includes the famous “Sweet Remembrance” (No. Pedaling
Use half-pedaling or flutter pedaling for resonance without blurring.
Change pedal with harmonies, not just bar lines.
Avoid over-pedaling; clarity is essential.
5. But they were not only admired by the middle classes.
Influence on Later Composers
Many composers wrote direct imitations or homages to Mendelssohn’s idea of “songs without words,” either in title or spirit:
Fauré: Romances sans paroles (Op. He is well-known for both his numerous editions of the composer’s works and an extensive monograph.
Matthias Kirschnereit has made a name as a pianist in recent years through his interpretations of Mozart, and particularly for his magnificent recording of Mendelssohn.
Subjects
Music/Composers/Piano Music/Romantic Music/Lieder ohne Worte/Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy/Todd, R.
Larry (NHC Fellow, 2007–08), ed.Lieder ohne Worte = Songs without Words. These works, like Mendelssohn’s, often consist of lyrical, short piano character pieces, and many were composed for domestic or salon performance, balancing expressiveness with accessibility.
🎹 Similar Compositional Concepts:
1.
Their rhythmic swaying and modal harmony suggest the gentle motion of a gondola on water—possibly inspired by Mendelssohn’s time in Venice.
🎤 8. Charles-Valentin Alkan – Esquisses, Op. 63 (1861)
49 piano miniatures, some only a few bars long.
Inventive and intimate, continuing the salon style into deeper musical waters.
🏛️ Other Romantic Miniature Collections:
Stephen Heller – 25 Études mélodiques, Op.
45
Theodor Kullak – Scenes from Childhood
Anton Rubinstein – Romances sans paroles, Op. 3 (directly inspired by Mendelssohn’s title)
Moritz Moszkowski – Moment musicaux, 16 Lyric Pieces, etc.
🪕 Folk-Influenced and National Style Successors:
Dvořák – Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85
Janáček – On an Overgrown Path (more modern, but spiritually linked)
📚 Summary:
Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte helped establish a genre: the Romantic piano miniature that sings like a Lied but needs no words.
These pieces quickly gained popularity for their charm, clarity, and accessibility. In one famous 1842 visit to Buckingham Palace, the Queen sang one of Mendelssohn’s own songs to him, believing it was by another composer. Although they are not conceived as a unified “suite” in the classical sense, the works are grouped into six-piece collections and share stylistic unity.
Here’s a breakdown of the key musical characteristics of the entire cycle:
🎵 1.
Some have noted that Ludwig Berger, one of Mendelssohn’s teachers, wrote etudes that bear some similarities to the Songs without Words.
Defining the Character Piece
Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte became a prototype for the Romantic character piece—short, expressive works that depict a mood, idea, or scene. Apart from a few that gained descriptive nicknames later—such as the famous “Spring Song” (Op. 62 (1844) – Contains the popular “Spring Song” (No. Pedagogical Influence
These pieces became standard repertoire for piano students, teaching:
Legato and cantabile tone
Voicing and phrasing
Expressive rubato
Dynamic nuance and pedal control
Later pedagogues such as Carl Czerny, Theodor Leschetizky, and even 20th-century teachers like Heinrich Neuhaus recommended them for shaping musical sensitivity, not just technique.
🎨 4.
Increasingly they came to be heard in the concert hall. Mendelssohn himself used the term occasionally, but not systematically. We are not so bothered if a title is not literally programmatic. They too seem so ambiguous, so vague, so subject to misunderstanding when compared with true music, which fills the soul with a thousand better things than words.’
Mendelssohn had studied Schubert’s songs and admired them, but as he wrote in a letter in 1831, he was not in the same mindset as Schubert when it came to setting songs ‘Now to me, it seems completely impossible to set a descriptive poem to music.’ What could be better then, than to write a poetic, song-like piece without struggling with text at all?
Pianist Leon McCawley plays Song Without Words Op 19 No 2
The idea of these wordless songs seems to have unsettled Mendelssohn’s contemporaries.