A Stranger in the Musical Interior of Romanticism: Fanny Cecilia Mendelssohn-Hensel

The purpose of the article is an attempt to draw the attention of domestic researchers and performers to the life and work of the German composer, the older sister of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a significant figure in the musical life of Germany in the first half of the 19th century — Fanny Cecilia Mendelssohn-Hensel, who belongs to the unexplored figures in Ukrainian musicology; to outline the principles of her work as a performer and composer; to determine the genre and stylistic direction of her creative work. The article demonstrates the relevance of the analysis of her heritage, the relationship between the events of her life, and the main areas of her activity as a pianist, composer, and educator is established. Methods. The author of the article applies a system analysis that combines the following methods: analytical (reproduction of the overall picture of the life and work of F. Mendelssohn-Hensel on the basis of an objective analysis of the found sources in German and English, information from explanatory notes to music collections, Internet resources and the author’s own article), cultural (in order to identify the conditions that provided for the formation of the creative work of F. Mendelssohn-Hensel as a composer), axiological (to determine the artistic and performing value of her works), and observational (own pedagogical analysis and experiment: the management of the creative project “Little-known women-composers” since 2011, in the context of which there is the introduction into the educational process of students and masters of the concertmaster class, the Department of Solo and Chamber Singing, the Department of Chamber Ensemble of the Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy, the Department of Music of the Jan Dlugosz University (course “Warsztaty Artystyczne”, Poland, Czestochowa) of the composer’s works and their performance on the concert stage. Results. Based on the analysis of the life and work of the little-known German composer of the Romantic era F. Mendelssohn-Hensel, there are prospects for new research of women’s compositional creative work of the past in the context of the then aesthetic values and further reflection on its internal content essence. Scientific novelty. The article is the first experience of a special analysis of the biography of a little-known German composer and performer in Ukrainian musicology, which fills an existing gap in the history of domestic research and performance, and expands the worldview of students and performers, enriches their educational repertoire and concert programmes.