• Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    Liza Lehmann & Radclyffe Hall

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    In this episode of The Eternal Feminine Podcast Series, we discuss two women: English composer Liza Lehmann (1862-1918) and English poet Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943). Both women lived during the turn of the 19th century; Lehmann was the daughter of famed portrait painter Rudolph Lehmann and his wife Amelia, a singer, composer, and amateur artist. Liza Lehmann enjoyed a successful, if not short career as a concert singer, gaining the admiration of audiences at home and abroad. She began composing after her marriage to Herbert Bedford, an equally talented composer, writer, and inventor. Radclyffe Hall was a novelist and poet, best known for her novel The Well of Loneliness, which sought to raise awareness and understanding of lesbianism in society at large. Her first partner, Mabel Batten, was a well-known amateur singer and composer and it is likely due to this connection that Lehmann knew Radclyffe Hall and came to set her poetry.

    Listen to the full podcast to hear our discussion of these two remarkable women and our recording of the piece “The Silver Rose.”

    Read more about Liza Lehmann and Radclyffe Hall in “A Whole Lotta Lehmann” and “Trial by Tabloid”.

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    Clara Schumann

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    In this episode of The Eternal Feminine Podcast Series, we discuss Clara Schumann (née Wieck) (1819-1896). Clara was born into a musical household and her father, pianist and teacher Friedrich Wieck, was determined that Clara should be a musical star from an early age. She soon won the hearts of the public, both in her native Germany and abroad, and relished her elevated status as a celebrated musician. Her marriage to the composer Robert Schumann in 1840 marked a change in her own compositional output, probably because she was the primary breadwinner of the family; Clara still gave concert tours despite having 8 children to raise and an increasingly ill husband. A fiercely determined woman, she continued touring and teaching until shortly before her death in 1896.

    Listen to the full podcast to hear our discussion of this amazing woman and our recording of Schumann’s tender Liebst du um Schönheit.

    Read more about “The Queen of the Piano.”

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    “The Queen of the Piano”

    Clara Schumann was an incredibly talented musician, shrewd businesswoman, and all-around force of nature.

    As a child, her father had her copy out [often-disparaging] letters that he had written to concert-arrangers and patrons (under the guise of “improving her handwriting”), so from a young age, she gained a rare insight into the business side of music. Her father, Friedrich Wieck, also instilled in her an often-paranoid outlook on the world. Wieck saw “plots and cabals” all around, threatening to ruin his hard work and investment in Clara’s success. This attitude, combined with a determination to succeed, is possibly responsible for the single-mindedness with which she approached concert touring and her general status as a professional musician. She often viewed other up-and-coming musicians as rivals, even when she was older and had established herself as the European “Queen of the Piano.”

    Her ability to garner audiences [read: money] made her somewhat blind to the sensitivity of her husband Robert Schumann and her dogged pursuit of income was often a source of strain in their relationship. Yet Clara viewed this as her one asset with which she could support her large family, and, always the practical one, continued to accept concert engagements no matter her physical or emotional state. She played through injury on more than one occasion (noting with surprise that the audience didn’t seem to notice any change in her playing or demeanor) and seems to have been a kind of Romantic super-woman in that sense.

    Clara’s determination (not to mention, physical strength) was famously apparent when the Schumann family was forced to flee the city in the wake of the May Uprising in Dresden. Reportedly, a civil war-like atmosphere had descended, with insurgents barricading many parts of the city. Clara, Robert, and their eldest child Marie fled the city unnoticed to a haven some 20 kilometers away. But several other children had remained behind with a wet-nurse. So two days later, Clara (then 7 months pregnant) walked back through the city, faced down the insurgents, gathered up children and nurse, and walked back out! It is also said that from the time she was five, Clara enjoyed daily walks, sometimes several hours at a time (her father didn’t change his habits just because she was a child). And considering her longevity, it’s hard to say that those walks were inconsequential.

    Clara’s business sense was also apparent in her first teaching post at Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium – Musikakademie in 1878. Not only was she the only female faculty member, but she garnered a position that was unprecedented for its time: Clara taught a maximum of 1.5 hours per day, could teach from home if she chose, and also had four months off for vacation and touring. She also demanded two teaching assistants (and who could do the job better than her two daughters!) and only taught the advanced pupils. Clara’s name and reputation helped to elevate the status of the school and brought international students, including such noted pianists as Natalia Janotha (Poland), Fanny Davies (England), Carl Friedberg (Germany), and Ilona Eibenschütz (Hungary). Even modern faculty members would be hard-pressed to find such a position!

    Though some might say that Clara’s determination may have caused some feelings of inadequacy on her husband’s part (and possible marital tension), there’s no debating that she was a woman without precedent. Clara Schumann enjoyed a 61-year career as a concert pianist in a male-dominated time: a feat befitting the “Queen of the Piano!”

    Daniella Theresia
    -September 2020

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  • Eternal Feminine Series - Featured Work

    Schumann – Featured Work

    Liebst du um Schönheit

    text: Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866)
    translation: Daniella Theresia

    Liebst du um Schönheit,
    O nicht mich liebe!
    Liebe die Sonne,
    Sie trägt ein gold’nes Haar!
    If you love for beauty,
    Oh do not love me!
    Love the sun,
    She has golden hair!
    Liebst du um Jugend,
    O nicht mich liebe!
    Liebe den Frühling,
    Der jung ist jedes Jahr!
    If you love for youth,
    Oh do not love me!
    Love the Springtime,
    That is young every year!
    Liebst du um Schätze,
    O nicht mich liebe!
    Liebe die Meerfrau,
    Sie* hat viel Perlen klar!
    If you love for wealth,
    Oh do not love me!
    Love the mermaid,
    She has many clear pearls!
    Liebst du um Liebe,
    O ja, mich liebe!
    Liebe mich immer,
    Dich lieb’ ich immerdar!
    If you love for love,
    Oh yes, love me!
    Love me forever,
    I will love you forevermore!

    *Rückert originally wrote “Die,” meaning “Who.”

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    Fanny Hensel

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    In this episode of The Eternal Feminine Podcast Series, we discuss Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn, later Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) (1805-1847). Born into a prominent German Jewish family, Fanny showed promising musical talent from an early age, but was prevented from pursuing a musical career by social conventions of the time, as well as the strict opinions of her father and brother (the composer Felix Mendelssohn). She contented herself with being a “critical eye” to her brother’s works (with whom she shared a close relationship), and eventually married Wilhelm Hensel, a painter, who, happily, encouraged her in her musical pursuits. Fanny Hensel composed over 400 musical works during her short lifetime ranging from vocal and piano works to chamber works and cantatas.

    Listen to the full podcast to hear our discussion of this amazing woman and our recording of Hensel’s beautiful piece Sehnsucht nach Italien.

    To learn more about Hensel’s fascinating roots and legacy, read our article “What’s in a name?”

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    “What’s in a name?”

    Both Fanny Hensel’s origins and her legacy are impressive, to say the least. Her paternal grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was a famous philosopher and literary critic. Moses came from humble beginnings, but soon became well-known and respected in both Jewish and German society. He was an advocate for Jewish emancipation from discriminatory laws in Germany and is credited as one of the forces behind the “Jewish Enlightenment” (HaSkalah) in the late 18th century that ultimately worked to assimilate Jews into European society.

    Moses’ son, Abraham, took this assimilation as far as he could: he converted to Protestantism and added a Germanic surname to try and distance himself from his father (and Judaism). His wife, Lea Mendelssohn (née Solomon), descended from the equally influential Itzig family. Lea’s grandfather, Daniel Itzig, was a banker for two kings of then-Prussia and as such, enjoyed a level of freedom and affluence which was rare among Jews at that time. Like Moses Mendelssohn, Itzig also worked to improve the state of the Jewish people and actually funded members of HaSkalah (including Moses’ teacher, Rabbi Israel of Zamosch).

    Many of Daniel Itzig’s thirteen children were influential in German society, particularly in their roles as patrons of the arts – two of his daughters were patrons of Mozart, while his daughter Sarah (Itzig) Levy studied with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and also had connections with Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. Sarah left a collection of Bach manuscripts to the Sing-Akademie of Berlin, which her niece Lea would later join, as well as her grand-nephew Felix Mendelssohn and grand-niece Fanny Hensel (the heroine of our story…you may have been wondering when we’d get back to her).

    Fanny married the painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829 (whose portrait of her is featured on this page). Thankfully, Wilhelm did not share the Mendelssohn men’s insistence that Fanny give up music for housework and actually made it part of her daily tasks to sit at the piano every morning. Ironically, they only had one child who survived to adulthood: Sebastian Ludwig Felix Hensel. Sebastian’s numerous children included Paul Hugo Wilhelm Hensel and Kurt Wilhelm Sebastian, who each made important contributions to the sciences in philosophy and mathematics.

    Given her extraordinary lineage and musical connections, one can’t help but wonder what Hensel might have accomplished if she hadn’t been born a girl. During her youth, Hensel received precisely the same education, musical and otherwise, as her brother Felix, yet society demanded that her sole profession must be a wife and mother. Yet, even with these restrictions, she still produced an astounding amount of music for such a short lifetime. Hensel wrote over 400 works in a wide variety of genres including Lieder, piano works, chamber music, and cantatas. She was one of the first women to compose a string quartet and she even composed the organ recessional for her own wedding in the span of just hours when her brother could not due to an injury.

    From 1831 until her death, Hensel composed, arranged, and directed the music for her weekly salons, whose success did much to raise Berlin’s status as a musical hub. Through these salons and her travels, Hensel enjoyed acquaintances with many prominent musicians like Gounod, Vieuxtemps, Clara Schumann, and the critic Robert von Keudell, whom she consulted for musical advice when her brother Felix became more engrossed in his work. In fact, Hensel’s son credited von Keudell as being instrumental in her finally publishing a few of her compositions (under her married name) just before her death. In her dedication to the field and her musical sensitivity as a composer, it seems that Hensel was a professional musician in all but name.

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series,  Eternal Feminine Series - Featured Work

    Hensel – Featured Work

    Sehnsucht nach Italien

    text: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    translation: Daniella Theresia

    Kennst du das Land?
    Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen blühn,
    Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn.
    Do you know the land?
    Do you know the land where the lemon-trees bloom,
    In the dark leaves, golden-oranges glow.
    Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
    Der Lorbeer hoch und still die Myrte steht.*
    A gentle wind wafts from the blue sky,
    The laurel tree stands tall, and the myrtle, still.
    Kennst du es wohl?
    Dahin!
    Dahin möcht’ ich mit dir,
    o mein Geliebter, ziehn.

    Do you know it well?
    There!
    I would like to go there with you,
    o my beloved.

     

    *the original poem reads “Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht.

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    “There’s Something About Alma”

    Alma Mahler-Werfel has always been a bit of a legend, certainly in her capacity as muse and wife (or lover) to an impressive assortment of cultural luminaries. Her elevated status is hardly surprising, considering that her husbands included composer Gustav Mahler, the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, and the writer Franz Werfel, not to mention the other flings, of varying seriousness, with composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and the painters Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka.

    A good part of her mystique, of course, tends to revolve around the question of how she managed to exert such a pull over all these men, all brilliant but each so different in his own way. As Tom Lehrer famously marveled in his song “Alma”, written shortly after her death:

    Though you didn’t even use Ponds,
    You got Gustav and Walter and Franz.

    And yet she was very far from being perfect – quite the contrary, as it happens! She was extremely self-absorbed to begin with, but, more unforgivably, her anti-Semitic remarks – about Mahler, Zemlinsky, Werfel and others – as recorded in her diaries (or, in some cases, by her contemporaries) have not lost their ability to shock with their casual cruelty. But, as Sarah Connolly argues in her essay entitled “The Alma Problem”, if she was a monster, she was nevertheless a “very intriguing monster”. (Much along the same lines, Marietta Torberg, a friend, or perhaps more precisely a frenemy, famously commented that Alma was “a great lady – and also a cesspit.”)

    And certainly the men who fell for her, one after the other, did find her extremely intriguing, which was perhaps not entirely surprising. She was known for her beauty in her youth, was very well-read and accomplished (well beyond what would be expected of the typical well-brought-up young lady), and also seems to have been quite unashamed of her sexuality. All of this together in one woman must have been like catnip to men in a world where the Madonna/whore paradigm loomed large and where, as a result, women of her social class were expected to “behave” themselves and to avoid scandal.

    Despite her adventurous love life, however, Alma proved to be not entirely unconventional in her decision to become a muse to great men, rather than having a career of her own as a composer (though, admittedly, that would have been much more challenging, given the times she lived in). And so it is that, despite a relatively small, if well-crafted portfolio of compositions, we know her less for the art she created and more for the art she inspired: Mahler’s Fifth and Tenth Symphonies (book-ending their marriage), Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg and possibly the Lyric Symphony* (both written after their breakup), many paintings by Kokoschka (most famously The Bride of the Wind).

    Nevertheless, that portfolio has survived, in no small part thanks to Mahler, who helped to get some of Alma’s music published, in an attempt to repair their marriage after discovering her affair with Gropius. It is an interesting collection, quite sophisticated in its own right, more than just a curious artifact left to us by the muse who inspired so many – and certainly enough to make one wonder what she could have come up with had she turned her not inconsiderable energies to composing instead.

    *There is some uncertainty as to whether the Lyric Symphony was inspired by Zemlinsky’s former relationship with Alma or his relationship with Luise Sachsel, the woman who would become his second wife. Somewhat piquantly, though, what we do know for sure is that Alma would play a role (albeit a supporting one) in the creation of another work related to it. Alban Berg was involved at the time in a passionate affair with one Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, and his Lyric Suite is full of encoded references to their relationship, one of which is a quotation of the line “Du bist mein Eigen” (“You are my own”) from the Zemlinsky work. Which in itself might not seem to have much to do with Alma, except that Hanna Fuchs-Robettin was also Alma’s sister-in-law through her final marriage to Franz Werfel. Berg and Fuchs-Robettin’s illicit correspondence was assisted by Alma and the philosopher Theodor Adorno (quite the pair of couriers!), who helped them carry letters to each other – a magnificent illustration of how extraordinarily entangled the artistic circles of Vienna were at the time.

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series

    Alma Mahler-Werfel

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    In this episode of The Eternal Feminine Podcast Series, we discuss Alma Mahler-Werfel (née Schindler) (1879-1964). Born to a well-known Viennese painter and his singer wife, Alma gained a certain notoriety through her marriages to Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel, and her relationships with such notables as Alexander von Zemlinsky and Oskar Kokoschka. What is perhaps somewhat less explored about Alma’s life is that she also aspired to be a composer at one point, and that she left behind a portfolio of compositions that are quite well-constructed and interesting in their own right.

    Listen to the full podcast for more about her and our live recording of Ansturm.

    To learn more about Alma Mahler-Werfel’s life, check out “There’s Something about Alma”.

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  • Eternal Feminine Podcast Series,  Eternal Feminine Series - Featured Work

    Mahler-Werfel – Featured Work

    Ansturm

    text: Richard Dehmel
    translation: Suzanne Yeo

    O zürne nicht, wenn mein Begehren
    Dunkel aus seinen Grenzen bricht,
    Soll es uns selber nicht verzehren,
    Muß es heraus ans Licht!
    Oh, do not be angry when my desire
    Bursts darkly out of its bounds,  
    If it is not to consume us,
    It must come out into the light!
    Und wenn herauf der Aufruhr bricht,
    Jäh über deinen Frieden strandet,
    Dann bebst du aber du zürnst mir nicht.
    You can feel how everything in me is surging,
    And when this tumult breaks to the surface,
    To suddenly become stranded over your peace,
    You will tremble but not be angry with me.

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