Fanny Hensel: Mai - Frühlingslied, from Das Jahr

Corona Chronicles A-Z: Week 8

"Mai - Frühlingslied” (May - Song of Spring) is from Fanny Hensel's Das Jahr; a piano cycle, composed in 1841, with one song for each month of the year, and a postlude.

I first learned about Das Jahr as an undergraduate student, and immediately admired Hensel’s approach to chronicling a year of her life through music. Even more, her decision to begin publishing works under her name, despite the gender and societal limitations against her at the time, were very inspiring to me. Each piece in Das Jahr is introduced by a poetic epigraph to set the scene of the month. The following precedes May: “Now blooms, the farthest, deepest valley.”