Domestic Tranquility

Piano Pieces 1840/1843

Deriving from the three-hand technique popularized by Sigismond Thalberg

in the late 1830s, and then appropriated by Liszt and many other virtuosi,

including Felix.25 In Fanny’s adaptation of the device, as in her earlier applications,

each hand serves double duty: the right hand projects a singing melody

above, and the left hand articulates a bass line below, while a seamless series of

harplike arpeggiations simultaneously unfolds between the two. A variant texture

obtains in the Allegro molto vivace in A-fl at Major. Here Fanny employs

hand crossings to surround the melody with rapidly repeated chords above

and below. The results are challenging virtuoso passages with widely spaced

arpeggiations. As in the Allegro molto, that reveal Fanny’s technique to have accommodated wide, awkward leaps. The sonorously enriched registers support her determined exploration of varied harmonic colorations, which expand the tonal palette of the character piece, and in the process stretch Fanny’s familiar model of statement, departure, and return.  The effect of these harmonic peregrinations is at once to challenge the traditional tonic-dominant axis of tonality and to lend the music a certain harmonic spontaneity and unpredictability.

Sample pieces :

Allegro molto vivace in A flat major

Allegro molto in G major

                                                                                       

  Collection of sheet music from Fanny Hensel - 5 Piano Pieces (upon request)