Word count: 1541 // 100% sfw // mentions of alcohol
Author’s note: this is my first piece mainly about Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Please note that this is not a reflection of their character and should not be regarded as such. This is only an inspiration of their real character personalities as I try to make references to a slight part of what they have truly experienced. I hope you enjoy!
Much feedback is appreciated (´,,•ω•,,)♡
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Fanny was a composer. She was meant to be in the ballroom serving everyone as per custom.
Melodies and harmonies spiralled from her fingertips as easy as her breaths rolled from her nose and fluttered in the air. At three she could compose and at ten, she led concerts day in and day out. As a composer should be, she thought. As a composer should be.
Alongside her training to be a good housewife for her dear Wilhelm Hensel, she played, played, played and played the piano.
Despite how many times the Hensels said, “no, Fanny, greet Wilhelm!” Or “stop playing or else your future will be gone!”Fanny still played as Felix played with her. Leading concerts here and there and avoiding the Hensels’ scrutiny, she had fun and made music right under the Hensels’ noses which only sniffed and snorted.
“Make your child behave like a real woman!” The Hensels said, “or else we might remove everything music related from her life once she’s married!”
“Will do Mrs. Hensel, will do,” Felix answered for his father. “We won’t make you regret choosing her as the bride.”
“I’d rather not!” Mrs. Hensel, Wilhelm’s mother, sniffed. “But one more toe out the line, and she’ll regret even having musical talents to begin with!”
“And don’t you chuckle at me, Felix!” She continued as she snapped the smile from his face. “Once she performs in public alone again, the only thing she’ll ever play in our household is some yarn and string!”
“That was absolutely splendid, Fanny!” Felix said. “Do play again! Play again! Play again!”
She paused; pondering the now silent keyboard before her. Strings still vibrated from the melodies she sang.
“I have other duties to attend to,” Fanny said, flipping her scribbled manuscripts. “I’m a lady, Felix. I have to focus on my actual goal.”
Before her brother frowned again, she continued —
“I’ve a husband to find. I'm going to be a housewife soon.”
“What about your music?” Felix retorted, waving the money Fanny earned from her pieces. “They don’t know you write music and I published them in my name.”
He held Fanny’s hands. “You could continue.”
A letter lined with velvet and class subdued her tears. “For you, Fanny,” Felix whispered. “Be there, tonight.”
“And you will stay at home!”
“Why do I have to do this?” Fanny said. “Why do I—”
“You will keep our name clean!” Father raised a pointed finger at me. Each fibre of it shook until his nails went white. “And you will do as I tell you!”
Felix gazed back at her, twisting the skin of his ring finger.
The banging door locked away any way Felix could leave. “You said that!” Fanny shouted. “And look what it did, Felix.” He glanced away.
Fanny raised her voice when Felix grabbed a hold of her music.
“And don’t you dare touch it!”
“What am I to do then?” Felix retorted, biting back his tears. “What am I to do about what is your fault?”
“My fault?” Fanny spat. “My fault?”
“You’re not suited for this, Fanny. You can’t perform concerts anymore,” Felix sat beside Fanny, who cowered on the ground, “and I’m sorry for instilling that hope in you.”
Felix offered Fanny his hand. “Come on, go back to your room with me. You can still compose, just don’t perform like what father—”
“Leave, Felix,” Fanny managed to sniffle through gritted teeth. She hugged her knees as tight as she could until her dress tore at the sides.
Before sinking onto the ground again, she glared straight into her brother’s face — the same lips which sang as they played piano, whose tongue lisped against the irregular curvature of complicated words and phrases; and whose gaze, drooped into a glance and later a glimpse when his repertoire got boring, pupils later fluttering as quickly away from the sheet music as his little fingers across the keyboard.
“And I,” she whimpered, controlling the uneven hitches agpt her larynx, “you leave.”
Felix dipped his head before her as he left. “Dinner’s coming in an hour.”
“Do you think she finally listened?”
“You really shouldn’t be so harsh on her, dad. She’s been crying in her room for the past hour.”
“Anyway,” Father said, staring straight at Felix. “She cannot go to the party. Her finacé’s family is there. Think of the scandals! Think of it all!”
In the cobblestone streets leading to the ball, pages of sheet music thumped against the backs of countless composers.
“I’m fine, thank you sir,” Fanny replied, unpacking her bag. “I’m a guest performer. Here’s my invitation.”
“F. Mendelssohn?” The guard replied, holding the card in his hand followed by a crowd of laughs and leers.
“Fanny Mendelssohn, sir,” Fanny added. “I’m the composer of that family. Felix is only my little brother.”
Gazing back up at her, he smiled, “right this way.”
Being led to the piano, Fanny was a composer. Fanny was a composer. Fanny was a composer. She kept reminding herself as she sat on the piano stool.
After all those years of preparing for being a housewife, her hands kept trickling out the music from her mind, bleeding into bandages of sheet music and fluttering up in the air. With every performance, each note folded into the ventricles of people’s hearts as motifs conjoined into their veins and pumped blood in their veins.
“They lived because of me,” Fanny thought. “And they shall again.”
And for that moment, she played. Amidst the crowd with everyone to gape at her, to raise eyebrows and clap at her mumps across the piano as their tears fuelled her encore.
“I could, I could, I could!” Thought Fanny as her keys laughed, cheered and clapped her mind’s whispers out loud.
After her waltzes and nocturnes, she hastened to bring out her lieders.
Readying them on the stand as the crowd hissed to a silence—
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Fanny Mendelssohn’s piano solo of Italien.”
Her heart prepared for another rush of adrenaline — the rush of laughter and flame, engulfed in all of it like alcohol. Wrapped in music bars, her mind spun again and again—
“Fanny playing Felix’s work?”
“It’s my work,” Fanny answered.
Before the gasps subsided, a virtuosic strum on the piano broke free with her breaths. As she continued her adrenaline reached the brim —
“Stop this!” Some people from the audience spoke. “How do we know you wrote it?”
“I wrote it!” Fanny said. “And I’m so tired of being called over and over and over about what I ought to do!”
She continued playing the piano, even as whispers disrupted the piano’s resonance and jammed her mind with disturbances.
“Fanny Mendelssohn!” A voice shouted before her. “You are to wed the Hensel family! What are you going to do once they find out about this?”
“That I’m a renowned composer? Leave! Father, leave!” Fanny said as she continued her pieces.
A bunch of drunkards in the ball shooed her family away. Satisfied, alcohol pumped through Fanny’s music as she slurred her pieces alongside her voice which often accompanied her lieders.
“See, everyone?” She hiccuped, making a sloppy run across the keyboard in the middle of the night. “Especially you, Mrs. Hensel. I’m to wed your son tomorrow, and look at me! I’m even more talented than my brother, Felix!”
Adding some trills and ornaments to her nocturnes, she shot out again at the Hensel family, a sober blur in the drunken mist and fatigue. “Wouldn’t you want me for a wife, Wilhem darling? Wouldn’t you… wouldn’t you?”
The ground reached for her first after her vomiting on the keyboard. Falling before her fiancé’s feet, spit trickling on her hands, still clutching some manuscripts, she whispered, “wouldn’t you be grateful for such a prodigy?”
In the carriage ride back to the Hensel estate, Wilhelm met Fanny with the same respectful nods and greetings as before.
“I thought, Wilhelm dear,” snorted Fanny, “that you’d hate me for what I did… even I would see how improper I was today.
“Don’t you worry, darling,” replied Wilhelm upon reaching his home. “After taking in consideration your abilities, you’d be best to participate in concerts for the rest of your life.”
The moment those words were uttered out, Fanny, carrying that pungent smell of vomit and liquor, thanked him saying, “I’ve always wanted this… I’ve always… always…”
A fireplace to sit by, and some soup to warm her stomach, still growling for sleep.
“Anything else you need, dear?” Fanny called. “There’s a piano for you down the hall if you want it.”
Fanny searched for the slightest twitch of discomfort in every guest at the ball, carrying a map of the ball if anyone needed it.
“Excuse me, lady, where are the refills?”
“Down the hall to the left, sir,” she replied to a gentleman as she led Felix to the performance room.
Fanny was a composer as everyone said. A composer meant to be in a ballroom, serving the public as per custom.
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Leave a request about which composers/people I should write about next if you want to ʘ̥ꀾʘ̥
(ฅ'ω'ฅ) Ps I never sleep so feel free to send me a dm any time of the day
