The ‘Power of Class’ in a New Perspective: A Comparison of the Compositional Careers of Fanny Hensel and Josephine Lang

Abstract

In her article ‘The Power of Class: Fanny Hensel’, Nancy Reich draws attention to the significance of social station as a constraint on Fanny Hensel’s musical career. While she acknowledges the existence of other barriers (such as religion, family traditions, and the influence on the Mendelssohns of Enlightenment philosophy), Reich emphasizes the role of contemporary expectations for upper-class women in limiting the scope of Hensel’s public musical activity. The identification of the ‘power of class’ as a factor in the careers of nineteenth-century women composers is an important contribution that deserves further investigation. Reich suggests a productive avenue for the exploration of this topic when she briefly compares Hensel’s career to those of two pianist-composers of lower social standing: Clara Schumann and Marie Pleyel. In this article, I pursue this avenue by comparing Hensel's career to that of another contemporary woman composer of a class lower than hers, namely Josephine Lang.