Fanny Mendelssohn (jan 1, 1805 – jan 1, 1847)

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Invented Songs without words, although originally called "Lieder fur das Pianoforte". Received same training in theory and composition as her brother, with Zelter. Wrote many choral works, including two cantatas.

Virtually none of her music became known during her liftetime beyond the circle of her family and the friends who frequented her Sunday salons; and after her marriage to the painter Wilhelm Hensel and the birth of her son (Sebastian, named after Bach) she stopped composing. She had lotsa discouragement from her father and brother. Her father forbade her to publish her music or to perform in public lest she become ambitious and compromise the feminine virtues of "love, obedience, tolerance and resignation" on which the stability of family life depended, as he put it to her in a letter.

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