The Wilderness at Home

Abstract Fanny Hensel’s songs on the theme of the German Romantic forest emphasize the transportive and emotive functions of music in Waldromantik (woods-romanticism) literature. In works by Joseph von Eichendorff and Ludwig Tieck, music announces the merging of the woods with the supernatural or the transcendent and also suggests human bewilderment or ecstasy in the midst of that experience. This chapter shows how, in “Morgenständchen” and the Anklänge cycle, Hensel accordingly centers her songs on the texts’ moments of sonic revelation, and creates a sense of expansiveness through harmonic adventurousness, dramatic ascents, textural juxtapositions, and musical allusions. Furthermore, these songs extend the worlds of their texts by providing glimpses of the unknown or by suggesting that domestic music performances are themselves implicated in the narrative. By enfolding distant realms into the home, these songs might be understood as subtly defying the gendered containment of domestic music culture.