Fanny Hensel, complete: all 29 Lieder piano parts now live
On this page
Fanny Hensel's catalog is done. Every piece of hers in the OpenScore Lieder corpus that includes a piano part — 29 songs — is now live, lint-checked, render-validated, and graded. The corpus actually holds 35 Hensel scores; the other six are unaccompanied SATB partsongs from her Gartenlieder with no piano part to speak of, so they sit outside a piano-practice catalog by construction, not because anything was skipped. "Complete" here means every shippable Hensel piano part in that corpus, not every piece she ever wrote.
One note on what you're getting: these are piano parts of Lieder — songs written for voice and piano — not solo piano pieces. The vocal line isn't included; what's live is the accompaniment, which in Hensel's hands is substantial and self-contained enough to practice and enjoy on its own.
Fanny Hensel (1805–1847) was Felix Mendelssohn's sister and one of the most significant women composers of the 19th century. For much of her life her Lieder were published under Felix's name rather than her own. The 29 pieces now live span difficulty 3 through 7 on our scale, clustering solidly in the intermediate range with several songs reaching into more demanding territory — a real body of work for a pianist who has outgrown beginner repertoire but isn't chasing virtuoso showpieces.
Six pieces to start with
Schwanenlied, Op. 1 No. 1
This piece is in G minor, sits at level 5 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
The opening number of Hensel's published Op. 1 — a good entry point into the whole set.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Die Mainacht, Op. 9 No. 6
This piece is in Eb major, sits at level 5 of 9, and takes about one minute to play.
Hensel's setting of Hölty's poem, also in Eb major — the same key Brahms chose for his own famous Die Mainacht, Op. 43 No. 2, whose piano part is also live on PracticeClef if you want to play both settings side by side.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Bitte, Op. 7 No. 5
This piece is in Ab major, sits at level 5 of 9, and takes about 38 seconds to play.
A short Lenau setting with striking harmonic color — the middle section slips into borrowed minor-key sonorities before the close resolves firmly back to Ab major.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Du bist die Ruh, Op. 7 No. 4
This piece is in B major, sits at level 7 of 9, and takes about one minute to play.
Hensel's setting of the same Rückert text Schubert made famous — his version (also live, in Eb major) is the one most pianists know; Hensel's B-major reading is worth hearing as its own piece, not a footnote to his.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Nach Süden, Op. 10 No. 1
This piece is in E major, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about 4 minutes to play.
The longest piece in the set by a wide margin, and one of the later opus numbers — more developed and sustained than the shorter Op. 1 and Op. 7 songs.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Morgenständchen, Op. 1 No. 5
This piece is in E major, sits at level 7 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
One of the more demanding pieces in Op. 1, and a good target once you've worked through the easier songs in the collection.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Part of a growing shelf of complete women composers
Hensel joins Josephine Lang (52 pieces), Johanna Kinkel (45), and Louise Reichardt (40) as complete catalogs on PracticeClef — every playable piece from each in our source corpus, live. Alongside Augusta Holmès (73) and Robert Franz (48), and now Peter Cornelius (33) and Schubert (96), that makes eight composers whose full shippable output from our source material is on the site, not just a greatest-hits sampling.
Explore it
All 29 Hensel pieces — along with the rest of the full library — are free to browse and play. No account is needed. Connect a digital piano for live note feedback. Turn on Wait mode when you want the cursor to advance after you play the written notes. See the docs for setup.
A note on the numbers. Every fact in this post — keys, difficulty grades, lengths, and the piece count — comes from each piece's own metadata record and is checkable against the live catalog. “Complete” means every playable engraving in our source corpus, not every piece a composer ever wrote. Duration figures are estimates derived from the score, not measured performances.