In this article we explore Fanny Hensel’s songs that end without cadences but instead with what William Caplin (2018) calls “prolongational closure.” These songs, most of which come from the 1820s, are some of the earliest examples of piece-ending prolongational closure in the repertoire and thus offer important models for understanding how the technique was deployed by later composers. We propose three types of prolongational closure, drawn from a study of Hensel’s works—".fn_scaledegree(5)."–".fn_scaledegree(1)." fill, dominant substitution, and early pedal—and suggest that Hensel’s fascination with non-cadential endings offers yet more evidence that she was one of the most inventive composers in the first half of the nineteenth century.

By and large, discussions on tonal pairing have been limited to works of the late nineteenth century whose competing key centers are a third apart. Even when we find tonal pairing earlier in the nineteenth century, the tonic is still most frequently in conflict with the mediant or the submediant. This chapter addresses a tonal pairing strategy found in certain songs by Fanny Hensel where the tonic is paired not with a third-related key but instead with the subdominant. In these cases, Hensel effectively transforms the tonic into V of iv, such that the subdominant key competes with, and even sometimes usurps, the tonic key. Using “Vorwurf” and “Die Äolsharfe auf dem Schlosse zu Baden” as examples, the author explores the harmonic strategies by which Hensel turns the tonic into V of iv, and the expressive implications that arise as the tonic’s function transforms is transformed in this way.

Over the last decade, Janet Schmalfeldt’s concept of “becoming” has provided groundwork to evaluate how ambiguous formal moments gradually come into focus through the practice of retrospective reinterpretation. I supplement Schmalfeldt’s Hegelian perspective with concepts drawn from Goethe’s botanical studies to propose a type of becoming that is not limited to retrospective reinterpretation but instead embraces gradual thematic transformations that can function either progressively or retrogressively. Using Fanny Hensel’s piano sonatas as case studies, I explain how the two categories of progressive and retrogressive metamorphosis are fitting metaphors to describe gradual thematic transformations within Romantic-era composers’ works that resist formal prototypes.