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Eleanor Roosevelt’s papers in the FDR Presidential Library contain approximately seventy musical works calling for world peace, the lyrics and/or music of which were created by women. Women’s peace songs from the 1930s were often a response to the First Lady’s press and radio statements about peace. They were also influenced by calls for cultural change by activists in the women’s peace movement, represented by the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, groups with which Roosevelt was involved. Compositions about peace typically either featured march-like music and nationalistic imagery or were religious choral works and hymn-like expressions of women’s collective action. Writers sometimes parodied well-known hymns or patriotic songs, providing them with less militaristic texts. Musical offerings for the First Lady reflected women’s desire to assist Roosevelt in her peace efforts, their growing concern about the onset of World War II, and a strong belief in the power of music to help achieve a better world.

Felix Mendelssohn9s Serenade and Allegro giojoso, op. 43, was composed rapidly for his performance in a concert in Leipzig on 2 April 1838. Originally entitled Adagio and Rondo , the concert piece underwent substantial revision before its publication in late February the following year. The autograph sources reveal that Mendelssohn9s Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, op. 40, composed less than a year before in 1837, influenced the Serenade and Allegro giojoso9s musical content. Not only do the two works for piano and orchestra share a key and thematic material, but an extended sketch found in the Mendelssohn Nachlass 19 (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz) was part of the compositional history of the concerto, yet served as the basis for a transition, later rejected, between the Serenade and Allegro giojoso9s two movements. Revisions to the Mendelssohn Nachlass 30 draft of op. 43 show Mendelssohn working to make his new work more like the D minor concerto. Not only were parts of the early stages of op. 43 derived from op. 40 sketches, but the finished work suggests that Mendelssohn, facing the proof sheets for op. 40 while working on the Serenade and Allegro giojoso , had not yet worked the concerto9s musical material out of his artistic consciousness.

The idea that Felix Mendelssohn prevented his sister, Fanny Hensel, from publishing her compositions is central to biographical representations of her, including Franccoise Tillard9s Fanny Mendelssohn (1992) and Gloria Kamen9s Hidden Music (1996). This story can be traced to nineteenth-century publications by male members of the Mendelssohn family and their desire to portray both siblings according to socially acceptable gender roles. Such origins challenge the assumption that the story of Fanny Hensel9s "suppression" represents a modern feminist reinterpretation of her life. Instead, current treatment of Hensel relies on common biographical models for male composers; in her lack of a public career, she fits the Romantic stereotype of the neglected, suffering genius. The retelling of the "suppression" of Fanny Hensel represents a "story" in itself - a rescue plot in which modern women rediscover Hensel and somehow "save" her from historical neglect. This feminist recovery relies on the assumption that Hensel was forgotten, overlooking the numerous publications between 1830 and 1920 in which she appears. Centering Hensel9s biography on her brother9s influence rather than on her eventual publication of her music oversimplifies the larger historical situation for women composers, replacing the manifold issues surrounding gender and class with a single male villain. The difficulties encountered in telling the story of Hensel9s life reveal a need for a feminist biography that balances an understanding of larger cultural constraints with recognition of individual female agency.