Program Notes for May 4, 2008
Fingal’s Cave Overture or The Hebrides Overture, Op. 26
Felix Mendelssohn(-Bartholdy) (1809-1847)
To round off the exceptional education, both musical and general, that he had enjoyed from earliest childhood, Mendelssohn undertook a Grand Tour in 1829, shortly before his 20th birthday. This extended foreign travel, to widen his cultural horizons and to gain a wider perspective on life, included a visit to the British Isles where, with his friend Karl Klingemann, Secretary to the Hanoverian Legation in London, Mendelssohn visited Scotland. Especially impressed by his exploration of the Hebrides Archipelago off the western coast of Scotland, Mendelssohn wrote to his sister: “In order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, I send you the following, which came into my head there.” Enclosed in the letter were the notes of the first theme of the Hebrides Overture. Immediately after he sent off the letter, Mendelssohn continued on and visited a sea-filled grotto on the tiny island of Staffa. Of this cavern, Mendelssohn’s travel companion Klingemann wrote, “I must say, never did such green and roaring waves pound in a stranger cave. The many pillars make the inside resemble a monstrous organ. Black, resounding, and utterly without any purpose at all, it lies there, the broad gray sea inside it and in front of it.”
Inspired in general by the Hebrides and in particular by the spectacular grotto called “Fingal’s Cave,” Mendelssohn developed his initial musical response into a full-scale concert overture, that is, a stand-alone independent composition for orchestra. He completed the first version of the work in December 1831. The Philharmonic Society of London presented the world premiere in May 1832. The first printed orchestral parts were marked The Hebrides while the first printed score was titled Fingal’s Cave. The overture contains two primary themes. The first comes immediately in the opening measures, a descending figure in bassoons, violas and cellos. Later comes a rising, song-like second theme played by the bassoons and cellos. From the very beginning, Mendelssohn’s overture was favorably received. Richard Wagner judged that “Mendelssohn is a first-class landscape painter, and the Hebrides is his masterpiece.” Brahms wrote “ I would gladly give all my works if I had succeeded in writing a piece like the Hebrides Overture.”
Mendelssohn was born in 1809, the year that Haydn died, that Beethoven composed the Emperor Concerto, and that Jefferson turned over the presidency to Madison. Among Mendelssohn’s contemporaries were Chopin, Liszt, and Robert Schumann. Mendelssohn’s most familiar orchestral works include the Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Symphony No. 4 (the Italian), the Violin Concerto in E Minor, and, of course, the Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite.
For the chronology of Mendelssohn’s travel to the Hebrides, this note relies on James Keller, program annotator for the New York Philharmonic.
Reference books:
Michael Hurd, Mendelssohn. New York: Thomas Crowell Co., 1970.
Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Felix Mendelssohn and His Times, translated Richard and Clara Winston. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
Web Sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrides_Overture
http://www.orlandophil.org/downloads/program-notes/2006-07/opo-prog-notes-pac1.pdf
Program note by Howard Storch