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Felix Mendelssohn: Fingal's Cave
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In 1829, on 7th August, Felix Mendelssohn visited Fingal's Cave. With his friend Klingemann, Mendelssohn set out on the newly introduced paddle steamer service to sail round Mull calling at Iona and Staffa, returning down the Sound of Mull to Oban. The day was wild and all the passengers were ill. Klingemann tells of the arrival at Staffa:
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Felix sketched ideas for a Hebridean piece on a trip to England and Scotland during his 20th summer. The day before visiting sea caves on the island of Staffa, he wrote the B minor main theme for an "Overture to a Lonely Isle," as he called the first version – a birthday present to his father – completed in Rome on December 20, 1830, one and a half years later. He revised this... in 1832 (as Die Hebriden, dedicated to the pianist Ignatz Moscheles), the version first performed with the London Philharmonic Society. But that wasn't the last version: immediately after the premiere, he further revised what he finally called The Hebrides Overture, although published in 1835 as Fingal's Cave.
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Having shown exceptional musical talent at an early age, Mendelssohn was encouraged by his family to study music and to make it his career. At the age of seventeen, he composed an overture based on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which was so successful that some years later he composed more music on the subject, resulting in a suite of pieces to be used in conjunction with productions of the play. Such a collection of pieces is known as incidental music, and the fleet and airy Scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is typical of the seemingly effortless and beguiling style of this composer. Mendelssohn responded to nature as did most composers of the period One of the results of nature's influence was the Fingal's Cave Overture... known as The Hebrides, which depicts the rocky, wind-swept coast and ancient caverns of Scotland. Mendelssohn's many travels also influenced two of his five symphonies, the third in A minor, known as the "Scotch" Symphony, and his popular Symphony no. 4 in A major , known as the "Italian" symphony, which incorporates melodies and dances that Mendelssohn heard while traveling in that country.
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By this time Mendelssohn was dazzling music-lovers as a composer, pianist, violinist, violist, and conductor. (Less widely known were his gifts as painter and poet.) When only twenty he stunned English audiences on the first of his ten trips to England. He loved to travel, and since he regarded the sea as the finest of nature's beauties, a trip to Scotland's Hebrides inspired the masterpiece, Fingal's Cave.
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Conditions were so bad that the little craft had only reached Tobermory by nightfall, and Mendelssohn can hardly have enjoyed seeing Fingal's Cave since he was so seasick. However the visit to Staffa, and the sight and sound of the Atlantic swell tumbling into the Cave, made a profound impression on him. The theme in the illustration, which he later developed into the ever-popular Hebrides Overture, occurred to him immediately. He was just 20 years old.
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A number of Mendelssohn's other works were inspired by visits to Britain. Though Mendelssohn mainly stayed in London, he ... visited Edinburgh. Like the novelist Sir Walter Scott, the composer appears to have been captivated by the Scottish landscape and people: from these visits come The Scottish Symphony and Fingal's Cave (also known as The Hebrides Overture).
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