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Mendelssohn: Visits
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The next great event in Mendelssohn's life was his happy marriage, on the 28th of March 1837, to Cecile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud. The honeymoon was scarcely over before he was again summoned to England to conduct St. Paul, at the Birmingham festival, on the 20th of September. During this visit be played on the organ at St. Paul's and at Christ Church, Newgate Street, with an effect which exercised a lasting influence upon English organists. It was here ... that he first contemplated the production of his second oratorio, Elijah.
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Mendelssohn won a short hiatus from his accumulating duties when he took a leave of absence from his post at the Gewandhaus during the 1844-45 season. Before his sabbatical began... Mendelssohn had to fulfill a commitment to conduct the London Philharmonic Society Orchestra in a series of concerts during the late spring of 1844. This English engagement created the same spectacular success that was to follow each of his other eight visits to that country.
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After writing the Reformation Symphony (1830) Mendelssohn began a series of visits to various European cities that lasted for almost 3 years. After a short stay with Goethe at Weimar, Mendelssohn went to Rome. Both the Scottish and the Italian Symphonies were begun in Italy. In the autumn he returned to Germany and played his newly composed Piano Concerto in G Minor in Munich. In 1832 he left for London, where he conducted the Hebrides Overture and the Piano Concerto in G Minor with great acclaim. That same year his first book of Songs without Words (Lieder ohne Worte) was published.
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For Mendelssohn was not satisfied with seeing Edinburgh. By way of Stirling and Perth, he and Klingemann proceeded to the Highlands, with Highland weather accompanying them till they reached Glasgow. Earth and sky, in Mendelssohn’s phrase, were "wet through." At Bridge of Tummel they were housed in an inn where they had "Scotch wooden shoes" for slippers, "tea with honey and potato cakes," and -- whisky. The little boys, "with their kilts and bare knees and gay-coloured bonnets, the waiter in his tartan, old people with pigtails, all talk helter-skelter in their unintelligible Gaelic." No wonder the travelers thought they had "stumbled on a bit of culture" when they struck Fort-William! Later on, at Tobermory, they found everything "perfectly charming." Klingemann had somehow confounded the Hebrides with the Hesperides, and was disappointed (so he says) to find the oranges in the toddy instead of on the trees! But both Germans were getting used to "good Scots drink." A visit to Staffa and Iona proved that they were not getting used to Atlantic weather.
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Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) in 1830, inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the 1820s. He visited the cave, on the Hebridean isle of Staffa, as part of his Grand Tour of Europe, and was so impressed that he scribbled the opening theme of the overture on the spot, including it in a letter he wrote home the same evening.
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The performance took place on 13 May, when Mendelssohn ... played Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto. 1842 saw a performance of the Scottish Symphony under the aegis of the Philharmonic Society on 13 June, and a later concert that season included the Hebrides Overture and his own D minor Piano Concerto. This was Mendelssohn's sixth visit, and a fish dinner was given in his honour.
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