The Hebrides, overture for orchestra in B minor (Fingal's Cave), op. 26
Felix Mendelssohn (born 1809; died 1847)
Far from the troubled, coarse libertine that has become an archetype of the Romantic composer, Felix Mendelssohn was something of an anomaly among his contemporaries. His own situation – one largely of domestic tranquility and unhindered career fulfillment – stands in stark contrast to the personal Sturm und Drang familiar to his peers.
Mendelssohn was the only musical prodigy of the nineteenth century whose stature could rival that of Mozart. Still, his parents resisted any entrepreneurial impulses and spared young Felix the strange, grueling lifestyle that was the lot of many child prodigies.
He and his sister Fanny received piano lessons, he also studied violin, and both joined the Berlin Singakademie. Carl Friedrich Zelter, director of the Singakademie, became Mendelssohn's first composition instructor.
Even in his youth, Mendelssohn moved with natural grace among the circles of influence in society, politics, literature, and art. Although he did spend some time at the University of Berlin, he received most of his education through friendships and travel.
Mendelssohn's advocacy was the single most important factor in the revival of Bach's vocal music in the 19th century, most famously realized in the 1829 performance of the St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakadamie. He did some touring as a pianist with Ignaz Moscheles, then took the position as music director in Düsseldorf from 1833 to 1835, which involved conducting both the choral and orchestral societies, preparing music for church services, and – later – p becoming manager for the new theatre. Tension with the theater owner caused him to resign some of his duties, and he began looking for a new post.
In 1835, Mendelssohn became municipal music director in Leipzig, where he also would conduct the Gewandhaus Orchestra. He would raise the level of the still-thriving ensemble to a new standard of excellence. In 1838, he married Cécile Jeanrenaud, enjoying an idyllic marriage and family life that was quite unlike the stormy romantic entanglements that profoundly affected such composers as Berlioz, Chopin, and Liszt.
Mendelssohn was in demand as a conductor, spent some time as royal composer and music director in Berlin, but remained committed to musical life in Leipzig. He was even able to establish a new conservatory in the city, which is still a well-respected institution.
Mendelssohn was a true Renaissance man. A talented visual artist, he was also a refined connoisseur of literature and philosophy. While Mendelssohn's name rarely arises in discussions of the 19th century vanguard, the intrinsic importance of his music is undeniable. A distinct personality emerges at once in its exceptional formal sophistication, its singular melodic sense, and its colorful, masterful deployment of the instrumental forces at hand. A true apotheosis of life, Mendelssohn's music absolutely overflows with energy, ebullience, drama, and invention, as evidenced in his most enduring works: the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826-1842); the Hebrides Overture (1830); the Songs Without Words (1830-1845); the Symphonies No. 3 (1841-1842) and No. 4 (1833); and the Violin Concerto in E minor (1844).
While the sunny disposition of so many of Mendelssohn's works has led some to view the composer as possessing great talent, but little depth, his religious compositions – particularly the great oratorios Paulus (1836) and Elijah (1846) – reflect the complexity and deeply spiritual basis of his personality.
The Hebrides, overture for orchestra in B minor (Fingal's Cave), op. 26
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings.
The Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra last performed this work in February, 2003 with Patrick Reynolds conducting.
Mendelssohn composed and then revised this music between 1829 and 1832, conducting its first performance on May 14, 1832 for the London Philharmonic Society. The French critic, Émile Vuillermoz, wrote during the 1930s that "Mendelssohn was handsome. Mendelssohn was rich. Mendelssohn was intelligent, sensitive, refined, elegant, and endowed with all the advantages of home and a family life." But Vuillermoz neglected to say that Mendelssohn was the earliest full-blown genius in the history of Western music (more so than Mozart or Schubert), that he was seldom secure about the product of his genius, and that he very likely worked himself to death in his 39th year.
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, however, 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.
The music belies its long gestation, causing even such a pooh-bah as Sir Donald Francis Tovey to assume that Mendelssohn was musically fluent to the point of glibness in one of the silliest analyses in his overrated lexicon. It was Tovey who persuaded subsequent pooh-bahs to single out "the roar of the waves rolling into the cavern, the cries of sea-birds, and perhaps almost more than anything else the radiant and telescopic clearness of the air when the mist is completely dissolved or not yet formed."
That first theme sketched in 1829 constantly reforms itself with every repetition, over a stretch of 46 bars, before yielding to the D major second theme for cellos and bassoons that Tovey (getting it right) called "quite the greatest melody that Mendelssohn ever wrote."
A development section follows, then a reprise that concentrates on the glorious second theme, and finally a coda that ends with three soft, unison Bs on pizzicato strings and timpani under a B held by the solo flute.
Biography by AMG
Composition Description by Roger Dettmer
Source: All Media Guide
