The Hebrides, Op.26 (Fingal’s Cave)

DURATION 10 minutes

Year Of Composition 1830

THE WORLD IN 1830...

Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar dies. One of the many ways he is commemorated is the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, which grew out of the pioneering El Sistema programme that provides musical training for underprivileged children and has inspired similar initiatives across the world.

Edwin Budding invents the first lawnmower.

Further Listening

Mendelssohn – Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Another remarkably descriptive overture (there’s no mistaking the entrance of the donkey), written when the composer was just 17 years old.

This short concert overture was inspired by Mendelssohn’s tour of Scotland in 1829, and specifically the eponymous cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides. Mendelssohn claimed that the opening theme arrived in his head as his boat approached the cave, and when listening it is easy to imagine the mists clearing and the gentle rocking of the waves. Mendelssohn captures the everchanging weather patterns of the west of Scotland oscillating between surging storms and serene stillness over the course of the short piece.

There is only one day of the year when the cave is fully illuminated by the sun, which must lie 5.6 degrees above the horizon to do so. This occurs on or around 16 December. Mendelssohn completed the first draft of this work on 16 December 1830, but nobody knows whether this was planned or just a strange coincidence.

By Jack Johnson (© NYOS, 2022)

Key Of Musical Terms

Concert overture – a standalone piece, which does not precede a larger work in the way the overture to an opera does.

Joseph