MUSICAL ISLANDS
ORCHESTRAL MANOE Many different strands of musical tradition can be found in the Hebrides. Carol Main pinpoints the inspiration four different islands provide
STAFFA
JURA
From its opening bars, Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture captures the grandeur of the island of Staffa’s famous Fingal’s Cave. The majestic basalt columns of its entrance, the waves rolling in from the Atlantic swells and the sense of nature’s wonders are all heard as fresh today as when the finished piece was premiered in Berlin in 1833 with the composer conducting. It was four years earlier that the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn had visited Staffa on his tour of Britain, next on his bucket list after visits to Italy, Switzerland and France. A day trip from Oban took him to Fingal’s Cave, where the first musical phrase of his overture was scribbled down on a postcard and sent off to the family back home. Mendelssohn was particularly close to his sister Fanny and, in a special note to her about his exciting new music, wrote: ‘In order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, I send you the following, which came into my head there.’ The full autographed manuscript of everything else which inspired Mendelssohn’s glorious music is now held in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. n mendelssohninscotland.com
2020 reset the dial on how vital it is to have nature’s open spaces somewhere in our sights. Yet it was over 20 years ago that musician Giles Perring realised that there had to be something different to life than darting across London at 2am delivering scores to TV producers. Knowing the value of taking his children out on the road to give them a change of scene from inner city life, a couple of chance holidays led to the family settling on Jura. Now Perring works on a variety of music projects from the old schoolhouse at Lowlandsman’s Bay, his World Organ gaining increasing attention. Don’t think organ pipes in the usual sense – although there are similarities in the physics – but a sound sculpture in Giles’ Sound of Jura studio garden. ‘It’s a different way of representing the landscape of Jura,’ he says. ‘It’s not Edwin Landseer and Scottish Romanticism. It’s more about what it sounds like, asking: What is this landscape, how do we connect with it and what is it doing to us?’ Bees, birds, wind, rain can all be heard through it. ‘It’s a response to this wild place,’ he says, ‘a place where you can’t hear any other humans.’ n soundofjura.com
28 The Guide to Scotland’s Islands
