Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
The Hebrides Overture, Fingal's Cave, Op.26 (1829. 8. 7.)
Geneva Camerata
David Greilsammer, conductor
September 19, 2017
Victoria Hall, Geneva, Swiss
Mendelssohn, who grew up in a wealthy family, loved traveling. Especially, I like England, so I visit England 10 times in my life. In 1829, in London, he was honored as an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society after attending a series of balls, watching plays and operas, and a successful concert in which he conducted his own symphony. At the age of the terms and conditions, he was welcomed as a master compared to Handel of the Baroque period.
At the age of 23, he traveled to Scotland in the summer of 1832. On the hill of Edinburgh's "The Place of King Arthur", he thought of Queen Mary Stewart's misfortune while looking at the horizon, and envisioned the introduction of the symphony No. 3 "Scotland".
The journey continued, he ascended to the Highlands and to the Hebrides Islands in the northwest. There, the overwhelming scenery of the huge cave on Staffa Island gives him a breathtaking shock. According to legend, the cave in the huge rock was called "Fingal's Cave" after King Fingal, who ruled the province. Klingeman, a friend who accompanied Mendelssohn at the time, looked at the cave and described "It was dark and sound like the inside of a giant organ, left in nature, and completely isolated."
When he first saw the cave, Mendelssohn felt strange about Scotland's unique atmosphere, along with the superb view of the Atlantic waves hitting rocks on steep cliffs, spraying white foam and revealing rock cliffs into the breaking waves.
With the legend of the cave, he fell into the charm of the cave and tried to make it the subject of a symphony. In the evening after watching "Fingal's Cave," Mendelssohn composes music of 21 bars of the feeling of the time and sends it to his sister Panny with a letter.
With this part as the introduction, it was announced in Rome the following year as the "Lonely Island". It was then revised and released in London under the title of "Hebrides", which later became Overture "Fingal's Cave". It premiered in May 1832 in London under Mendelssohn's own direction and was later dedicated to the Prussian Crown Prince after several revisions.
The song is harmonized with the strings reminiscent of the waves of the waves and the woodwind instruments that represent wind and rock and has Mendelssohn's elegant classical characteristics to create an ideal composition and harmony.
Wagner listened to the music and praised it as "the work of a remarkable landscape painter." Program music genre, which expresses pictorial landscapes and literary content through pure instrumental music, was one of the most popular genres in the Romantic period, and the orchestra's "Prelude for Concerts" like "Fingal's Cave" later became an important prototype of the symphonic poem created by Liszt.
"The first theme of Allegro moderato begins with the melody of cello, viola, and bassoon as if a gentle wave swaying. The appearance of the cave, which is opening its mouth toward a hill that rises steeply over the cliffs of Stapa Island, where a flock of seagulls flies and rolling waves, is being exquisitely sketched.
As the waves of white droplets hitting the rocks and the gloomy silence in the cave are depicted as if to be seen, the second theme of the beautiful melody depicts a ship gliding through the sea calm by cello and bassoon.
As the sea gets rough again, the third theme spreads freely as waves break under bright sunlight."
The music continues to draw the changing appearance of the sea, repeating tension and relaxation, and at the end, the seagull's cry ends as if it were heard from far away with the cool sea breeze.
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Mendelssohn - The Hebrides Overture, Fingal's Cave, Op.26, MWV P7 | GECA | Free Music Sheet
Reviewed by Cantabile Music Society
on
April 22, 2021
Rating:
Reviewed by Cantabile Music Society
on
April 22, 2021
Rating:
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