Felix Mendelssohn - The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave) Overture for Tuba Euphonium Choir [$]
Grade VI

Program Note:

Felix Mendelssohn was born in 1809 in Hamburg, Germany. He was given the additional names Jakob Ludwig and later the additional surname Bartholdy due to tensions related to his family’s Judaism. Felix and his sister Fanny were from a young age recognized as genius virtuosi, receiving their public performance debuts at only 9 years old. Beginning in 1819, they both studied music theory with Carl Friedrich Zelter, who became Felix’s good friend and mentor. In 1821 Felix traveled to Weimar with Zelter and performed for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his Kappellmeister, Hummel.

By the time Mendelssohn was 15, the cultural elite of Berlin were coming to his home to listen to the young prodigy perform. The Mendelssohn family moved homes in 1825, and this new home became a cultural boon for Felix, completing his Octet Op. 20, as well as reading many of the works of Shakespeare. Evidently this had an impact on him, and the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was completed in 1826. The following year, Mendelssohn enrolled at the University of Berlin, and  undertook the revival of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which was premiered in 1829 at the Singakademie, which Mendelssohn had joined as an alto nine years prior. He additionally made his conducting debut with the Philharmonic Society in London the same year, conducting his Symphony in C minor Op. 11.

Through extensive traveling, Mendelssohn found inspiration for his Scottish Symphony on a trip through the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides Overture upon reaching the titular archipelago as well as Fingal’s Cave, which became the subtitle for the work. Continuing his travels over the next several years, Mendelssohn composed his Reformation Symphony, the first volume of Lieder ohne Worte, premiered his Italian Symphony in London, and took a position in Dusseldorf as music director. Here, in addition to putting on masterworks of opera, he revived the oratorio and began to write his own, St. Paul. In 1835, Mendelssohn left Dusseldorf to take up the prestigious position of director and conductor of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. When his father, Abraham died in 1835, Felix took this as impetus to complete St. Paul, which was premiered at the Niederrheinisches Musikfest, with Mendelssohn conducting. On a stop to Frankfurt, Mendelssohn met Cecile Jeanrenaud, who later became his wife.

In 1841, Mendelssohn was appointed Kappellmeister by Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, for which Mendelssohn composed music for the choruses of Sophocles’ Antigone. Splitting his time between Berlin and Leipzig, he conducted the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the premiere of his Scottish Symphony, though with the death of his mother at the end of 1842, he resumed work with the Gewandhaus fully. Mendelssohn was awarded honorary citizenship in 1843 in Leipzig, whereupon he established a new conservatory with renowned musicians such as himself, Ferdinand David, Robert Schumann, and others serving as faculty.

In 1843, Mendelssohn left Leipzig entirely, moved with his family and completed the fifth volume of Lieder ohne Worte, the overture to Athalie, and conducted five Philharmonic Society concerts in London. He declined an invitation in 1845 to go to New York, but was asked to return to his position in Leipzig, whereupon he began commuting between Berlin and Leipzig once more. While conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Mendelssohn worked on the music for his new oratorio, Elijah. In 1847, he learned of his sister Fanny’s death, and left for Switzerland with his brother Paul, where he began composing his third oratorio, Christus. Upon returning to Leipzig, his health rapidly diminished, and Mendelssohn suffered a series of strokes, eventually dying November 4th, 1847.

The Hebrides Overture, or Fingal’s Cave began as a sketch of Mendelssohn’s on his trip to the titular geographical features in Scotland in August of 1829. On the 7th of August Mendelssohn and his traveling partner, Klingemann, visited the western coast and looked out at the Hebrides; they took a small boat out to Fingal’s Cave on the island of Staffa the following day, and though Mendelssohn was supposedly very sea-sick, he evidently appreciated the beauty of the formations nonetheless. He completed the first draft of the concert overture while in Rome in 1830—announced as a birthday present for his father, titled Overtüre zur einsamen Insel— and it was premiered by the Philharmonic Society of London in May of 1832, now with the title The Isles of Fingal. He revised it the following year and it was published titled both The Hebrides and Fingal’s Cave Overture, with discrepancies between the title on the score and the orchestral parts. 

The work is somewhat programmatic; though it does not tell a story exactly, it represents the awe and beauty (and perhaps sea-sickness in some of the dramatic dynamic swells) Mendelssohn felt at the landscapes he encountered in Scotland. The Hebrides, in this way, functions much like an early tone poem, though is labeled as a concert overture.

The work starts in the key of B minor with the main arpeggiated theme, shifting tonics through an array of keys, eventually ending with an A dominant 7 arpeggio, which leads into the second theme in the key of D major. One of Mendelssohn’s most beautiful melodies, the second theme (originally played by cello) features dynamic swells that align with the tessitural leap, and ends by softly bringing back the first theme, which after a dramatic scalar figure leads to a piu mosso third theme with dotted rhythms and quick 16th note scalar patterns. The dotted fanfare-like rhythms continue in some of the voices, interspersed with a piano statement of the first theme in other voices. A new melody comprised of a quarter note, two beats of dotted 8th note and 16th notes, and another quarter is traded throughout several voices amidst the fanfare rhythm as the first part plays the obbligato string part. A soft interlude brings back the second theme, but a series of triplets raise the energy level and help change the key to F minor, where a staccato, truncated and militaristic version of the first theme is traded through call and response. After a brief climax, a flurry of chromatic scales and whole step ostinatos brings the piece, by way of a repeated first theme in its initial legato fashion, to a repeat of the second theme, though now in the key of B major, which slows and diminuendos to a half cadence before quickening the tempo and beginning a new section. This new and faster section features a transition of four 8th notes, two slurred and two staccato, playing off the interval of a third, before two of the voices repeat the first theme, now in a non-legato manner, with two other voices arpeggiating the harmony. The fanfare figure briefly makes a return before a climax gives way to a piano and then pianissimo statement of the first theme with an arpeggio leading up to a B, upon which the piece ends in octaves.