In the _Hebrides_ overture, Mendelssohn shook off his priggish
formalism. He had been deeply affected by the sight of Staffa and
Fingal’s Cave; he was not ashamed to translate his emotions into music
without obsequious obedience to the old pedagogic traditions. Here he is
poetic, picturing the wildness of the far-off scene without too
deliberate attempt at realism. Here is the suggestion—and with the small
orchestra of the period!—as Mr. Apthorp put it, of screaming sea birds,
whistling winds, the salty smell of the seaweed on the rocks. For once
Mendelssohn showed himself more than a careful manufacturer of music
when he revised his score, saying that the middle section smelt more of
counterpoint than of train oil, sea gulls, and salt fish.
* * *
Mendelssohn saw Staffa and Fingal’s Cave on August 7, 1829. He at once
determined to picture the scenes in music. He wrote to his sister on
that day: “That you may understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides
affected me, the following came into my mind”; and he then noted down
twenty-one measures in _alla breve_, which coincide for the first ten
and a half measures with the later measures in 4-4. Ferdinand Hiller,
who lived with Mendelssohn in Paris during the winter of 1831-32, tells
how Mendelssohn brought to him the sketched score. “He told me how the
thing came to him in its full form and color when he saw Fingal’s Cave;
he also informed me how the first measures, which contain the chief
theme, had come into his mind. In the evening he was making a visit with
his friend Klingemann on a Scottish family. There was a pianoforte in
the room; but it was Sunday, and there was no possibility of music. He
employed all his diplomacy to get at the pianoforte for a moment; when
he had succeeded, he dashed off the theme out of which the great work
grew. It was finished at Düsseldorf, but only after an interval of
years.” Hiller was mistaken about the place and time of completion.
The overture was first performed on May 14, 1832, from manuscript, in
London, at the sixth concert of the Philharmonic Society at Covent
Garden. Thomas Attwood conducted. The composer wrote: “It went
splendidly, and sounded so droll amongst all the Rossini things.” The
_Athenæum_ said that the overture as descriptive music was a failure.
George Hogarth wrote in his History of the Philharmonic Society (1862):
“It at once created a great sensation—a sensation, we need scarcely add,
that has not been diminished by numberless repetitions. At a general
meeting of the Society on the 7th of June, 1832, Sir George Smart read a
letter from Mendelssohn requesting the Society’s acceptance of the score
of this overture; and it was resolved to present him with a piece of
plate in token of the Society’s thanks, which was forthwith done.” The
_Harmonicon_ praised the overture highly, and found the key of B minor
well suited to the purpose.