Preview

The Hebrides Overture By Felix Mendelssohn

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1158 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Hebrides Overture By Felix Mendelssohn
The Lonely Island

Inspiration can be found in the strangest of places, amongst the strangest of things. In 1829, Felix Mendelssohn was inspired by a great cavern, rich with Scottish mythology. While sailing through the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland, he saw the famed Fingal's Cave and was so moved by its beauty that he jotted down a full orchestration that became the beginning of one of his most famous works, The Hebrides Overture. Originally titled, The Lonely Island, this masterpiece has become a staple in today's orchestral repertoire.
Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3rd, 1809, in Hamburg, Germany. His father was Abraham Mendelssohn, who was a wealthy banker. Abraham was the son of Jewish rabbi and philosopher
…show more content…
As was the custom with most rich young men, Mendelssohn toured through Europe, seeing all the sights and visiting all the places. He was so inspired by the beauty and awe of the cave, that he sketched the first 20 bars of what would become the Hebrides Overture and sent them off in a letter to his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn. This overture depicts the crashing of waves and the swelling and stirring of the ocean as he saw it. Mendelssohn finished the piece on December 16, 1830 and was revised on June 20, 1832. When he finished the piece in 1830, he titled it The Lonely Island. After the revision and the process of publishing and writing, there was some confusion about the name of the piece. It seems that Mendelssohn abandoned the original title and replaced it with two different ones. On his score, he called the piece Fingal's Cave, but on the parts, he titled it The …show more content…
When listening to the piece, one notices the swirling and swelling of the waves as they come in with the tide. It begins with a melody that is brooding, and at the same time magnificent. The strings and woodwinds take the opening theme with the melody ending up in the violins. Sudden rises in the music allude to the sudden large waves. Also, descending passages after the musical swell suggest the falling of the waves on the rock walls of Fingal's Cave. At nearly a third of the way through, the cellos play an incredible melody that when listened to, one can picture coming around the corner of the island of Staffa and seeing for the first time the cave. Towards the middle, the brass plays the melody, hinting at slightly harsher conditions. This soon fades into woodwind and string variations. The end gradually builds up into an intense section, with scales in the strings and fanfare type playing in the brass. When listening, one can almost see the waves crashing on the walls. The end is possibly the best example of his tone painting of waves; everything comes to a climax, fades off, and we are left with three hits from the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    1) How old was Mendelssohn when he composed the Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream?…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The title of the poem, 'Beach Burial', has an ironic slant, as beaches are commonly associated with life and pleasure. Instead, the poem consists of the opposite: death and sorrow. Similarly, the poem first two stanzas include low, soft sounds, such as "softly", "humbly", "convoys" and "rolls", with the rhythm and alliteration of "swaying and wandering", which present a calm, soothing tone. However, this soothing calm is more of a grief, as illustrated by the onomatopoeia, in "sobbing and clubbing of the gunfire". The main place or action is sensed as afar, so the washing up of "dead sailors and "tide wood" represents a calm after a storm, wherein the storm is a battle out to sea.…

    • 311 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For example, the first eight measures of the piece feature constant, mostly scaler eighth notes with the horn starting the melody just barley louder than the eighth note lines which reference to the text of the first lines “When peace like a river, attendeth my way,/When sorrow like sea billows roll…” creating a moment of text painting that is not directly relevant to Holsinger’s rendition due to performance media used (Timeless Truths, 2016). Melodically, Holsinger’s is able to reflect the somber mood of the text by having lower, mellower voices carry the main tune while the upper voices serve as the more accompanimental figures until the high points of the piece, mostly when the melody goes into the refrain. This melody is mainly carried by the horn and trombone in the brass and low clarinet in the woodwinds (Holsinger, 1989). When the upper voices do come in, however, they help to create a very sublime moment within the music that is meant to reflect Spafford’s profound declaration of praise in the face of the deaths of his daughters. These moments are reflected quite simply, but still beautifully in Holsinger’s arrangement of the hymn that has worked its way to become a concert band…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I believe the bright colors are making a statement to emphasize on the major parts of the artwork. Showing the motion, makes you move your eyes along the imaginary wave. The slight tone of yellow makes me think of the sun come through the wave. The soft light of the off white background makes me think of a light blue sky that is clear of everything. Vague colors made me stare at the picture for long periods of time so that way I could understand why he created this on in particular. I thought maybe like times when he got bored and went to the museum; he created a scene of his bus ride there. Maybe he pictures himself at a beach and what it would be like to sit and watch someone ride a…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, Italy. His full name is Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. His father and mother are Leonardo…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After several attempts to get K to make a last second escape, the wave finally makes its first appearance with a bang being depicted as “a wave like a huge snake with its head held high, poised to strike, was racing towards the shore” (Murakami, 178). Through the use of simile and personification, Murakami is able to compare the wave to give a sense of a life threatening situation. By comparing the wave to a large snake he is able to give the reader a first glimpse of how deadly the wave is.…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Michael Waters’ poem, “The Mystery of the Caves”, two stories are told: one of a boy lost in a cave, and one of the narrator’s household of domestic violence. The narrator submerges themself in the story of the lost boy, trying to escape from the reality of their home. Through ambiguity of language, Michael Waters’ use of images and symbols blurs the lines between the two stories, and ultimately tells a tale of of how a failed mission can cause anguish within an individual.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hokusai vs JMW Turner

    • 2136 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The Great Wave is a seascape polychrome ink painting done on paper by Hokusai. When you first look at it, you almost miss the details because the massive waves seem to tower over the viewer. If you look closely at the waves, you can see there are boats which probably are depicting fishermen as well at the very small looking Mount Fuji in the background thanks to the sheer size of the waves. Because of the boats included he could have been painting a scene of everyday labor grafted onto the seascape view of the mountain as well. The curvature of the wave seem to bring the attention down to the fishermen as well as Mount Fuji maybe a hidden message as to the importance of these two to the culture at that time.…

    • 2136 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1812 Overture

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The 1812 Overture, composed by Peter Tchaikovsky is the most widely regonized piece of classical music. The 1812 Overture was written to commerate the victory of Russia in the Napoleonic War in 1812. The defeat of this battle marked the start of the long and disastrous retreat that destroyed Napoleon and his army. In 1880, the Russian composer Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write an uplifting and patriotic piece to immortalize Napoleon's defeat and celebrate the liberation of the Russians. Cannons would have been used during the actual conflict, they are very significant in the piece. Its first performance was in Moscow in 1882.…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Moses Mendelssohn

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Moses Mendelssohn lived between the years 1729 and 1786. He was known as the " father of Haskalah " because of his contributions to the Haskalah movement. Mendelssohn was a Jewish philosopher, and got much of his education from his father, the local rabbi, David Frankel. Mendelssohn studied the philosophy of Maimonides.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    One peculiar thing about the structure of the piece is its shape. In the piece, the persona speaks about several rivers, and in an attempt to emphasize this, Hughes indents line three as well as lines ten nine and ten. Indenting these give the structure of the piece a wavy look, a shape resembling the movement of moving water. It can also be seen that at the beginning of the piece the number of words used per line swells and eventually dwindles: from three words to about seven words and finally three words. This increase and decrease in words per line depicts the character of a wave, which grows in the beginning and dwindles at it gets to the shore, spreading at its very last existence.…

    • 1365 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the last completed symphony composed by Gustav Mahler, “Der Abschied” (The Farewell) is often celebrated and adored by the personal message delivered through the music by Mahler. This essay, through decoding the lyrics and analyzing the music, attempts to translate Mahler’s bravery facing death, his linger on the dying life, and his epic legacy that makes him immortal in human history.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gustav Mahler

    • 293 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Gutav Mahler, born July 7,1860, was a post romantic composer. He was born in eastern Bohemia, which was the Austrian Empire back then. Mahler and his family moved to Iglau, Germany when he was a little boy. He and his family lived near the town square; they frequently heard concerts, this gave Mahler an initial exposure to music.…

    • 293 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lieder ohne Worte (Song without Words) is written by the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. It is a collection of forty-eight short lyrical piano pieces of markedly song-like character that he wrote at various periods of his life between 1809 and 1847. They are well suited to the study of musical form because of their artistic value. Op. 19b, No. 1 Andante con moto in E major was written in 1830 and is the first in the collection. The piece is in the key of E major and modulates from E to B to G major.…

    • 1405 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beach Of Falesa Analysis

    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Falesa is presented as an ‘’imaginary paradise island’ ’However, it has a supernatural air as the windward side of the island is uninhabited and it is said to be haunted by witches who enchant men and turn them insane. Throughout this poetic and romantic description, Stevenson linked with travel writings and records through memoirs his ‘’own experience of landfall on his first pacific island, NukuHiva in the Marques as group’ ’on 20 July 1888. Wiltshire descriptions engage all his senses: the smell of lime and vanilla, the cool breeze, the prospect of hearing new words and the bright moon and the day star sparkling like a diamond .The circulation of books that translated bibles among the natives is another realistic element in the story. This is a representation of missionaries work on the…

    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics