| Symphony No. 3 in A minor | |
|---|---|
| Scottish | |
| by Felix Mendelssohn | |
 Drawing of the composer by Eduard Bendemann, 1833 | |
| Key | A minor |
| Opus | 56 |
| Composed | 1829–42 |
| Performed | 3 March 1842 |
| Movements | four |
The Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, MWV N 18, known as the Scottish, is a symphony by Felix Mendelssohn, composed between 1829 and 1842.
Mendelssohn was initially inspired to compose this symphony during his first visit to Britain in 1829. [1] [2] [3] After a series of successful performances in London, Mendelssohn embarked on a walking tour of Scotland with his friend Karl Klingemann. [4] On 30 July, Mendelssohn visited the ruins of Holyrood Chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, where, as he related to his family in a letter, he received his initial inspiration for the piece:
In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved...The chapel below is now roofless. Grass and ivy thrive there and at the broken altar where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my "Scottish" Symphony. [5]
Alongside this description, Mendelssohn enclosed in his letter a scrap of paper with the opening bars of what would become the symphony's opening theme. [6] A few days later Mendelssohn and his companion visited the western coast of Scotland and the island of Staffa, which in turn inspired the composer to start the Hebrides. [7] After completing the first version of the Hebrides, Mendelssohn continued to work on his initial sketches of what would become Symphony No. 3 while touring Italy. [3] However, he struggled to make progress, and after 1831 set the piece aside. [3]
It is not known exactly when Mendelssohn resumed work on the symphony (sketches suggest he may have returned to the first movement in the late 1830s) but he was certainly working in earnest on the piece by 1841 and completed the symphony in Berlin on 20 January 1842. [8] It was slightly revised after early performances, excising 111 bars of material in total, [9] and the revised version is the one almost universally performed. Although it was the fifth and final of Mendelssohn's symphonies to be completed, it was the third to be published, and has subsequently been known as Symphony No. 3. [3] Intriguingly, despite describing the work as his 'Scottish Symphony' to his family in 1829, by the time the work was published in 1842 Mendelssohn never publicly called attention to the symphony's Scottish inspiration, and it is debatable whether he intended the finished work to be considered 'Scottish'. [10] Ever since the Scottish provenance became known following the composer's death, however, audiences have found it hard not to hear the piece as evoking the wild Romantic landscapes of the north - even if such picturesque associations have caused audiences to overlook the many other musical qualities of this symphony.
The premiere took place on 3 March 1842 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus.
The work is scored for an orchestra consisting of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B flat and A, two bassoons, two horns in C and A, two horns in E, F and D, two trumpets in D, timpani, and strings.
Mendelssohn's symphony is in four interconnected movements:
Unusually, Mendelssohn marked the movements to be performed without breaks, and underlined the connection between the symphony's parts by making them grow from the continual thematic transformation of the original idea he had notated in 1829, presented in the slow introduction to the first movement. [11] Despite this overriding concern for musical unity the emotional scope of the work is wide, consisting of a dark and stormy first movement, a joyous and fairly brief second movement, a slow movement maintaining an apparent struggle between love and fate, and a finale that takes its components from Scottish folk dance.
The lively second movement is melodically and rhythmically in the style of Scottish folk music, using the notes of the pentatonic scale and the characteristic Scotch snap rhythm, although no direct quotations have ever been identified. A novel feature lies in the coda of the finale, where Mendelssohn introduces a new majestic theme in A major to close the work in a contrasting manner to the rest of the A minor finale. Akin to a victory hymn and intended by Mendelssohn to allude to a male-voice choir, this ending returns to the balladic tone of the first movement's introduction, transforming the material of the original inspiration for the piece Mendelssohn had twelve years before. [12] Contemporary musicians such as Robert Schumann found the effect highly poetic, though some later twentieth-century critics have shown aversion to the 'happy ending'. [13] The conductor Otto Klemperer, for instance, disliked this coda and wrote his own ending in a vein similar to the general character of the movement. [14] Recordings of him conducting both endings are available. [15] [16] Removing the maestoso coda strongly alters the cyclic structure Mendelssohn has created across the symphony's four movements and nowadays critics are more inclined to recognize the composer's original and lasting contribution to the nineteenth-century symphony. [17]
The Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44, by Robert Schumann was composed in 1842 and received its first public performance the following year. Noted for its "extroverted, exuberant" character, Schumann's piano quintet is considered one of his finest compositions and a major work of nineteenth-century chamber music. Composed for piano and string quartet, the work revolutionized the instrumentation and musical character of the piano quintet and established it as a quintessentially Romantic genre.
Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, from 1810, was his last before his late string quartets. It is commonly referred to as the "Serioso," stemming from his title "Quartett[o] Serioso" at the beginning and the tempo designation for the third movement.
Ludwig van Beethoven completed his String Quartet No. 12 in E♭ major, Op. 127, in 1825. It is the first of his late quartets. Commissioned by Nicolas Galitzin over a year earlier, the work was not ready when it was scheduled to premiere. When it was finally premiered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet, it was not well received. Only with subsequent performances by the Bohm Quartet and the Mayseder Quartet did it begin to gain public appreciation.
The Symphony No. 9 in C major, D 944, known as The Great, is the final symphony completed by Franz Schubert. It was first published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1849 as "Symphonie / C Dur / für großes Orchester" and listed as Symphony No. 8 in the New Schubert Edition. Originally called The Great C major to distinguish it from his Symphony No. 6, the Little C major, the subtitle is now usually taken as a reference to the symphony's majesty. Unusually long for a symphony of its time, a typical performance of The Great lasts around one hour when all repeats indicated in the score are taken. The symphony was not professionally performed until a decade after Schubert's death in 1828.
The Symphony No. 5 in D major/D minor, Op. 107, known as the Reformation, was composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1830 in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession. The Confession is a key document of Lutheranism and its Presentation to Emperor Charles V in June 1530 was a momentous event of the Protestant Reformation. This symphony was written for a full orchestra and was Mendelssohn's second extended symphony. It was not published until 1868, 21 years after the composer's death – hence its numbering as '5'. Although the symphony is not very frequently performed, it is better known today than when it was originally published. Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, chose the name Reformation Symphony.
The Symphony in C major by German composer Robert Schumann was published in 1847 as his Symphony No. 2, Op. 61, although it was the third symphony he had completed, counting the B-flat major symphony published as No. 1 in 1841, and the original version of his D minor symphony of 1841. It is dedicated to Oscar I, king of Sweden and Norway.
Songs Without Words is a series of short lyrical piano works by the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn written between 1829 and 1845. His sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, and other composers also wrote pieces in the same genre.
The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 of Johannes Brahms was written in 1853 and published the following year. The sonata is unusually large, consisting of five movements, as opposed to the traditional three or four. When he wrote this piano sonata, the genre was seen by many to be past its heyday. Brahms, enamored of Beethoven and the classical style, composed Piano Sonata No. 3 with a masterful combination of free Romantic spirit and strict classical architecture. As a further testament to Brahms' affinity for Beethoven, the Piano Sonata is infused with the instantly recognizable motive from Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 during the first, third, and fourth movements. Composed in Düsseldorf, it marks the end of his cycle of three sonatas, and was presented to Robert Schumann in November of that year; it was the last work that Brahms submitted to Schumann for commentary. Brahms was barely 20 years old at its composition. The piece is dedicated to Countess Ida von Hohenthal of Leipzig.
Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49, was completed on 23 September 1839 and published the following year. The work is scored for a standard piano trio consisting of violin, cello and piano. It is one of Mendelssohn's most popular chamber works and is recognized as one of his greatest along with his Octet, Op. 20. During the initial composition of the work, Mendelssohn took the advice of fellow composer Ferdinand Hiller to revise the piano part. Hiller wrote, "with his usual conscientious earnestness when once he had made up his mind, he undertook the length and rewrite the whole pianoforte part."
The Violin Sonata in F major, MWV Q 26, was composed in 1838 by Felix Mendelssohn, but remained unpublished during the composer's lifetime. It remained so until 1953 when violinist Yehudi Menuhin arranged it for publication.
The Symphony in C major, WWV 29, from 1832 is the only completed symphony of Richard Wagner.
Variations sérieuses, Op. 54, MWV U 156, is a composition for solo piano by Felix Mendelssohn consisting of a theme in D minor and 17 variations. It was completed on 4 June 1841. A typical performance lasts about eleven minutes.
Felix Mendelssohn's six Organ Sonatas, Opus 65, were published in 1845. Mendelssohn's biographer Eric Werner has written of them: "Next to Bach's works, Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas belong to the required repertory of all organists."
The Piano Quartet in E♭ major, Op. 47, was composed by Robert Schumann in 1842 for piano, violin, viola and cello. Written during a productive period in which he produced several large-scale chamber music works, it has been described as the "creative double" of his Piano Quintet, finished weeks earlier. Though dedicated to the Russian cellist Mathieu Wielhorsky, it was written with Schumann's wife Clara in mind, who would be the pianist at the premiere on 8 December 1844 in Leipzig.
Hooked on Classics is a classical crossover album recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Louis Clark, released in 1981 by K-tel and distributed by RCA Records, part of the Hooked on Classics series. It was produced by Jeff Jarratt and Don Reedman.
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