Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26

this piece and its genesis are readily findable on the internet, so i will just do something abbreviated here. to be honest this post is definitely just about my personal enjoyment of this piece, which is one of my favorite short orchestral pieces of all time.

the title of "overture" is kind of misleading, as there is no opera or play to follow it. it's just 10 minutes of "mood-setting" music - an early form of program music which lacks plot, but delves deeply into setting.

mendelssohn had a pretty charmed life - he wrote this in 1830, during travels to england and scotland. he was barely 20 at the time and had already gained fame by conducting a performance of bach's st. matthew passion, and for these few years he basically just traveled all over europe.
this is dedicated to king william iv of prussia. he also conceived bits of the scottish symphony during this trip, but that work took much longer to mature - that would turn out to be his third symphony and didn't get completed until 1842, becoming his op. 56.

here is a pretty awesome furtwangler recording. for some reason it took me a little while to wade through the recordings that are unlabeled and simply come with pretty pictures of said cave, and i almost thought youtube lacked any legitimate recordings of the piece, so i'll post a bunch here for easier access.

but actually these recordings all sound sort of similar to me: this music is so simple, so well-distributed, that it more or less plays itself. this recording is actually pretty idiosyncratic mostly because of the tempi he takes, which are really extreme (the last minute and half are at a blistering speed, while the stretch just before that is really, really slow).

toscanini gets kind of a reedy sound - a lot of modern recordings get a huge wash of sound from the strings, which lends itself well to the swelling seas, but the slides and thinness in this orchestra give a sense of clarity.
ok, and just because this is a cool recording:

video of casals. it has his characteristic unbalanced tempo but he really knows how to extract some conviction from the strings.

any number of the rest of the recordings that come up first on youtube when you type in hebrides will offer you more "standard" takes.

the piece has two motifs. the first is the very opening, which he came up with the day before his visit to the actual cave, and he included this in a letter to his sister fanny:

it is undulating, floats on top of the murmuring sixteenth notes of the strings. the second begins at 1:41 in the furtwangler recording. it's sweeter, in d major, and a bit wistful, swelling up and then receding, like the minor melody.
notice how tension is always built up by the moving sixteenths - you only become conscious of it at certain moments when it bursts into focus, for example around 2:35 with the ascending chromatic bass line, which provides some excellent impetus for the orchestra with its repeated notes.
the other thing to notice is the repeated wind and brass fanfare like figures - tattoos of sixteenths and dotted rhythms.
my favorite moment is 5:16 when the theme from the beginning is transformed into muted staccato notes for the strings. the key changes here are really leading, and the rhythm is compelling when articulated in a way that is completely different from the main melody.
ok, just enjoy this awesome piece. i have to put this in though, which i found courtesy of wikipedia:

see you tomorrow.