#102
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 "Scottish"
Felix Mendelssohn
1842
From
Mendelssohn, after a 'walking tour" of Scotland:
"In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved;
a little room is shown there with a winding staircase leading up to the door;
up this way they came and found Rizzio in that little room, pulled him out,
and three rooms off there is a dark corner, where they murdered him.
The chapel close to it is now roofless;
grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar
where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland.
Everything around is broken and mouldering,
and the clear heavens pour in.
I think I have found there the beginning of my Scottish Symphony."
"Ruins of Holyrood Chapel"
Louis Daguerre
Although it was the fifth and last of
Mendelssohn's symphonies to be completed, it was the third to be published, and has subsequently been known as
Symphony No. 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'. 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.
Mendelssohn's symphony is in four interconnected movements:
I.
Andante con moto - Allegro un poco agitato (in A minor and in sonata form with introduction)
II.
Vivace non troppo (in F major and in sonata form)
III.
Adagio (in A major and in abridged sonata form)
IV.
Allegro vivacissimo - Allegro maestoso assai (in A minor → A major and in sonata form)
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. 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 in the style of Scottish folk music melodically and rhythmically, using 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.
The
Finale is marked
Allegro Guerriero - fast and warlike - and the music strongly suggests a battle, with its syncopations which dominate the movement and the underlying lower instruments marching constantly onward. The chaotic fugal passages conjure up the frenzy of combat and the falling two-note figure which occurs later in the movement is a device which has been suggested to be akin to women bewailing the death of their men in battle.
At the end of the movement the music comes to a virtual stop and is followed by a curious coda which presents a theme which sounds new, although it is related to the very opening theme of the Symphony. The orchestration is unusual and unlike anything that Mendelssohn did before or after. The majestic melody begins with the lower strings and the woodwind doubling each other at the bottom of their register before it gradually rises up as if escaping the mists with which
Mendelssohn and his lifelong friend
Carl Klingemann (who wrote the phrase
"mighty mountains sticking up to their knees in the clouds, and looked out again from the top") had become so familiar in the Highlands. The Symphony ends in triumph with horns blazing above the full orchestra.
Here's
Rumon Gamba directing the
Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia.
F. Mendelssohn: Symphony nÂş 3 "Scottish" - R. Gamba - SinfĂłnica de Galicia