Mendelssohn, knowing Shakespeare through German translations by Schlegel and Tieck, wrote in 1826 (he was then seventeen years old) his overture to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." The music was begun July 7th, and finished August 6th. It was first written as a piano duet, and afterwards scored for orchestra. Mendelssohn's incidental music to Shakespeare's play was not composed until seventeen years later. The following comments by Mr. Frederick Niecks furnish an excellent indication of the significance of the overture: "Before our mind's eye," he writes, "are called up Oberon and Titania as they meet in 'grove or green by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen'; the elves, who, when their king and queen quarrel, creep into acorn-cups; ... Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed; the knavish sprite Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, who delights in playing merry pranks.... But there are other things in the overture than fairies. There are Duke Theseus and his betrothed, Queen Hippolyta, and their train; the two pairs of lovers—Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena; and those hempen homespuns, the Athenian tradesmen—Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling.... But let us see where the different dramatis personæ are to be found in the overture.
"The sustained chords of the wind instruments [which begin the work] are the magic formula that opens to us the realm of fairyland. The busy, tripping part of the first subject [violins and violas] tells us of the fairies; the broader and dignified part, of Duke Theseus and his following; the passionate first part of the second subject [at first wood-wind, then strings, later the full orchestra], of the romantic lovers; and the clownish second part, of the tradesmen, the braying reminding us of Bottom's transformation into an ass. The development is full of the vivacious bustle and play and fun of the elves; ... the pianissimo passage towards the end ... signifies the elves' blessing on the house of the Duke. In conclusion we have once more the magic formula [the four sustained chords of the opening], which now dissolves the dream it had before conjured up."
OVERTURE, "FINGAL'S CAVE" [OR, "THE HEBRIDES">[ [106]: Op. 26
Mendelssohn, visiting the Hebrides in 1829, was deeply impressed with what he saw. "In order to make you realize," he says in a letter written August 7, 1829, "how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind there"—then follows, in notation, a passage from the overture. Later in the month he wrote from Glasgow: "How much lies between then and now! ... Staffa—scenery, travels, people: Klingerman [the friend who accompanied him] has described it all, and you will excuse a short note, especially as what I can best tell you is contained in the above music." In September he wrote from London: "'The Hebrides' story builds itself up gradually"; and early in the following year (January 21, 1832) he wrote from Paris: "I cannot bring 'The Hebrides' to a hearing here because I do not regard it as finished in the form in which I originally wrote it [the first version of the overture was finished late in 1830]. The middle portion ... is very stupid, and the whole working out smells more of counterpoint than of blubber, sea-gulls, and salt fish." His friend Klingermann wrote as follows of the impressions produced by Fingal's Cave: "We were put out in boats, and climbed, the hissing sea close beside us, over the pillar stumps to the celebrated Fingal's Cave. A greener roar of waters surely never rushed into a stranger cavern—comparable, on account of the many pillars, to the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, lying there absolutely purposeless in its utter loneliness, the wide, gray sea within and without."
It has been said of the music of this overture that, in hearing it, "you will think of yourself in a ship, gliding over rocking waves, about you a vast expanse of sea and sky, light breezes blowing, the romantic stories of the past coloring the sights that one has seen." Wagner, on the strength of this work, praised the composer as "a landscape painter of the first order."
OVERTURE, "BECALMED AT SEA AND PROSPEROUS VOYAGE": Op. 27
Mendelssohn's Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt[107] was written in illustration of two short and contrasted poems by Goethe, entitled Meeres Stille and Glückliche Fahrt (published in 1796). They have been translated into English prose as follows:
"BECALMED AT SEA"
"A profound stillness rules in the water; the ocean rests motionless; and the anxious mariner looks on a smooth sea round about him. No breeze in any quarter! Fearful quiet of death! Over the monstrous waste no billow stirs."
"PROSPEROUS VOYAGE"
"The fog has lifted, the sky is clear, and the Wind-god looses the hesitant band. The winds sough, the mariner looks alive. Haste! Haste! The billows divide, the far-off grows near; already I see the land!"