A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Scotch Symphony, The
SCOTCH SYMPHONY, THE. Mendelssohn's own name for his A minor Symphony (op. 56), one of the works in which he recorded the impressions of his Scotch tour in 1829. Other results of that expedition are the 'Hebrides' overture, the PF. Fantasia in F♯ minor (op. 28), originally entitled by its author 'Sonate écossaise,' the PF. Fantasia in A minor, op. 16, no. 1, and the two-part song 'O wert thou in the cauld cauld blast.'
The subject of the opening Andante of the Symphony dates from his visit to Holyrood in the evening of July 30, 1829, when it was written down. The Symphony was planned and begun during his residence in Italy in 1831, but was not finally finished till Jan. 20, 1842, the date on the finished score. It was first performed at a Gewandhaus Concert on March 3 of the same year, again at the Gewandhaus Concert next following. He then brought it to England, conducted it at the Philharmonic Concert, June 13, 1842, and obtained permission to dedicate it to Queen Victoria.
The passage for flutes, bassoons, and horns, connecting the end of the first movement with the scherzo, was, on the authority of Prof. Macfarren, put in after the rehearsal (under Sterndale Bennett) at the Philharmonic, and added by Goodwin, the copyist, to the Leipzig MS. parts. The score and parts were published (as Symphony no. 3) by Breitkopf & Härtel in March 1851.
The work is peculiar among Mendelssohn's symphonies from the fact that it is not separated by the usual pauses. This is especially enjoined in a preface by the author prefixed to the score, in which the titles and tempi are given differently from what they are at the head of the movements themselves.[ G. ]