ROMANTIC HOLYROOD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 20

ROMANTIC HOLYROOD

Where Mendelssohn Conceived A Symphony

N April 1829, at the age of twenty, Mendelssohn left his home and family for the first time in his life, to visit England. He appeared in London both as a pianist and composer, and was received with the warmest of welcomes by the British world of music.

The whole musical season was indeed something of a personal triumph for the young’ foreigner, and in some ways he must have been quite glad to reach the end of those strenuous weeks and to set off for.a visit to Scotland. He reached Edinburgh on April 28.

It was there in the old palace of Holyroodhouse that the idea of a Scottish Symphony first occurred to him. In his own words: "In the evening 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 the broken altar Mary was ‘crowned

Queen of Scotland. Everything around is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found to-day in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony." The work was not actually completed until 1842. It was played repeatedly in Germany with invariable success, and at its performance at a Philharmonic concert in London under Mendelssohn’s own direction, in June of that year, it met with the most enthusiastic reception. After the performance, Mendelssohn, by her Majesty’s permission, dedicated it to Queen Victoria.