In 1829, Mendelssohn and his friend Carl Klingemann traveled to Oban by paddle steamer while in Scotland. They then journeyed to Tobermory and stayed in accommodations where Mendelssohn wrote a letter titled 'On one of the Hebrides' to his home. In this letter, he included the famous sentence and 20 bars of music, explaining how the Hebrides had affected him deeply. Mendelssohn was inspired by the islands and sea between Fort William and Oban (or Tobermory), which led him to call his first draft of the overture 'Die einsame Insel' ('The Lonely Island'). When the full score was published, it was named 'Fingal's Cave,' suggesting that the island of Staffa (uninhabited, tiny and rocky) was his inspiration for this piece. However, there is no mention of Staffa in Mendelssohn's published letters, and it is unclear whether
...Staffa was the true lonely island that inspired him.
Mendelssohn composed the Hebrides in less than three years, but there were two versions created. The first version, titled "Die Hebriden," was completed in Rome in December 1830. Unfortunately, someone obtained a copy of it before Mendelssohn made most of his changes and titled it "Die einsame Insel." In January 1832, he wrote to his sister Fanny, expressing that he considered the overture unfinished. He described the loud DMaj section in the middle as very stupid and felt that the development had more of a counterpoint feel than anything related to oil, seagulls, or dead fish. He completed the second version of the overture in London on June 20th, 1832. Sir George Grove mentioned in the first edition of his dictionary that the published score and parts did not
always match perfectly.
It is likely that bars 7 and 87 were different in the published parts compared to the first performance due to the parts being taken from the initial performance and not being updated to reflect later changes.
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