Fingal

Demonstrates the profound impact of The Poems of Ossian on composers of the Romantic Era and later: Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Massenet, and many others. Beyond Fingal's Cave: Ossian in the Musical Imagination is the first study in English of musical compositions inspired by the poems published in the 1760s and attributed to a purported ancient Scottish bard named Ossian. From around 1780 onwards, the poems stimulated poets, artists, and composers in Europe as well as North America to break away from the formality of the Enlightenment. The admiration for Ossian's poems -shared by Napoleon, Goethe, and Thomas Jefferson - was an important stimulus in the development of Romanticism and the music that was a central part of it. More important still was the view of the German cultural philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who saw past the controversy over the poems' authenticity to the traditional elements in these heroic poems and their mood of lament. James Porter's long-awaited book traces the traditional sources used by James Macpherson for his epoch-making prose poems and examines crucial works by composers such as Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Massenet. Many other relatively unknown composers were also moved to write operas, cantatas, songs, and instrumental pieces, some of which have proven to be powerfully evocative and well worth performing and recording.

The former Northern Lighthouse Board tender Fingal was in service for some 37 years and was party to many operational and technical changes in the provision of aids to navigation in Scottish waters.

On the isolated island of Staffa, near Iona, Scotland, stands a natural wonder of the world: Fingal's Cave, a cathedral-like space of hexagonal balsatic columns and a floor made of ocean and tides create constant musical sounds. To understand Fingal and his importance to Celtic culture, we must understand the poems of Ossian and ancient Celtic Christianity. The authors describe Fingal's Cave and the poems of Ossian, showing why they influenced such figures as Mendelssohn, Jefferson, Napoleon, and Turner. Illustrated.