Beyond Fingal's Cave

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.

Illustrates, through the continuing popularity of Ossian throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the influence of folk legend on art-culture and popular culture., Beyond Fingal's Cave: Ossian in the Musical Imagination is destined to become the definitive scholarly handbook on the most influential cultural obsession of Europe and the United States around the turn of the nineteenth century. Sweeping in scope and inclusive of vernacular as well as concert repertoires, Porter's book situates the cult of Ossian in a 'landscape of feeling' that arose out of the Burkean dichotomy between the sublime and the beautiful, while also interrogating the themes of power and subjugation., Porter discloses an intricate network of international lines of influence linking Scotland to the musical cultures of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and America. His study brings to light unsung composers, some of whom were women. Porter makes the most persuasive case for Beethoven himself. Most riveting...is his excursus on Mendelssohn. Porter's intimate knowledge of the source material enables him to gauge the relative degree and success of each...blend of the old and the new., To say that the coverage and scope is impressive is almost an understatement. A thoroughly scholarly work, the monograph would find a welcome place in any university or conservatoire collection., In the musical arena, the [Ossian] poems inspired uncountable compositions in the most varied genres, from opera to piano cycle and from overture to symphony. Porter's descriptions are vivid and well written. His knowledge of the [scholarly] literature goes deep. Porter's study is exemplary in its depth and nuance.

JAMES PORTER is Professor Emeritus of Music at UCLA and an Honorary Professor of the University of Aberdeen.