Symphony no. 3 "Scottish" in A minor, op. 56

Mendelssohn began sketching this symphony in 1830 after visiting the ruined chapel at Holyrood during his Scottish journey of the previous year, then set it aside — he complained he could not summon the northern gloom under the Roman sun — and finished it only in 1842 in Berlin. Because his symphonies are numbered by when they were begun rather than completed, the Scottish is the third although it was the last. He conducted the first performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 3 March 1842. The four movements run without a break, and there is not a single folk quotation in them.