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 dark corner, where they 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 that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.

Felix Mendelssohn: Letters

Our logo/featured image for this term –
based on an early Augener edition of Mendelssohn’s 42 Songs Without Words for piano –
comes to us courtesy of the artistic skills of Bill Bytheway.
Thanks Bill!