The Hebrides (overture) the following, which came into my head there." The cave at that time was approximately high and over deep, and contained black basalt pillars. The work was completed on 16 December 1830 and was originally entitled "Die einsame Insel" ("The Lonely Island"). However, Mendelssohn later revised the score and renamed the piece "Die Hebriden" ("The Hebrides"). Despite this, the title of "Fingal's Cave" was also used: on the orchestral parts he labelled the music "The Hebrides", but on the score Mendelssohn labelled the music "Fingal's Cave". This revision of the overture was premiered on 14 May 1832 in London in
Overture poem, a form devised by Franz Liszt in several works that began as dramatic overtures. The distinction between the two genres was the freedom to mould the musical form according to external programmatic requirements (Temperley 2001). The symphonic poem became the preferred form for the more "progressive" composers, such as César Franck, Richard Strauss, Alexander Scriabin, and Arnold Schoenberg, while more conservative composers like Anton Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann and Arthur Sullivan remained faithful to the overture. In the age when the symphonic poem had already become popular, Brahms wrote his "Academic Festival Overture", Op. 80, as well