James Macpherson's The Poems of Ossian (1760–63) employ a memorable musical image twice: frst, in the prose poem “Berrathon,” in which the bard Ullin is pictured in the palace of Fingal, striking “the half-viewless harp,” and again in the second book of the epic poem Temora, when Ossian is mourning for his son, Oscar: “Open thou thy stormy halls. Let the bards of old be near. Let them draw near with songs and their half-viewless harps.” This notion of “half-viewless” suggests something dimly perceived, visually and aurally. The idea appears again, with a somewhat different application, in “The Songs of Selma,” as Ossian says, “Often by the setting moon, I see the ghosts of my children. Half viewless, they walk in mournful conference together.” The trope of an indistinct harp, however, barely perceived but nevertheless resonant, seems appropriate for the way in which the musical response to Ossian has been largely ignored or downplayed. Few know that in addition to a few pieces by Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, the poems of Ossian, since their appearance in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, have stimulated forty or so operas and scores of cantatas, songs, and symphonic works.

From the preceding chapters, we can glimpse the long-acting effect of Ossian on composers. Apart from the recognized works of masters such as those cited above (and, as I have argued, the more problematic case of Beethoven), perhaps a dozen or more of those discussed here, about one-fifth of the total number of musical compositions based on Ossian, stand out as reaching an elevated level of inspiration and craftsmanship. While this is a personal selection, I would maintain that these works show a magisterial blend of Romanticism and modernity in their melodic invention, harmonic language, and instrumental texture, or any combination of these factors. That is, the composers have not only realized their individual feelings but also created something new—and in reaching out to others, something “modern.” In the process of transmediation they have achieved a delicate balance between Romanticism and modernity, and as a result this mastery is found at many levels in each work.