The concert overtures A Midsummer Night's Dream, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), conceived by Mendelssohn before the age of twenty, have ranked among the most enduring of the nineteenth-century orchestral repertoire. R. Larry Todd offers a historical, stylistic, and analytical guide to these three remarkable works. His clearly structured and accessible text is supported by a wealth of primary documents, including Mendelssohn's correspondence, memoirs of his friends, and nineteenth-century critical reviews.