The work is scored for an orchestra consisting of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B flat and A, two bassoons, two horns in C and A, two horns in E, F and D, two trumpets in D, timpani, and strings. Form Mendelssohn's symphony is in four interconnected movements: Unusually, Mendelssohn marked the movements to be performed without breaks, and underlined the connection between the symphony's parts by making them grow from the continual thematic transformation of the original idea he had notated in 1829, presented in the slow introduction to the first movement. Despite this overriding concern for musical unity the emotional scope of the work is wide, consisting of a dark and stormy first movement, a joyous and fairly brief second movement, a slow movement maintaining an apparent struggle between love and fate, and a finale that takes its components from Scottish folk dance. The lively second movement is melodically and rhythmically in the style of Scottish folk music, using the notes of the pentatonic scale and the characteristic Scotch snap rhythm, although no direct quotations have ever been identified. A novel feature lies in the coda of the finale, where Mendelssohn introduces a new majestic theme in A major to close the work in a contrasting manner to the rest of the A minor finale. Akin to a victory hymn and intended by Mendelssohn to allude to a male-voice choir, this ending returns to the balladic tone of the first movement's introduction, transforming the material of the original inspiration for the piece Mendelssohn had twelve years before. Contemporary musicians such as Robert Schumann found the effect highly poetic, though some later twentieth-century critics have shown aversion to the 'happy ending'. The conductor Otto Klemperer, for instance, disliked this coda and wrote his own ending in a vein similar to the general character of the movement. Recordings of him conducting both endings are available. However, removing the maestoso coda destroys the intricate cyclic structure Mendelssohn has created across the symphony's four movements and nowadays critics are more inclined to recognize the composer's original and lasting contribution to the nineteenth-century symphony. Media References External links Full score Mendelssohn in Scotland Symphonies by Felix Mendelssohn 1842 compositions Compositions in A minor