liquid Tolkien

[calimac]

And the composer of the day, whose work was so described by ellen_kushner, is Jean Sibelius.

Today marks 50 years since Sibelius died at the age of 91, but it's closer to 80 years since he stopped composing, or at least composing anything that he ever let anyone see. The long "Silence from Järvenpää," his Finnish fastness, is the most notable long retirement from composition in musical history - more complete than Rossini's (he put out his "Sins of Old Age") and more mysterious than Copland's (he suffered from Alzheimer's).

While he was still actively composing (roughly 1890-1925), Sibelius's work became greatly renowned - first as a Finnish nationalist and then throughout the classical-listening world. In the 1930s he was probably the most popular living composer, surpassing even Stravinsky and Strauss. But a backlash hit. Sibelius's Second Symphony is a dazzling work in a good performance - Symphony Silicon Valley under Yasuo Shinozaki several years ago gave it one of the best renditions I've ever heard of anything from anybody - but the finale can get tedious if the work isn't played well. And I guess Virgil Thomson, composer and critic, heard a bad performance, because he reviewed the work as "vulgar, self-indulgent, and provincial beyond all description."

That was the beginning. In the serialist hegemony of the 50s and 60s a modern composer of tonal music was considered contemptible, and Sibelius's aspirations to grandeur may have made it worse. Even as late as 1970, critic Harold Schoenberg's attempt to rehabilitate him got no further than a weak "he deserves to occupy an honorable place among the minor composers."

"Minor composer" my foot. Sibelius has returned far since then; now he is recognized again as one of the greats, and in particular as one of the 20th century's finest symphonists. Sibelius was consciously moving against the fashionable compositional trends of his time, and preferred concision to grandiosity. He once had an argument with Mahler over the form. Mahler said, "The symphony must be like the world; it must contain everything," but Sibelius said it should have "severity of form" with "profound logic that creates an inner connection between all the motifs."

That's why I prefer Sibelius. In place of Mahler's disjointed, kitchen sink approach, Sibelius built cathedrals of sound that form a solid, cogent unity. All of his seven symphonies are striking works. The Second is the biggest and most extroverted and probably the most popular; the Fifth is right behind, notable for the big striding horn calls in the finale. At the tougher end, the Seventh, which essentially invented the condensed one-movement symphony, is perhaps the most original; and the Fourth, much of it cold and wintery, is the hardest nut to crack: you'll know you're a real Sibelius fan when you come to love it.

My own favorite is the Third, a small, classically unpretentious, work of three movements that contains the seeds for all his later major works. The first movement begins with a chattering motive on lower strings that grows into a broad theme; the slow movement is a simple beautiful flute melody that repeats without becoming repetitious; the finale begins in darkness and gradually reveals light. Throughout Sibelius maintains a perfect balance, with just enough cryptic enigma to be fascinating, but not so much as to frustrate the listener's desire for melodic and harmonic satisfaction.

As a Finnish nationalist, Sibelius is best known for a rousing tone poem called Finlandia, which to my mind exemplifies the enigmatic side of his work: it keeps threatening to really get going, but it never actually does. Among his nationalist works, I prefer the ones based on the Finnish epic myth, the Kalevala. These include a large choral symphony titled Kullervo (an early work, not fully in evolved Sibelius style, but interesting), but they're mostly shorter tone poems. Of these The Swan of Tuonela, a somber dialogue of cello and English horn against lush strings, is best known, but there are others. Pohjola's Daughter is the one which Ellen quoted in her Sound & Spirit program on Tolkien: the glorious entrance of Väinämöinen illustrated her claim that "like Tolkien, Sibelius has it all: sweeping grandeur, mystery, magic, and tragedy."

Sibelius's music has been comforting me in times of depression or stress for a long time. It's mostly better for introspective moods than for cheerful ones, because even when it ends in an outgoing vein, that ending is really earned. I'm keeping him by my side as we prepare to move house, and with the truly introspective holiday of Yom Kippur tomorrow eve, it's an even better time to listen to some Sibelius. You should too.

Comments

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

I first learned of Sibelius' music when I was a teenager, from, of all people, Morris Scott Dollens. Morris was a painter of astronomical art, chronologically sort of a godson of Bonestell and a godfather to Okuda and others. He often gave slideshows of his art at lasfs and at cons, accompanied by a recording of Sibelius' Symphony #1. That rather Tchaikovskian work was my entrée into the music of the Northern master.