JEAN SIBELIUS (1865-1957) PART 3 (From 1910)

Following his quartet Voces Intimae Sibelius began writing, or rather

wrestling with, his fourth symphony. It is likely that his abandoned ideas
for both a setting of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe and a newly started
quartet found their way into the symphony. Its very opening has a
chamber music quality. Double basses and cellos plumb the depths with
a sombre theme entwined in rich harmony between the whole cello
section alongside a lone single cello. A recent recording made by the
BBC conducted by Andrew Manze reproduces this chamber music effect
brilliantly and this may well therefore signify it being a legacy from that
embryo of a quartet.
Of all his symphonies the fourth caused more bewilderment than any
other. It is variously described as bare, bleak, dark, desolate and
stripped of all non-essentials. Its score has been referred to as a
symphony written on a telegram form. That may not exactly turn you on.
Yet nowadays it is rated by many as possibly his greatest. Was it a
reflection of his fear of cancer and despair? During his last visit to
Europe he had listened to much modern music if only to find out what
was happening in the hub of the music world. This was the period of
Mahlers Seventh, bleak; Stravinsky with the Firebird Suite, Ravels
Rapsodie Espagnole, Debussys La Mer. 1909 saw the first performance
of Schoenbergs Five Pieces for Orchestra for which Henry Wood got
hissed at the 1912 proms. Later in 1914 Sibelius heard Schoenbergs
Chamber Symphony which he described as a legitimate and valid way
of looking at things ... But certainly painful to listen to. Sibelius must
have been at this stage pondering as to what direction he should now be
taking.
A short look at the fourth symphony may not go amiss particularly as it is
not on Matthews agenda for this series. This time it is cast in the
traditional four movement form. I have already described its dark
opening. After its exposition and a nebulous development there follows a
truncated recapitulation when only the last part of the exposition gets
replayed. Yet further contraction. The second movement is a scherzo
and trio but the scherzo does not return. It is simply alluded to by a few
notes before fading out. The slow movement is one of those where the
second theme grows more and more extended at each appearance. To
begin with there is but a snatch of a distant theme on muted horns; it
then returns growing and expanding at each occasion until eventually
the whole orchestra bursts out with it. It is only a few bars but more than
enough to restore a sense of equilibrium. It feels as if the sun is

emerging through black clouds and for one glorious moment lighting up
the surrounding landscape. The fourth movement appears to lighten up,
a return to the Sibelius of the shimmering strings and with bells. The
bells are usually tinkled out on a glockenspiel but I first heard it in
concert on tubular bells back in 1954 under Basil Cameron at a prom.
The score actually says glocken which are bells and not glockenspiel.
I was more than delighted to make their re-acquaintance when Matthew
in a series Music 1910-1914 played the CD of Neeme Jrvi which
made sure about this by including both.
There is one musicological aspect to this symphony which I want to
mention despite my being a gentleman and not a player. In all four
movements Sibelius uses what is called the augmented fourth, also
known as the tritone. It permeates the whole symphony. This interval of
sound was pronounced upon by the Church in mediaeval times as
Diabolus in Musica (the Devil in Music). Most combinations of notes are
mainly euphonious but the tritone has always been treated as ungodly
as it is discordant. In Sibelius Fourth it appears in many guises. It may
form the interval of sound between two successive notes (C-F); then
there may be an ordinary phrase which is played in one key and then
repeated in a key which is uncomfortably an augmented fourth above or
below. Listeners who were happily familiar with the simple harmonies of
Sibelius in sonorous thirds were taken aback. Yet, here in the last
movement he presents them with clashing discords of the jarring
augmented fourth. Today experienced listeners know what to expect.
Then, audiences were left bewildered by its modernism.
Oddly enough it might be argued that this last movement stretches out a
hand by Sibelius to our other protagonist of this series, Carl Nielsen. In
the middle of this last movement Sibelius produces two musical devils,
one based on C and one based on A which lock devils horns with each
other to reach a point of conflict where each strives for ascendancy.
Now that sounds to me very much like the language of Nielsen, not
Sibelius, particularly Nielsens fourth symphony written five years later,
the Inextinguishable.1 Of his fourth symphony Nielsen, the optimist, saw
it as life affirming. Of his fourth symphony Sibelius, the pessimist,
claimed "It stands as a protest against present-day music. He also
quoted from Strindberg One feels pity for human beings
One must have felt pity for the first Helsinki audience who politely
applauded but hardly knew where to look. This was much the same
1

I have since spoken to Matthew about this and he confirms my comment is valid but also rightly points out that this example
by Sibelius is of short passing duration whilst Nielsens conflicts last throughout the work.

result wherever the work was first played. It wasnt just the audiences.
In New York, Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony
Orchestra claimed that he could not understand it after eight rehearsals
and warned the audience of the difficulties they might face, many of
whom walked out between movements.
It was worse for Felix
Weingartner who was conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. The
orchestra simply refused to play it. They have always had a reputation
of being bolshie, anti feminist and anti semitic. They had certainly made
Mahlers life a misery. The odd thing is that usually if something went
wrong with a new work Sibelius would withdraw it. This time he was
made of sterner stuff and stood his ground. Oddly enough the audiences
back home began to come round. First of all he was the great national
hero, no mere here today, gone tomorrow David Beckham. They came
out in full support. At the same time Sibelius was composing other new
works, a second series of Scnes Historiques; a re-orchestration of
Rakastava first written for chorus in 1he 1890s. With these new gems
Sibelius could be excused for the oddity of his fourth symphony if they
didnt get it.
Back in the period between1911 and 1913 Sibelius was emerging from
the lower depths of the Fourth Symphony but, if no longer in quite such a
black mood, he was still in one of his fifty shades of navy blue.
Interestingly The Vienna Music Academy offered him a professorship in
composition, a reliable source of income had he taken it but he decided
to turn it down to make sure he would have enough time for composing.
Vienna had been the happy period of his student days but one cannot
imagine the family moving out of Ainola. With hindsight there would also
have been the difficulties of the World War not too far off. These were
the years that produced some very individual works from him, The Bard,
Luonnotar and the Oceanides.
The Bard was written in 1913 and rewritten the next year but not played
till 1916. No-one is quite certain who the bard was or what was its
inspiration. There was a degree of cross fertilization between the works
he was writing. The Oceanides was originally conceived to be in three
parts. The first part is missing and could well have found its way into the
Bard which had a working title of The Naiads to begin with. Sibeliuss
biographer, Erik Tawaststjerna thought that the composer was probably
inspired by a poem of Runeberg, called The Bard, but Sibelius
discredited that and said that it was "something like an ancient
Scandinavian ballad from the time of the Vikings". It is written with a
prominent harp solo with small orchestra mainly with strings and rising
brass chords. What with bards and harps you would have thought it
might have been one for an International Eisteddfod. In fact the nearest

Sibelius would get to Wales was Gloucester for the Three Choirs
Festival. In 1913 he at last completed Luonnotar for Aino Ackt which
was given its first performance in September of that year. It is a difficult
work and rarely gets a performance because it needs a skilful soprano
who can sing in Finnish, like they do. He had had the character of
Luonnotar in mind as early as 1894 when writing sketches for an opera.
The early workings for Pohjolas Daughter as we have seen were with
Luonnotar in mind. The piece takes only about 10 minutes, but has been
avoided by many singers because of its formidable challenges. There
are leaps and drops of almost an octave, sometimes within a single
word. Elizabeth Schwarzkopf sang it in Helsinki in 1955, saying it was
the "best thing she had ever done in her life". To be fair she lived on
another 51 years! At this time Sibelius was at work on the fifth and sixth
symphonies although they would take years to appear in their final
versions. At this stage it was not yet clear which ideas would go into
which. He had thought of calling the sixth Luonnatar!
The Oceanides refers to the female sprites who inhabited the waters
according to Greek mythology but the original Finnish title was Aallottaret
("Spirits of the Waves"). Conceived originally in three movements we
know the first was lost and the second two were sketches which he
would reduce to one movement. He sent a sketch to the Norfolk
(Conneticut) Festival and received an immediate commission from the
millionaire, Carl Stoeckel, the Festival promoter, and an invitation to
attend. Sibelius jumped at the idea although Aino was none too sure.
The work still remained to be finished and Aino recorded in her diary the
frantic energy to complete it before embarkation. Sibelius was up all
night, not to be interrupted, writing the last twenty pages. The copyist
was living in and at hand at Ainola. It had been conceived and written in
D flat but at the last moment Sibelius switched it to D to make it easier
for the string players. The orchestra of a hundred was to be recruited
from the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the
Metropolitan Opera.
On the voyage over he still made further
corrections in his cabin as he gathered further thoughts from scanning
the ocean. Oceanides is by Sibelius standards one of the most individual
works he wrote but absolutely accessible. It is written for a standard
orchestra augmented by two harps, a second timpanist and also
according to the score, stahlstbe, which translates as steel bars. It is
the one work of Sibelius described as impressionist, an impression of the
sea and the swimmers. More reminiscent of Ravel perhaps than
Debussy The Daybreak sequence from Daphnis and Chloes with its
dawn chorus of birds is a touch like Sibelius who gives us gulls
swooping, screeching and skimming the water as the wind force

increases to a mighty wave. One kettledrummer has the role of standard

percussionist whilst the other plays a continuous roll up and down
representing the sea bed. Now there is no-one but absolutely no-one
who can match Sibelius for a storm, not your Mendelssohns, not your
Wagners nor your Debussys. Sibelius had become a past master of
nature painting. We meet the fury of the forest led by the tuba in the slow
movement of the second symphony; also near the end of Tapiola where
there is a howling gale which carries all before it; in the seventh
symphony high siren like horns howl the most awesome storm sound
from out of nowhere. Sibelius would have observed elemental nature at
work from the windows of Ainola. With Oceanides the music is not just
pictorial but maintains its own musical structure and control holding its
key changes through the all mighty great wave. We cannot possess the
minds eye of Sibelius. Speaking for myself I perceive not some Aegean
Hellenic cruise but the North Atlantic at work where at the end of the
storm peace and calm return.
The Festival was successful with Sibelius invited to return the next year
to lead a concert tour. He enthused at the idea writing to his brother that
fifty concerts would clear both their debts. In happy mood he returned at
the end of July just in time before World War One got under way.
Finland was on the fringes of the war but was a combatant despite itself,
still being part of Russia, one of the three great allies with France and
Great Britain. Still the general Finnish feeling towards Russia was that
Russias enemy is my friend which therefore led to sympathy for
Germany and the Central Powers. For Sibelius there was, as with other
composers, a drying up of big compositions and travelling was difficult
except to Sweden. Added to this was a difficulty in receiving royalties.
His publishers, Breitkopf and Hartel were on the wrong side. Still they
contrived to see he got paid by diverting remittances through the neutral
Danish publishers, Hanson, a smart piece of money laundering that.
Much of what he composed were songs and piano pieces. He had as
we have seen been at work on a fifth symphony and sixth symphony and
other ideas took root which would find their way ultimately into the
seventh with all three being written at the same time albeit in different
stages. 1915 would see his fiftieth birthday in December of that year and
the Finnish government commissioned from and honoured him with his
fifth symphony to celebrate the event. He had been at work at different
times on it over three years and finished it in a last minute gasp in time
for the first performance. It was a great success with his birthday
proclaimed a public holiday. Yet Sibelius was far from satisfied. It was
his habit to touch up his scores after the practicality of a first

performance but in the case of the fifth symphony he felt it needed

remoulding. We have been fortunate to hear the original version with
Matthew, an archaeological dig of composer at work but truly not
intended to be reproduced once the composer has disclaimed it to
produce his further thoughts. The original is in four movements and to
us who know the final version it is disconcerting to hear familiar phrases
in the wrong place on the wrong combination of instruments, ably
demonstrated by Matthew. The final six bare hammer blows as we know
them originally served as accompanying chords to an elongated note to
create a conventional ending. Sibelius wrote two revised versions, the
first played in 1917 of which we know little but the great change was for
the ultimate 1919 version. It gradually dawned on Sibelius that there was
something incomplete in each of his first two movements and the great
revision was to contract and merge them into one movement. Unlike the
third symphony where the finale is joined by almost a single stitch, the
first two movements of the fifth have their themes entwined. The join is
wondrous in the concert hall or when you turn up your equipment (if and
when you can get away with it). The bird call responses at the opening
grow into great fanfares as the whole orchestra swells to great heights to
introduce seamlessly what would be the scherzo, mingled with snatches
from the first part. What I find ludicrous was an account of the differing
views of the great critics, Cecil Gray, Gerald Abraham and Robert Layton
as to where the development ended and where was the recapitulation
and if it could be properly attributed to sonata form. Here was Sibelius,
the greatest symphonist of his time and since, who by an act of genius
had moulded his material into one mighty structure and these academics
squabbling over where the bricks should be placed. No wonder Sibelius
once quipped No-one has ever built a statue to a critic. The second
movement is a gentle intermezzo similar to that in the third symphony
which in fact is the one I prefer of the two. The final movement is a flurry
of strings. The string section of an orchestra is conventionally divided
into five, first and second violins, violas, cellos and basses. In this
symphony each of those sections is further sub-divided so that by the
time they all join in the fray there are seventeen sections all buzzing
away at the same time. The movement generates its tension with the
swinging horn theme (are they really cranes?) repeated by the trumpets,
on beat and off beat, concordant and discordant, until the final pedal
notes are interrupted by those six staccato hammer blows.
In total contrast to the symphony its first performance in final form was
accompanied by the first performance of the Six Humoresques for violin
and orchestra, so delightfully once played to us by Fenella Humphreys.
Sibelius had been toying with the idea of writing a second violin concerto

but that was not to be. The Humoresques due to a mathematical error
are opp 87/89 but I would not let that worry you. This is Sibelius
returning to the great love of his youth, the violin. Its drawback is not the
music but their commerciality. They take twenty minutes in all and few
violinists of stature can find a slot for them when it comes to
programming. These are not plush seat romantics, nor Paganini like
circus show offs. They are light in texture with string accompaniment
with additional woodwinds in four of them. They are reflective rather than
tragic but Sibelius gives the violinist enough opportunity to demonstrate
his/her skills. A touch gypsyish, they display the dancing qualities of the
violin.
Sibelius had well and truly recovered from the lows of his fourth
symphony and 1917 to 1919 had given birth to the triumph of the revised
versions of his fifth symphony. One might never hazard a guess at the
background. In October 1917 the Soviet Government was formed under
Lenin. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, between the new
Bolshevik government and the Germany and its allies ended Russia's
participation in World War I. Lenin had sufficient problems on his hands
that Finland awoke to obtain its independence from Russia. That
background is perhaps reflected at the end of Symphony No 5. What
followed was a bloody civil war for power between the Whites supported
by Germany and the Reds who looked to Russia. 10,000 Finns were
killed. Sibelius was on the side of the Whites but Jarvenpaa was in a
Red controlled area and Ainola was under siege. Sibelius and his family
had to be got out and arrangements were made to move the family to
Helsinki where they resided until the ultimate victory of the Whites and
their moving back home into Ainola. The end of hostilities might have
brought peace on earth but did not end the financial problems of
Sibelius. His publishers were still Breitkopf and Hartel, still in Leipzig but
now of the Weimar Republic whose currency was taking a tumble.
Eventually this was sorted for once and all. Sibelius moved to the house
of Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen who would publish his last
symphonies and Tapiola. Secondly a new international convention as to
royalties was agreed, dollar bottomed, and at long last the income began
to flow in for the greatest composer on earth.
In contrast to the fifth, the sixth symphony, which he had been writing at
the same time, was completed in 1922. It is as peaceful as Palestrina
whom Sibelius was said to be studying. It is actually written in the Dorian
mode which is from D to D on the piano keyboard. This gives a slightly
mediaeval effect la Vaughan Williams. If the fifth has cut the
symphony back in physical size it is the sixth which effects spiritual

change. It is in four short separate movements and it has an end of

winter-beginning of spring feel about it. The snowdrops are out. The
orchestra with two additional harps sounds light and springy. No words
of mine can describe the recapitulation in the first movement. There is a
sense of a wintry warm sunrise as the music rises up. This is Sibelius
the Nature Painter, now tranquil and free of storm and stress. The sixth
moves on naturally from there to the seventh symphony in 1924.
Sibelius has positioned himself to make one further surgical operation to
achieve total contraction to a single movement symphony. His plans
when writing it were for a three or four movement symphony but
gradually his ideas followed the logic of the fifth symphony. There we
saw the contraction of two movements and merger into one. Now he
contracts all his ideas into one single movement which contains all the
essential elements that one will find in the conventional four movement
symphony. The mould of a single movement symphony does not lend
itself to excess and triumph. There is the prevailing spiritual feeling
displayed in the sixth. As in the first movement of the second symphony,
various unrelated motifs are played which return towards the end orbiting
round each other. There is a unifying recurring motif played on a solo
trombone which acts as a signpost at each stage to light the way. Its
first appearance follows a tranquil adagio and evokes a sense of sheer
sunlit happiness. It is well nigh impossible to convey the images each
section brings to mind. I could write about wood nymphs skipping or a
lone star twinkling at night. These are my individual imaginings and
probably bear no relation to what went on in the creative mind of
Sibelius. It is the trombone which returns to lead the way to a last climax
which every programme note writer who has cribbed from another
describes as Olympian. Celestial and sylvan is how I personally see
this work which lasts a mere twenty two minutes and says it all.
Very much related to the seventh symphony is Tapiola written in 1926
and commissioned by Walter Damrosch. This would be the last major
orchestral work he would write and, as at the beginning with En Saga, is
Kalevala based. He decided to travel to Rome and the island of Capri
where he began working on what was originally to be called "The
Forest". Tapiola was completed at Ainola but there was a problem. He
wanted the score back for correction. He had not conducted it but had
sent it to Damrosch. Sibelius managed to make the few necessary
corrections to the work after he conducted it in Copenhagen. His selfcriticism was increasing but it yet remained to reach the point of
impossibility. The original quatrain suggested by Sibelius which heads
the score is as follows:

" Widespread they stand, the Northland's dusky forests,

Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;
Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God,
And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.
Tapiola is the domain of the Forest God, Tapio. The work is described by
some as monothematic. Here we go again because there are to my ear
two clear themes, one which is immediately announced and, after a
climb up the scale on strings, a second subject announced on the
woodwinds which dominates the majority of the work. Who am I to
argue with such eminent musicologists? Still I do have on my side one
Jean Sibelius who claimed it to be in sonata form which implies two
subjects. The work is atmospheric and strange. It is a description of the
forests with their murmurs and shudders, with strange outbursts from the
brass and followed by eerie pizzicato, first in the lower strings and then
taken over by the high violins. The end comes with a whirlwind starting
quietly and reaching a force 10 gale. If you like visual effect this work
was first heard by me on disc played at a dinner set to a background of
shadows from flickering candles.
Sibelius had reached his late style but here he was writing works
inspired by the Kalevala as he had been doing for more than thirty years.
His symphonies had been
pared down to a single movement and it seemed he did not know which
way to go without repeating himself. His self doubt, for which there was
no justification, seemed to overtake him. He continued with a few minor
works and one last shot at incidental music, this time for a production in
Copenhagen of Shakespeares Tempest. And there was no-one better
qualified to know how to reproduce a tempest, as Matthew will
demonstrate. It seems that Sibelius had become the victim of his own
success. He was feted by the state and all those about him and he
probably felt that anything he now wrote had to live up to that reputation.
He just could not bring himself to release into the public domain
whatever he might have striven to write. The longest writers block in
history was taking place. To begin with he did not know it but he needed
help. Great conductors asked when symphony number eight would
appear and promises and assurances were given, well intentioned no
doubt. The one person who might have helped, Carpelan, had died in
1919. We know Sibelius stated on a number of occasions the eighth
was written or nearly written. There is a record of two movements being
sent to the copyist; in 1931 he wrote to Aino from Berlin stating that the
symphony was doing well; he promised it to Koussevitsky who was
planning a cycle of the symphonies in Boston ending with the new

number eight. Sibelius went along with it and later wrote, more in panic
than sorrow, to say it would not be ready in time. Basil Cameron, who
many may remember as assistant to Henry Wood and Malcolm Sargent
at the proms, a great journeyman conductor who started his career at
Torquay and moved up market to Hastings, established a very close
relationship with Sibelius and was told the eighth was already written.
The whole musical world was talking of the silence from Jarvenpaa, not
that Sibelius himself was silent but the more the blockage lasted the
longer the silence of music lasted. In the late 1990s a few pages were
discovered and performed, barely enough to see that he was developing
a new approach. One wonders if he might have considered writing
something of his other genres. The Kalevala would have been repeating
the same old story. Incidental music was only written on request and by
the 1930s the idea of providing drama in the theatre with incidental
music was old hat. This had been around from Beethoven (Egmont),
Mendelssohn (Midsummer Nights Dream, Grieg (Peer Gynt) and an
enormous output by Sibelius himself. These were usually written by
pros, the fore-runners of the film score. By the 1930s the talkies had
arrived and the world had moved on. Perhaps Sibelius should in the
refuge of his own home have returned to the string quartet but for
whatever reason the long silence continued.
In tandem with this, his fame as a symphonist was spreading mainly still
in Britain and the USA. The 1930s saw his symphonies recorded. The
Sibelius Society was formed by Walter Legge at HMV to record them.
They started off under the baton of Robert Kajanus who died in 1932.
His place was taken by Georges Schnevoight who was a bit dull. Sir
Thomas Beecham participated. In America there were recordings by
Koussevitsky and Ormandy.
In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact gave the Soviet Union a free hand
in its own backyard and it promptly attacked Finland to seize back
Karelia. The Finns to everyones surprise gave the Soviets a bloody
nose which in turn sent a message to Herr Hitler that he would have little
to fear by invading the Soviet Union. With the end of the war in Europe
came the eightieth birthday of Sibelius. During that year he made a fire
in his dining room pulling out masses of his sketches and drafts and
watching them go up in flame and smoke. They probably included the
eighth symphony and possibly many other treasures.
Another ten years passed by and I have some really treasured memories
of my own from that time. There was Thomas Beecham around 1954
agreeing for the first time to conduct at the Proms. He had two concerts

and to start with was Sibelius in the first half (90 minutes in those days).
In 1955 I went to my first Karajan concert at the Festival Hall and was
overwhelmed. It started with the first English work he conducted, the
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge by Benjamin Britten (thankfully I
have the recording he made); followed by Beethovens Pastoral
Symphony and to finish, what Noel Goodwin in the Daily Express
described as a white hot interpretation of Sibeliuss Fifth Symphony.
Under Karajan, said Manoug Parikian, the leader of the Philharmonia
every violinist feels like Heifetz. The outstanding memories are for the
two Sibelius 90th birthday concerts at the Festival Hall. The first was the
Philharmonia under Paul Kletzki with a thunderous performance of
Tapiola and the second symphony. Two days later on the 8 th December,
the birthday anniversary, the Royal Philharmonic played under Beecham
the fourth symphony and also Tapiola in the presence of the Finnish
ambassador. He awarded Beecham the White Rose of Finland. Back at
Ainola a short wave radio link had been hooked up so that the great
man himself could hear. In those days there were four knighted
conductors. Thomas Beecham (also a baronet) was our champion;
Adrian Boult esteemed; John Barbirolli much admired and Malcolm
Sargent, albeit the darling of the prommers, was the butt of our derision.
In the summer of 1957, Sibelius, sixty five years after its composition,
was able to dictate a new arrangement of Kullervo's Lament. In
September, he watched a flock of cranes fly close over Ainola. One
detached itself from the others and flew a circle before rejoining the
flock. Sibelius was overcome. Two days later he collapsed and died at
home in Ainola at nine o'clock that evening.
His passing at nearly 92years of age was to be expected. We could be
sad at the works he could but did not write over the previous thirty years.
It was with a wry smile that we would learn that at the time of his passing
a performance of his fifth symphony was being broadcast from Helsinki
conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.