Johan Julius Christian "Jean" / "Janne" Sibelius (
pronunciation?; December 8,
1865 – September 20, 1957) was
a Finnish composer of classical music and one of the most notable composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His
music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity.
Sibelius was born into a Swedish-speaking family in Hämeenlinna in the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. Although known as "Janne" to his family, during his student years he
began using the French form of his name, "Jean", inspired by the business card of his seafaring uncle. In Finland he is known as Jean Sibelius.
Against the larger context of the rise of the Fennoman movement and its expressions of
Romantic Nationalism, his family decided to send him to a Finnish language school, and he attended The Hämeenlinna Normal-lycée
from 1876 to 1885. Romantic Nationalism was to become a crucial
element in Sibelius' artistic output and his politics.
The core of Sibelius' oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies. Like Beethoven, Sibelius used each one both to develop a single musical idea and to develop further his
own personal compositional style. These works continue to be performed frequently in the concert hall and are often recorded.
In addition to the Symphonies, Sibelius' best-known compositions include Finlandia, Valse Triste, the Violin Concerto, the Karelia Suite and
The Swan of Tuonela (one of the four movements of the Lemminkäinen Suite). Other works include pieces inspired by the Kalevala, over 100 songs for voice and piano,
incidental music for 13 plays, the opera Jungfrun i tornet (The Maiden in the
Tower), chamber music, piano music, 21 separate
publications of choral music, and Masonic ritual music.
Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s. However, soon after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924) and the tone poem
Tapiola (1926), he produced no large scale works for the remaining thirty
years of his life. Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he did attempt to continue writing, including abortive
attempts to compose an eighth symphony. He wrote some Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works during this last period of
his life, and retained an active interest in new developments in music, although he did not always view modern music
favorably.
Life and work
After Sibelius graduated from high school in 1885, he began to study law at Aleksander's Imperial University in
Helsinki. However, he was more interested in music than in law, and he soon quit his studies.
From 1885 to 1889, Sibelius studied music in the Helsinki music school (now the Sibelius Academy). One of his teachers there was Martin
Wegelius. Sibelius continued studying in Berlin (from 1889 to 1890) and in Vienna (from 1890 to 1891).
Jean Sibelius married Aino Järnefelt (1871–1969) at Maxmo on June 10, 1892. Their home, called
Ainola, was completed at Lake Tuusula, Järvenpää in 1903, and the two lived out the remainder of their lives there.
They had six daughters: Eva, Ruth, Kirsti (who died at a very young age), Katarine, Margaret, and Heidi.
In 1911, Sibelius underwent a serious operation for suspected throat cancer. The impact of this brush with death can be seen in several of the works that he composed at the time,
including Luonnotar and the Fourth
Symphony.
Sibelius loved nature, and the Finnish landscape often served as material for his music. He once said of his Sixth Symphony, "[It] always reminds me of the scent of the first snow." The forests
surrounding Ainola are often said to have inspired his composition of Tapiola. On the subject of Sibelius' ties to nature,
one biographer of the composer, Erik Tawaststjerna, wrote the following[citation needed]:
Even by Nordic standards, Sibelius responded with exceptional intensity to the moods of nature and the changes in the seasons:
he scanned the skies with his binoculars for the geese flying over the lake ice, listened to the screech of the cranes, and heard
the cries of the curlew echo over the marshy grounds just below Ainola. He savoured the spring blossoms every bit as much as he
did autumnal scents and colours.
The year 1926 saw a sharp and lasting decline in Sibelius' output: after his Seventh Symphony, he only produced a few major works in the rest of his life. Arguably the two
most significant were incidental music for Shakespeare's The Tempest and the tone poem Tapiola. For nearly the
last thirty years of his life, Sibelius even avoided talking about his music.
There is substantial evidence that Sibelius worked on an eighth numbered
symphony. He promised the premiere of this symphony to Serge Koussevitzky in
1931 and 1932, and a London performance in 1933 under Basil
Cameron was even advertised to the public. However, the only concrete evidence for the symphony's existence on paper is a
1933 bill for a fair copy of the first movement [2]. Sibelius had always been quite self-critical; he remarked to his close friends, "If I cannot write a better
symphony than my Seventh, then it shall be my last." Since no manuscript survives, sources consider it likely that Sibelius
destroyed all traces of the score, probably in 1945, during which year he certainly consigned (in
his wife's presence) a great many papers to the flames.[3]
His 90th birthday, in 1955, was widely celebrated and both the Philadelphia
Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas
Beecham gave special performances of his music. The orchestras and their conductors also met the composer at his home; a
series of memorable photographs were taken to commemorate the occasions. Both Columbia Records and EMI released some of the
pictures with albums of Sibelius' music. Beecham was honored by the Finnish government for his efforts to promote Sibelius both
in the United Kingdom and in the United States.
Tawaststjerna also relayed an endearing anecdote regarding Sibelius' death[citation needed]:
[He] was returning from his customary morning walk. Exhilarated, he told his wife Aino that he had seen a flock of cranes
approaching. "There they come, the birds of my youth," he exclaimed. Suddenly, one of the birds broke away from the formation and
circled once above Ainola. It then rejoined the flock to continue its journey. Two days afterwards Sibelius died of a
brain haemorrhage, at age 91 (on September 20,
1957), in Ainola, where he is buried in a garden. Another well-known Finnish composer,
Heino Kaski, died that same day. Aino lived there for the next twelve years until she died
on June 8, 1969; she is buried with her husband.
In 1972, Sibelius' surviving daughters sold Ainola to the State of Finland. The Ministry of Education and the Sibelius Society opened it as a
museum in 1974.
Musical style
Like many of his contemporaries, Sibelius was initially enamored with the music of Wagner. A performance of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival had a strong effect on him, inspiring him to write to his wife shortly thereafter,
"Nothing in the world has made such an impression on me, it moves the very strings of my heart." He studied the scores of
Wagner's operas Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Die Walküre intently. With this music
in mind, Sibelius began work on an opera of his own, entitled Veneen luominen
(The Building of the Boat).
However, his appreciation for Wagner waned and Sibelius ultimately rejected Wagner's Leitmotif compositional technique, considering it to be too deliberate and calculated. Departing from
opera, he later used the musical material from the incomplete Veneen luominen in his Lemminkäinen Suite (1893).
More lasting influences included Ferruccio Busoni, Anton Bruckner and Tchaikovsky. Hints of Tchaikovsky's
music are particularly evident in works such as Sibelius' First Symphony
(1899) and his Violin Concerto
(1905). Similarities to Bruckner are most strongly felt in the 'unmixed' timbral palette and sombre
brass chorales of Sibelius' orchestration, as well as in the latter composer's fondness for pedal points and in the underlying
slow pace of his music.
Sibelius progressively stripped away formal markers of sonata form in his work
and, instead of contrasting multiple themes, he focused on the idea of continuously evolving cells and fragments culminating in a
grand statement. His later works are remarkable for their sense of unbroken development, progressing by means of thematic
permutations and derivations. The completeness and organic feel of this synthesis has prompted some to suggest that Sibelius
began his works with their finished statement and worked backwards, although analyses showing these predominantly three- and
four-note cells and melodic fragments as they are developed and expanded into the larger "themes" effectively prove the
opposite.[1]
This self-contained structure stood in stark contrast to the symphonic style of Gustav
Mahler, Sibelius' primary rival in symphonic composition. While thematic variation played a major role in the works of
both composers, Mahler's style made use of disjunct, abruptly changing and contrasting themes, while Sibelius sought to slowly
transform thematic elements. Sibelius reported that while on a walk with Mahler during his conducting tour of Finland in November
1907,
| “ |
I said that I admired [the symphony's] severity of style and the profound logic that
created an inner connection between all the motifs... Mahler's opinion was just the reverse. 'No, a symphony must be like the
world. It must embrace everything.'[2] |
” |
However, the two rivals did find common ground in their music. Like Mahler, Sibelius made frequent use both of folk music and
of literature in the composition of his works. The Second Symphony's slow
movement was sketched from the motive of Il Commendatore in Don Giovanni,
while the stark Fourth Symphony combined work for a planned "Mountain"
symphony with a tone poem based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". Sibelius also wrote several tone poems
based on Finnish poetry, beginning with the early En Saga and culminating in the late
Tapiola (1926), his last major composition.
Over time, he sought to use new chord patterns, including naked tritones (for example in the Fourth Symphony), and bare
melodic structures to build long movements of music, in a manner similar to Joseph Haydn's
use of built-in dissonances. Sibelius would often alternate melodic sections
with blaring brass chords that would swell and fade away, or he would underpin his
music with repeating figures which push against the melody and counter-melody.
Sibelius' melodies often feature powerful modal implications: for example much of the
Sixth Symphony is in the (modern) Dorian
mode. Sibelius studied Renaissance polyphony, as did his contemporary, the Danish
composer Carl Nielsen, and Sibelius' music often reflects the influence of this early
music. He often varied his movements in a piece by changing the note values of melodies, rather than the conventional change of
tempi. He would often draw out one melody over a number of notes, while playing a different melody
in shorter rhythm. For example, his Seventh Symphony comprises four movements
without pause, where every important theme is in C major or C minor; the variation comes from the time and rhythm. His harmonic
language was often restrained, even iconoclastic, compared to many of his contemporaries who were already experimenting with
musical Modernism. As reported by Neville Cardus in the Manchester Guardian newspaper in 1958,
| “ |
Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers
were engaged in manufacturing cocktails he offered the public pure cold water.[3] |
” |
Reception
Because of its alleged conservatism, Sibelius' music is sometimes considered insufficiently complex, but he was immediately
respected by even his more progressive peers. Later in life he was championed by critic Olin
Downes, who wrote a biography, but he was attacked by composer-critic Virgil
Thomson.
Sibelius has sometimes been criticized as a reactionary or even incompetent figure in 20th century classical music. In
1938 Theodor Adorno wrote a critical essay about the
composer, notoriously charging that
| “ |
If Sibelius is good, this invalidates the standards of musical quality that have
persisted from Bach to Schoenberg: the
richness of inter-connectedness, articulation, unity in diversity, the 'multi-faceted' in 'the one'.[4] |
” |
Composer and theorist René Leibowitz went so far as to describe Sibelius as "the worst
composer in the world" in the title of a 1955 pamphlet.[5]
Despite the innovations of the Second Viennese School, he continued to write in a
strictly tonal idiom. However, critics who have sought to re-evaluate Sibelius' music have
cited its self-contained internal structure, which distills everything down to a few motivic ideas and then permits the music to
grow organically, as evidence of a previously under-appreciated radical bent to his work. The severe nature of Sibelius'
orchestration is often noted as representing a "Finnish" character, stripping away the superfluous from music.
Perhaps one reason Sibelius has attracted both the praise and the ire of critics is that in each of his seven symphonies he
approached the basic problems of form, tonality, and architecture in unique, individual ways. On the one hand, his symphonic (and
tonal) creativity was novel, but others thought that music should be taking a different route. Sibelius' response to criticism
was dismissive: "Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been put up to a critic."
Sibelius has fallen in and out of fashion, but remains one of the most popular 20th
century symphonists, with complete cycles of his symphonies continuing to be recorded. In his own time, however, he
focused far more on the more profitable chamber music for home use, and occasionally on works for the stage. Eugene Ormandy and, to a lesser extent, his predecessor Leopold
Stokowski, were instrumental in bringing Sibelius' music to the American audience by programming his works often, and the
former thereby developed a friendly relationship with Sibelius throughout his life. Currently Paavo Berglund and Colin Davis are considered major exponents of his
work. Other classic sets of recordings of the symphonies are by John Barbirolli,
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Leonard Bernstein,
Simon Rattle and Lorin Maazel. Herbert von Karajan was also associated with Sibelius, recording all of the symphonies except the
Third, some several times. Recently Osmo
Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra released a critically acclaimed
complete Sibelius cycle, including unpublished or retracted pieces such as the first versions of the Fifth Symphony (1915) and the Violin Concerto (1903).
In 1990, the composer Thea Musgrave was commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra to write a piece in honour of the 125th anniversary of
Sibelius' birth. Song of the Enchanter was premiered on 14 February 1991.[6]
Media
Selected works
These are ordered chronologically; the date is the date of composition rather than publication or first performance.
Orchestral works
- Kullervo, Symphony for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra, Op.7
(1892)
- En Saga, Tone Poem for orchestra, Op.9 (1892)
- Karelia Overture for orchestra, Op.10 (1893)
- Karelia Suite for orchestra, Op.11 (1893)
- Rakastava (The Lover) for male voices and strings or strings and percussion, Op.14 (1893/1911)
- Lemminkäinen Suite (Four Legends from the Kalevala) for orchestra, Op.22 (1893) - these legends, which include The Swan of Tuonela, are often performed separately
- Skogsrået (The Wood Nymph), Tone Poem for orchestra, Op.15 (1894)
- Vårsång for orchestra, Op.16 (1894)
- Kung Kristian (King Christian), Suite from the incidental music for
orchestra, Op.27 (1898)
- Sandels, Improvisation for chorus and orchestra, Op.28 (1898)
- Finlandia for orchestra and optional chorus, Op.26 (1899)
- Snöfrid for reciter, chorus and orchestra, Op.29 (1899)
- Tulen synty (The Origin of Fire), Op.32 (1902)
- Symphony No. 1 in E minor for orchestra, Op.39 (1899/1900)
- Symphony No. 2 in D major for orchestra, Op.43 (1902)
- Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.47 (1903/1905)
- Kuolema (Valse Triste and Scene with Cranes) for orchestra, Op.44
(1904/1906)
- Dance Intermezzo for orchestra, Op.45/2 (1904/1907)
- Pelléas et Mélisande, Incidental music/Suite for orchestra,
Op.46 (1905)
- Pohjolan tytär (Pohjola's Daughter), Tone Poem for orchestra, Op.49
(1906)
- Symphony No. 3 in C major for orchestra, Op.52 (1907)
- Svanevit (Swan-white), Suite from the incidental music for orchestra, Op.54
(1908)
- Nightride and Sunrise, Tone Poem for orchestra, Op.55 (1909)
- Dryadi (The Dryad) for orchestra, Op.45/1 (1910)
- Two Pieces from Kuolema for orchestra, Op.62 (1911)
- Symphony No. 4 in A minor for orchestra, Op.63 (1911)
- Two Serenades for violin and orchestra, Op.69 (1912)
- Barden (The Bard), Tone Poem for orchestra and harp, Op.64
(1913/1914)
- Luonnotar, Tone Poem for soprano and orchestra, Op.70 (1913)
- Aallottaret (The Oceanides), Tone Poem for orchestra, Op.73 (1914)
- Symphony No. 5 in E flat major for orchestra, Op.82 (1915, revised 1916
and 1919)
- Oma Maa (Our Fatherland) for chorus and orchestra, Op.92 (1918)
- Jordens sång (Song of the Earth) for chorus and orchestra, Op.93 (1919)
- Symphony No. 6 for orchestra, Op.104 (1923)
- Symphony No. 7 in C major for orchestra, Op.105 (1924)
- Stormen (The Tempest), Incidental music for soloists, chorus and orchestra,
Op.109 (1925)
- Väinön virsi (Väinö's song) for chorus and orchestra, Op.110 (1926)
- Tapiola, Tone Poem for orchestra, Op.112 (1926)
- Andante Festivo for string orchestra (1925/1930)
Other works
- Viisi joululaulua, Op. 1, five Christmas songs (1895–1913)
- Seven Songs, Op.17, with lyrics by J. L. Runeberg, K.A. Tavaststjerna, Oscar Levertin, A.V.
Forsman (Koskimies, Finnish surname), and Ilmari Calamnius (Kianto, Finnish surname).
Composed between 1891 and 1904.
- Incidental music to Hjalmar Procopé's play Belshazzar's Feast, Op.51 (1906); this was mainly for orchestra but voices were called for in
some places. He later rescored some sections of the incidental music as a purely orchestral suite; in 1939 he wrote a new version
of the section called "Solitude" (originally called "The Jewish Girl’s Song" in the incidental music) as a song, dedicated to
Marian Anderson
- Voces intimae, Op.56, string quartet
(1909)
- Jääkärimarssi (1915)
See also
Notes
- ^ Pike
- ^ Burnett-James, p. 41
- ^ Burnett-James, p. 94
- ^
Adorno, Theodor (1938), "Törne, B. de, Sibelius; A Close Up", Zeitschrift
für Sozialforschung 7: 460-463. Later reprinted as "Glosse über Sibelius". Cited and translated in
Jackson, Timothy L. (2001), "Preface", in Jackson, Timothy L. & Murtomäki, Veijo, Sibelius Studies,
Cambridge University Press, pp. xviii, ISBN 0521624169, <http://books.google.com/books?id=6p9lAkbz7fAC&pg=PR18&vq=%22if+sibelius+is+good%22&dq=%22sibelius+studies%22&sig=IvW86aN-JhSmvekkgBHjuhqy3ek>
- ^ Leibowitz, René (1955).
Sibelius, le plus mauvais compositeur du monde. Liège, Belgium: Éditions Dynamo. OCLC
28594116.
- ^ [1]
References
- Burnett-James, David (1989). Sibelius.
London, New York: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0711916837.
- Pike, Lionel (1978). Beethoven, Sibelius and 'the Profound Logic': Studies in
Symphonic Analysis. London: The Athlone Press. ISBN 0 485 11178 0.
Further reading
- Layton, Robert. Sibelius. New York: Schirmer Books, 1993. Master Musicians Series. ISBN 0-02-871322-2.
- Minnesota Orchestra's showcase concert magazine, May 6, page 44
- Morgan, Robert P. [1990]. "Other European Currents", The Norton Introduction
to Music History: Twentieth-Century Music, 1st edition, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 121-123. ISBN
0-393-95272-X.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
