JEAN SIBELIUS PART 2.

INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In Part 1 we followed Sibelius from his beginnings, his finding his own voice
particularly through works inspired by the Kalevala, his support musically against
Russian domination of Finland, and in 1899 Finlandia on the one hand and his first
symphony on the other spreading his reputation to a wider world. He was viewed as
someone special, to be nurtured, by his being awarded a pension for life that same
year. Notwithstanding, he remained beset by money difficulties and prone to having
more than one too many, if not more than that.
In 1900 he accompanied the Helsinki Philharmonic with its conductor, Robert
Kajanus, on a tour of Denmark, Sweden, Germany Holland and ending in Paris for
the Grande Exposition. He met and got to know the Swedish composer/conductor,
Wilhelm Stenhammar and in Germany Felix Weingartner who conducted the
symphony. Soon there would be added other maestros, Arturo Toscanini, Artur
Nikisch and Henry Wood, all big names who would give his repertoire a good kick
off. The works played were usually The Swan of Tuonela or Lemminkinens Return
(these were treated as individual works, the other Lemminkinens having already
dropped out of the repertoire); En Saga, Finlandia and the music for King Christian II.
His potential as a great symphonist was yet to come. At this stage it was still his
spring and a case of one symphony doesnt make a cycle.
The tour had been a great success. There now came on the scene a a strange
anonymous figure who signed his letters Music Lover. He was Baron Axel
Carpelan. He sent advice to Sibelius, suggesting what he should be doing and
writing and importantly raising money for him. Carpelan came from a long standing
Finnish aristocracy but was not himself wealthy. He raised money from industrialists
in support of Sibelius but he himself was a loner. He became the one person in
whom Sibelius could confide and discuss his works, not that he was a musician
himself. He had learned the violin but his life became devoted to pushing Sibelius.
They corresponded for nearly twenty years. Often it was one way traffic as Sibelius
did not always find time to reply. He had other supporters who would loyally promote
and encourage, not least Kajanus (with whom he had had a bad falling out at one
time), Henry Wood, Thomas Beecham, Granville Bantock and Rosa Newmarch. Yet
none of them could get as close as Carpelan, the alter ego organizer of a creative
genius. It was with Carpelan he could discuss the reconstruction of the fragments of
his original fifth symphony into its final version. It was Carpelan who had the instinct
to push Sibelius when he went into one of his blocks. And when Carpolan died
suddenly in 1919 it was Sibelius who said Who should I write for now? And in little
more than five years Sibelius wrote for nobody when he descended into silence. I
wonder if he would have gone on had Carpelan been around. We will never know.
Carpelin was concerned not to see Sibeliuss growing reputation linked only to the
Finnish connection of the Kalevala and Finlandia. He encouraged extending a more
European appeal. In 1901 Sibelius and his family were suffering the loss of one of
their daughters and a degree of melancholia had entered Sibeliuss writing. It was
Carpelan who encouraged them to get away and to take an extended stay in Italy.
He raised a fund for the purpose although it was first used to pay some of the
mountain of debt that Sibelius had. The family then first spent three months in Berlin

before arriving in Italy where they rented the Villa Suisse in Rapallo. By this time
most of the money had been squandered and Sibelius was writing home to borrow
more. He was however productive and at work on several projects amongst which
was an orchestral work based on Don Juan. Another was a theme he had been
thinking about on and off since the early 1890s, Luonnotar, from the Kalevala.
Neither of these ideas materialized but they filled his sketchbooks. In the case of
Luonnotar he would return to the subject in a tone-poem for soprano and orchestra a
decade later and what he did work on in Italy transformed into the tone poem,
Pohjolas Daughter. Most of the ideas he noted in his sketches would be absorbed
into the second symphony. The Italian stay produced family tensions. His second
daughter, Ruth, developed a high temperature and there were fears they would lose
her particularly after being struck with peritonitis. During this time it may be that
Sibelius could not cope with it or needed to escape to work. Whatever, he went off
alone to Rome. There he rented somewhere where he could compose undisturbed
and there he stayed until he returned to the Villa Suisse somewhat sheepishly.
Holiday over, they made their way back home to Finland and soon after moved
house to Helsinki. This turned out to be a disaster domestically because Sibelius
was able to spend more nights on the town with Aino having to come out to rescue
him. His state did not affect his ability to compose and it was against this background
he was able to assemble all his ideas together to produce his second symphony.
The second has always been the most popular of his symphonies mostly because of
its heroic, triumphant ending. Like the first it is the archetype big romantic symphony
with a big tune to finish off, not unlike Rachmaninov. A few commentators, wised up
to the fact that he had written much of content in Italy, refer to it being Italianate.
Frankly, I do not go along with that. It was the first of his symphonies I knew well
and for me no more Italian than Walls Ice Cream. I have been left with an
impression, particularly in the second movement, of northern climes and wild forests.
Of course my sentiment is no more valid than that of anyone else and as equally
subjective. Its real innovation is in the first movement of this symphony where
Sibelius created a more organic development, which becomes a feature of his later
symphonies. Up till then the established opening movement of a symphony is based
on sonata form as in Haydn, Beethoven and all the others. Two subjects are
presented (exposition), then put into the mincer to get dissected like body parts
(development), then recapitulated before receiving a topping called the coda. What
Sibelius does with the first movement of his second is a reversal of the process. He
presents the listener not with microwave ready themes but with ingredients for the
themes, seemingly unrelated. There are about eight of them. These snippets go into
the pot. This is followed by a development section where the various bits and pieces
get cross matched and welded together and only after simmering emerge like a
wondrous gateau, the sum of the parts. The development is one of construction as
opposed to deconstruction. The recapitulation is a return to the original snippets.
The third movement, a Beethoven like scherzo is interrupted during its reprise by
trombones forewarning of the opening theme of the last movement which arrives
without a break between movements. The second would be his last symphony in
nineteenth century tradition.
The following year he was working on what would be the violin concerto, when he
was approached by his playwright brother-in-law, Arvid Jarnefeld, who had written a
symbolist play, Kuolema. He asked Sibelius if he would write the incidental music

and received an answer from Sibelius that he would think about it. He obviously did
because two weeks later he produced the score. Kuolema is the Finnish word for
death and the plot starts with a mother sitting in her bed with her child watching
some dancers performing a waltz which she joins in. Her dead husband enters and
the dancers disappear. That is the background to the waltz that starts the play off.
The story goes on with her son since grown up with equally odd outcomes. Some
years later Jarnefeld revised the play and the music would no longer fit it as written.
Two items were adapted into a short evocative piece of music by Sibelius called
Scene With Cranes which were a metaphor for a meeting with death. The opening
waltz of Kuolema was renamed Valse Triste, originally written for strings but later to
have a clarinet and flute added. It was to be a number one to rank alongside
Finlandia. It is not a waltz one actually dances to but, like Webers Invitation to the
Dance, a dance one watches someone else do. The music made a fortune for his
publisher, Breitkopf and Hartel as they paid a sum which bought the rights outright.
The same thing happened to Rachmaninov who sold off the copyright of what would
turn out to be his most famous composition, the Prelude in C sharp minor. Sibelius
was plagued with money troubles most of his working life and to think that Valse
Triste would have seen him alright.
Sibelius had an on/off relationship with his publishers. He was plagued with money
troubles and sought an advance from Breitkopfs which they would not give. He
approached instead the Berlin firm, Robert Lienau, who were keen to have his
account. They agreed to advance money to him on the condition he produced four
works a year for them to publish. That sounded good. He had four works to write
minimum as well as sufficient money up front to pay something to his creditors or restock his cellar. But it didnt work out so easily. Four works a year is a lot for any
composer bar Mozart and Haydn . Sibelius had ongoing ideas, such as his third
symphony. Yet you cant write a symphony against such a dead line and suddenly
he realized that he had to drop what he was doing in order to meet his deadline. The
result was short works of not necessarily great achievement, maybe for the piano
which was not his greatest instrument. These were honest works but not always
works of genius. There were also outside commissions for incidental music where
there were theatre programme deadlines that also had to be met. At one point to
make up the number, he included in the package his third symphony at which he had
been hard at work on and off for three years but for which he received little more
than he would have done for one of his lesser works. The arrangement came to an
end and Sibelius found himself back home with Breitkopf and Hartel.
Back in 1903 Sibelius was to write his violin concerto. It is a big work, like his
symphonies but in a different category. This would be the big romantic relic of the
19th century concerto and in some ways written in memory of the violinist he had
once set out to be. It is of the Brahms or Bruch variety with plenty of gypsyish hints.
It is in the standard three movement form but it has Sibelius written all over it. It
starts with shimmering Sibelius with a solo tune played against frosty snow flakes
before it warms up with a hint of tzigane. Who but Sibelius would dream of turning
the mid-movement development section into a cadenza? It was another move
towards contraction as he would do with the last two movements of his third
symphony and the first two of the fifth. Who but Sibelius would write the cantering
last movement with a kettle drum beating a tone out of tune from the rest of the
orchestra? As with a number of his works, En Saga, Valse Triste and the fifth

symphony, he would revisit the concerto after its first performance and produce a
Mark Two.
Thoughts now moved to a third symphony but it would take some time to reach
creation, not that he struggled with it but with other matters to take up or to fill his
time. On the home front, Aino was desperate to get him away from Helsinki and the
drinking. In 1903 they moved to Jarvenpaa, then in the countryside with few houses
where they had a new house built. It was called Ainola, Ainos Home. It remained
their home except for short periods following the post 1917 Finnish Civil War when
they moved back to Helsinki for safety from the Reds. Still there were frequent visits
at this time to Helsinki with binges which went on for days and often expenditure at
the rate of 400 per night in todays money. There was even correspondence sent
by him to Aino as to when he was coming home which was found after her death
bundled up as not to be read. His brother who was a surgeon begged him to stop
drinking which he solemnly swore he would drop. At one time Aino had to go into a
sanatorium as she was having a breakdown. Through all of this he was writing or
touring and conducting. The production of more music left more repertoire available
to be played and one would hope, more reward. There was a problem however with
copyright. Most of the civilized world were trying to adhere to laws on copyright and
royalties but Tsarist Russia remained in the Middle Ages and did not sign the
convention which would have seen Sibelius comfortably looked after.
He still visited Berlin but his reputation there began to wane just as his reputation in
England and America was growing thanks, largely in this country, to support from
Henry Wood, Granville Bantock and Thomas Beecham. He had promised his third
symphony for London but it was not yet ready on his arrival and there was
disappointment felt when all he produced were some small piano pieces. Debussy
had also come to London to have his Nocturnes and Prelude LAprs Midi dun
Faune played. He remarked to Arnold Bax on hearing the Sibelius piano works that
he would have preferred spending his time writing a symphony. During his stay in
London Sibelius would hear Elgar and Bantock, both of whom he admired, but he
was not sympathetic to the neighbour in the next door flat practising Beethovens
Moonlight Sonata all day long. From London he whizzed off on the boat train to
Paris where he was happier, even if the French were not that happy with his music.
Other commissions came his way with incidental music for Pelleas and Melisande,
made popular here by its opening movement, At the castle Gate, the signature tune
for The Sky at Night with Patrick Moore. It has some wonderful other music which
was right up Tommy Beechams street, such as The Three Blind Sisters, an entracte
which became a Beecham lollipop encore and, of course, the Death of Melisande.
This theatre music might not have been top notch Sibelius to compare with his
symphonies but they were master works of their genre. There followed incidental
music to Belshazzars Feast for a play by the Finnish playwrite, Hjalmar Procop and
then for Swanwhite, a play by Strindberg. This first got known to me from a 78
recording of the fifth symphony under Koussevitsky on seven sides and the eighth
being devoted to The Maiden with the Roses from Swanwhite. Call it a sentimental
memory by a sentimental has been.
Sibelius had returned to his quest to write Luonnotar, the creation of the World as
depicted from the Kalevala. His publisher however, the four times a year Lienau was

looking for something to be based on Pohjolas Daughter, a different kettle of cold

fish from the Kalevala. In the end it was the music for Luonnotar which Sibelius
produced but the title accorded for it was Pohjolas daughter to satisfy the publisher.
This is a big, big symphonic poem, as Sibelian as you will hear but yet in part to my
ear owing something to the Strauss tone poems. Like so much of Sibelius it starts in
the deep lower strings with a pessimistic solo cello representing Vainomoinnen on
his winters journey. It soon gets roused up to the rhythmic accompaniment sounding
like a chugging steam train. The acoustic of the fan shaped Barbican is excellent for
this work as I found when hearing it under Sir Colin Davis. Here, I might mention the
pedal notes which Sibelius so often adds. Pedal notes? Well, if you take a
composer like Liszt, he would compose at the piano with his foot pressed down on
the sostenuto pedal, which prolongs each long note merging each sound into the
next. The problem for Liszt was that when he got round to orchestrating, the thing
he could not do was reproduce this effect. Sibelius did so in a way which would
better be explained by Matthew. Take the popular ending of the second symphony.
The effect you get is that there is someone there somewhere pressing an unseen
sostenuto pedal for the whole orchestra and trumpets and strings and the rest seem
to meld into each other. The effect at the Barbican for Pohjolas Daughter was one of
continuous sound surround. We will meet it time and again in Sibelius. The first
performance of Pohjolas Daughter took place at a Siloti Concert in St Petersburg.
Alexander Siloti was the leading conductor of his day, a concert pianist, first cousin
of Rachmaninov and a former pupil of Tchaikovsky and Nicholas Rubinstein at
Moscow. His series of concerts were famed in their day, a kind of Russian Henry
Wood. His orchestra was massive with 16 first violins and twelve second violins. On
reflection I dont know that I would have liked that particularly. Later on in 1909 Siloti
would conduct the first performance of that strange masterpiece of Sibelius,
Nightride and Sunrise. On that occasion, Siloti just didnt get it at all, cutting much of
it and changing the speeds. Some conductors then and now get away with murder.
There is a tendency these days which comes from America to hail all conductors as
Maestro. That might have been alright for Toscanini. He was Italian after all but on
the whole I find it a tad sycophantic.
One can see that Sibelius was producing all manner of new works which had a
delaying effect on completion of the third symphony. He had started on this work in
1904 three days before moving into Ainola but it did not get its first performance until
1907. It had been promised to Sir Granville Bantock but projected first performances
kept being pushed back. This symphony is immediately noticeable as being more
concise compared with the opulence of his first and second symphonies or that of his
contemporaries. It has been slimmed down, no tuba or harp, and it starts off with
just cellos and double basses. Some describe it as monochrome. In todays parlance
I would describe it as cool. This is not so much about colour as much as climate. The
third is akin to taking a swim in a northern lake as part of a slimming regime. May be
that is why the third is the only Sibelius symphony which Karajan did not conduct.
This time the first movement immediately expresses its theme with a recapitulation
which expands on its first thoughts. The third movement is a contraction between a
flitting scherzo and a broad finale. The two are stitched into one movement but not
quite so successfully as the single entity he managed in the fifth symphony. The third
movement is fragmentary during which a wisp of the finale is mooted before its
theme is fully expounded. Still it is another small step on the way to the contraction
of the symphonies still to come. Its first Helsinki performance started with Pohjolas

daughter in which the audience revelled. There was a sense of disappointment

however with the symphony which followed. It has remained a Cinderella of the
cycle but it is one of the most attractive. Of all his symphonies it is in some ways the
closest reminder of its Scandinavian roots.
The period following would witness Sibelius descending into more troubled times.
He was travelling less but the world was visiting him. Rosa Newmarch was a great
advocate from England and she spent time with him on her way back from a trip to
St Petersburg. Harriet Cohen, a great pianist of her day for whom Arnold Bax left his
wife in order for them to become an item had met Sibelius in London and seemed to
have turned his head over a vodka. That was enough for Aino to keep out of the way
when Miss Cohen came to visit. Mahler visited him and they exchanged views as to
their take on music. There is a famous account that Mahler asked Sibelius which of
his symphonies - he had then written three - would he like Mahler to conduct. His
reply was nicht but to give Sibelius his due he probably thought by holding back he
was being polite. Carl Nielsen also called by to conduct the third symphony and pay
his respects.
Sibelius had been finding himself troubled for some time by a sore throat and in May
1908, he sought medical help first through his brother, Christian. . A tumour was
diagnosed and he and Aino travelled to Berlin for an operation for its removal. He
was advised that it was benign. However Sibelius was worried it might return and
was fearful he was going to die. At last he made the decision he had put off up till
then, to give up alcohol and smoking. There followed a period of abstinence which
lasted almost for seven years. Whilst his mood was black, for Aino they were to be
the happiest years of her life.
Troubled times they might have been but thankfully Sibelius was continuing to
compose. For the theatre there was incidental music to Scaramouche which took up
more time than he reckoned upon. For the Finnish soprano, Aino Ackt, he planned
writing a cantata based on the poem, The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe to be played on
a planned German tour. As with so many other plans this went on the back burner,
much to Miss Ackts disappointment and it would not be till five years later, after his
fourth symphony, that he completed, yes at last, Luonnotar now a cantata for
soprano and orchestra. Since his student days he had produced little in the way of
chamber music. With his thoughts dwelling on his own possible demise he wrote the
only string quartet of his mature years. The words, Voces Intimae, were inscribed
by him over a page of the third movement. Sibelian to the core, but there is
something in it which has the depth of the late Beethoven quartets. It is written in five
movements with a pivotal long central slow movement. The music is at times almost
polyphonic and there is about it a touch of the Dorian mode which perhaps explains
why it has a family likeness to the sixth symphony. As with his symphonies, there is
a constant feeling in each movement of growth where snippets broaden into fully
grown themes. One feels he must have been satisfied at returning to the medium of
his youth because he started straight away on another quartet. It seems however
that his long standing friend, Busoni, advised him to stick to what he knew best.
His mood was black. He remained on the wagon and in depression. Now was the
time for him to contemplate what would be his most misunderstood work, his
Symphony Number 4.