After Mahler comes Sibelius ...

[Kullervo]

But, so is Elgar! 

I revised what I intended to say in the new post.

[karlhenning]

I revised what I intended to say in the new post.

Yes!  But it's a funny speculation . . . if he were a Briton and not a Finn, he might well despise Elgar, and idolize Sibelius . . . and call it free-thinking!!!!

[karlhenning]

Not because he's a Briton, but because of who he is, I mean . . . .

[Kullervo]

Well, Sibelius would still be well-known and widely respected, which is anathema of course.

[Mirror Image]

After Mahler came Sibelius, Nielsen, RVW, and Shostakovich who are, in my opinion, greater than Mahler (as much as I love several of his works). I know this is an old thread and the last post was in 07, but I don't care, I said what I had to say here.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

After Mahler came Sibelius, Nielsen, RVW, and Shostakovich who are, in my opinion, greater than Mahler (as much as I love several of his works). I know this is an old thread and the last post was in 07, but I don't care, I said what I had to say here.

Ha! Old thread or not this is definitely a worthwhile thread to unearth! Fun reading...

[Mirror Image]

Ha! Old thread or not this is definitely a worthwhile thread to unearth! Fun reading...

It certainly is fun reading that's for sure.

[The new erato]

I'm just happy Delius didn' twrite symphonies. In that case this thread would explode.

[Mirror Image]

I'm just happy Delius didn' twrite symphonies. In that case this thread would explode.

I am too as I wouldn't want to hear them if he did. He's not a 'symphonic' composer. His art is much more suited to the tone poem and to the rhapsodic form in general.

[some guy]

After Mahler came Sibelius, Nielsen, RVW, and Shostakovich who are, in my opinion, greater than Mahler (as much as I love several of his works). I know this is an old thread and the last post was in 07, but I don't care, I said what I had to say here.

And Ives and Krenek and Wellesz and Searles and Corcoran and Gerhard and Sessions and Piston and a whole host of other people who wrote symphonies and another whole host of people who did not.

And none of them are any greater than any other, though they are all different enough from each other to be readily distinguished.

[amw]

Sibelius didn't come 'after' Mahler, they were contemporaries. They knew each other's work. They come together. 'After' Mahler came composers like Webern and Shostakovich and 'after' Sibelius came composers like Vaughan Williams and Nørgård, etc.

[Jo498]

I don't think Sibelius saw himself as "taking back" Mahlerian ultra-romanticism. He had started in a not altogether different brand of excessive romanticism, but with a "national" element, like in e.g. Kullervo and some of the Tone poems and the 2nd symphony. The later more austere style starting with the 3rd symphony is just one way of development which is different from the expressionism of the late Mahler and e.g. the second Viennese school.

[jochanaan]

This thought came to mind as I reviewed this thread: Both Mahler and Sibelius are transitional musicians.  Standing right at the cusp of the shift from Romanticism to "modernism" (however one can define that!), they both looked backward and forward; backward to the Romantic musical language, but forward in a couple of different ways.  Mahler's expanded tonality and ever-increasing palette of orchestral color led directly to music like that of Schoenberg, Stravinsky (the Stravinsky of The Rite) and Messiaen, while Sibelius' increasing compactness and concentration is a foreshadowing of Webern and the Stravinsky of the Neoclassical period.

[North Star]

This thought came to mind as I reviewed this thread: Both Mahler and Sibelius are transitional musicians.  Standing right at the cusp of the shift from Romanticism to "modernism" (however one can define that!), they both looked backward and forward; backward to the Romantic musical language, but forward in a couple of different ways.  Mahler's expanded tonality and ever-increasing palette of orchestral color led directly to music like that of Schoenberg, Stravinsky (the Stravinsky of The Rite) and Messiaen, while Sibelius' increasing compactness and concentration is a foreshadowing of Webern and the Stravinsky of the Neoclassical period.

And Sibelius might have influenced Feldman, Pärt too, with the 'minimalism' of works like Tapiola or Night ride & Sunrise. Of course, Mahler led to Webern. Sibelius's Third from 1907 is certainly among the earliest examples of neoclassicism.

I wonder how much the available resources had to do with each composer's development.  After all, Mahler had the Vienna Philharmonic to read his scores, while I'd guess that the Finnish orchestras of the time were rather less numerically and even technically proficient...

The Finnish orchestral tradition stretches rather far back, with Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra being the oldest professional orchestra in the Nordic Countries, founded in 1882 by Robert Kajanus. And a majority of the musicians were Germans, before the wars with Soviets, Karelia and Vyborg were a part of Finland, and there were a fair amount of German immigrants. Stalin didn't want the border so close to St Pb., though.

Also, Turku Philharmonic is among the oldest orchestras in the world, founded in 1790. When Mahler heard some Sibelius in 1907, he wrote very positively of the orchestra, if not of the 'kitsch' of Sibelius. . .

I also heard a few works by the Finnish national(ist) composer Sibelius - he is praised a lot, and not just here in Finland, but in the musical world in general.
In one of them I heard just ordinary kitsch, nationalist rubbish made from those certain Nordic chord patterns - yuck, what damned rot! They're all the same, these national genius gentlemen. There are similar ones in Russia and Sweden - and Italy, which is teeming with these hookers and their pimps. In this company Axel (Gallén-Kallela) and his dozen schnappses before the soup and his boat gives a totally different impression - I can feel his health and the purity of his race.

The Sibelius Mahler heard was probably Symphony no. 3, Pohjola's Daughter, Valse triste.
(Afterwards Mahler returned to Russia to conduct his Fifth Symphony, with Igor Stravinsky in the audience.)

[San Antone]

And Sibelius might have influenced Feldman

Doubtful.

[The new erato]

Also, Turku Philharmonic is among the oldest orchestras in the world, founded in 1790.

Bergen Philharmonic; 1765, Just saying.

[jochanaan]

...The Finnish orchestral tradition stretches rather far back, with Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra being the oldest professional orchestra in the Nordic Countries, founded in 1882 by Robert Kajanus. And a majority of the musicians were Germans, before the wars with Soviets, Karelia and Vyborg were a part of Finland, and there were a fair amount of German immigrants. Stalin didn't want the border so close to St Pb., though....

Thanks for this information!  I see I was mistaken about the orchestral tradition in Finland.  And actually, it makes sense given the demanding nature of Sibelius' scores, esp. the string parts!

[North Star]

Thanks for this information!  I see I was mistaken about the orchestral tradition in Finland.  And actually, it makes sense given the demanding nature of Sibelius' scores, esp. the string parts!

Perhaps something to do with him not making it as a violinist

Doubtful.

Feldman raised Sibelius in connection with one specific work of his own, the orchestral piece Coptic Light (1985). His programme note explains that 'An important aspect of the composition was prompted by Sibelius's observation that the orchestra deffers mainly from the piano in that it has no pedal. With this in mind, I set to workto create an orchestral pedal continually varying in nuance.  [...] Thus the whole form of Coptic Light could be seen as an illustration of Hepokoski's definition of rotational forms in Sibelius as a set of varied restatements around a central material, the last of which links up with the harmonic area of the openng. At once static and continuously evolving, Coptic Light is an unexpected instance of Sibelius's effect on one of the most unusual and innovatice recent works composed for orchestral in the last two decades.

Quoted in the same book:

I have often said that it is a pity that Sibelius was Finnish! His music has been deeply misunderstood. While his language was far from modern, his thinking, as far as form and treatment of materials is concerned, was ahead of its time. While Varèse is credited with opening the way for new sonorities, Sibelius has himself pursued a profound reassessment of the formal and structural problems of composition. I do not think it is fair that he has been considered as a conservative .  . His harmonies have a resonant, almost spectral quality. You find an attention to sonority in Sibelius works which is actually not so far removed from that which would appear long after in the work of Grisey or Murail . . . For me, the crucial aspect of his work remains his conception of continuity. In Tapiola, above all, the way genuine processes are created using very limited materials is pretty exceptional.

[San Antone]

Despite your quoted material, I continue to consider it unwise to exaggerate Sibelius's influence on Feldman.

[Karl Henning]

It does say (in principle, restrictively) in connection with one specific work of his own;  and if Feldman says he got an idea or two from Sibelius, I'm inclined to take him at his word.