"Sibelius, the Worst Composer in the World"

[Muse Wanderer]

Sibelius was a tough nut to crack for me too. Took me months to finally 'get' his 4th!
However he certainly wasn't as tough as Schoenberg in my experience.

I always feel that the understanding of music is worth persuing especially with radical and original works as Schoenberg or Sibelius' late symphonies.

[Mirror Image]

Sibelius was a tough nut to crack for me too. Took me months to finally 'get' his 4th!
However he certainly wasn't as tough as Schoenberg in my experience.

I always feel that the understanding of music is worth persuing especially with radical and original works as Schoenberg or Sibelius' late symphonies.

Sibelius took me awhile, too, but I did like his music immediately, especially the tone poems. It's really the symphonies in particular the 5th and the 6th that took me the longest to figure out. Many will say the 5th is one of the more accessible symphonies and, while, on the surface it's probably true that it is, but for some reason it just wasn't clicking for me right away. The 6th just confused me to no end until I heard the Vanska/Lahti SO performance of it on BIS and then everything became clearer. I felt the deep emotions of the 4th rather quickly and was in-tune with it from the start.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

I don't say the violin concerto does not deserve its stature as an important work and a staple of the violin concerto repertoire (but so does the Bruch 1st...).

Disparaging by any other name...

But it's news to me that it is widely regarded as the best violin concerto ever.

You took a fun comment (which that comment obviously is) and ran with it in the opposite direction. Hitting back with a slam is overkill to say the least.

There would be classics Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, for me also Bach, from the 20th century at least Berg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofieff 1st all of which I think are more interesting pieces. I'd also say that comparably late/post romantic/early modern works like the Szymanowski concertos are rather underrated compared to the Sibelius.

Also in the context of Sibelius' oeuvre I do find it a fairly standard late romantic piece, even more so than the first two symphonies. Except for the "spooky" beginning I do not find it terribly original, I am afraid. To me it seems closer to the Grieg piano concerto as an effective but not terribly interesting mix of folksy stuff and "nordic" atmosphere than to either the "serious" symphonic concerto of Brahms or the extraordinary colorful Prokofiev 1st.

Good for you. Sad you can't hear the greatness in the work.

[Monsieur Croche]

Disparaging by any other name...

You took a fun comment (which that comment obviously is) and ran with it in the opposite direction. Hitting back with a slam is overkill to say the least.

Good for you. Sad you can't hear the greatness in the work.

Is the appropriate riposte to,
"Good for you.  Sad you can't hear the greatness in the work."
then,
"Good for you. Sad you hear greatness in the work."

... just curious.


Best regards.

[Jo498]

I do not find my remark in #64 overly negative. It is also my honest opinion after 20 years of listening to that piece, sorry if this thread was meant to contain nothing but the highest enthusiasm.

[Mirror Image]

I do not find my remark in #64 overly negative. It is also my honest opinion after 20 years of listening to that piece, sorry if this thread was meant to contain nothing but the highest enthusiasm.

I'm not a huge fan of the Violin Concerto as I feel the second and third movements are less memorable and inventive than the first, but even still, I find it a piece that's worthy of the attention it has garnered throughout the decades.

[Madiel]

Hitting back with a slam is overkill to say the least.

I think the overkill is in your direction.

[Muse Wanderer]

Sibelius took me awhile, too, but I did like his music immediately, especially the tone poems. It's really the symphonies in particular the 5th and the 6th that took me the longest to figure out. Many will say the 5th is one of the more accessible symphonies and, while, on the surface it's probably true that it is, but for some reason it just wasn't clicking for me right away. The 6th just confused me to no end until I heard the Vanska/Lahti SO performance of it on BIS and then everything became clearer. I felt the deep emotions of the 4th rather quickly and was in-tune with it from the start.

I struggled a lot with Sibelius' 6th as portrayed by Osmo Vanska and Lahti SO.  Vanska's rendition of the other symphonies was blissful to my ears but not this one!

I literally memorised each movement but could not get it.  It was like trying to hold onto water that simply flows away.  So I tried so many other versions including Bernstein, Davis, Karajan, Segerstam, Rattle, Barbirolli and Volmer.

At the end I was ready to give up but then I heard Naeeme Jarvi and the Gothenburg SO and it just clicked. The 6th revealed itself as based on a simple 2 note motif with the third movement being the key to the whole, as with the 4th symphony.

[Mirror Image]

I struggled a lot with Sibelius' 6th as portrayed by Osmo Vanska and Lahti SO.  Vanska's rendition of the other symphonies was blissful to my ears but not this one!

I literally memorised each movement but could not get it.  It was like trying to hold onto water that simply flows away.  So I tried so many other versions including Bernstein, Davis, Karajan, Segerstam, Rattle, Barbirolli and Volmer.

At the end I was ready to give up but then I heard Naeeme Jarvi and the Gothenburg SO and it just clicked. The 6th revealed itself as based on a simple 2 note motif with the third movement being the key to the whole, as with the 4th symphony.

It's always wonder, and strange, how opinions differ about performances, but that's not matter. We both love Sibelius' music and that's all that matters.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

I think the overkill is in your direction.

But an attitude like Jo498's plays right into the hands of that pontificating pond scum Leibowitz!! And Leibowitz is the guy we're here to throw darts at, remember?

Solidarity, I say. Long live hpowder's post!

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Is the appropriate riposte to,
"Good for you.  Sad you can't hear the greatness in the work."
then,
"Good for you. Sad you hear greatness in the work."

... just curious.


Best regards.

In Haiku, maybe.

[Jo498]

But an attitude like Jo498's plays right into the hands of that pontificating pond scum Leibowitz!! And Leibowitz is the guy we're here to throw darts at, remember?

You got it exactly the wrong way around. What provoked Leibowitz (who nonwithstanding his poor judgment in this case was very probably a better musician than anyone posting on this board) was the hailing Sibelius as "the greatest composer of the world" by some magazine, something he found so ridiculously overblown that he wrote that polemic.

Taking my very moderate criticism (more lack of enthusiasm than clearly negative assessment) of the concerto as something in the vein of Leibowitz exaggerated polemic certainly does not help for an open discussion and a nuanced appreciation of Sibelius' music.
I do not see what is to be gained if anything less than overwhelming enthusiasm is interpreted as "hate".

[knight66]

When I was young, in the 60s and 70s, I remember 'serious' music critics being a bit disparaging of the music of Sibelius. That was when BBC Radio 3 was in thrall to much more cutting edge avant-garde music. Sibelius had died in 1957 and I got the impression there was a bit of a post mortem going on in a coterie of the music establishment. Sibelius was regarded as too easy to listen to. I believe that in the UK this did some damage for a time. Now, we know how popular his music is across a number of countries.

The Lebowitz trashing seems to me to be part of that backlash. Ultimately it is the public who decide what is listened to and programmed regularily. Clearly, the avant-garde and Lebowitz have so far lost out. Are any of us surprised?

When discussing how Sibelius' music has travelled outside of Nordic countries, I have not seen Russia mentioned. His music seems to have been adopted by a number of Russian musicians and I am not surprised. As next door neighbours, they will respond in much the way the Finns themselves do to the strong nature elements of the music and the darkness of it.

Sibelius was adopted as the Finnish national composer, not just because he wrote good tunes, but because his music expressed the country deepy to those in the country and purely anecdotally I have found that as a proportion, more Finns respond to Sibelius than English respond to Elgar.

Finally, have there ever been people who trash a composer more thoroughly than another composer? It is normal when one creative artist is so at odds with the sound world the other is working towards, So often the most hated had once been the most loved.

Mike

[knight66]

You got it exactly the wrong way around. What provoked Leibowitz (who nonwithstanding his poor judgment in this case was very probably a better musician than anyone posting on this board) was the hailing Sibelius as "the greatest composer of the world" by some magazine, something he found so ridiculously overblown that he wrote that polemic.

Taking my very moderate criticism (more lack of enthusiasm than clearly negative assessment) of the concerto as something in the vein of Leibowitz exaggerated polemic certainly does not help for an open discussion and a nuanced appreciation of Sibelius' music.
I do not see what is to be gained if anything less than overwhelming enthusiasm is interpreted as "hate".

I agree with Jo and see no point in a discussion if we are all supposed to agree. There is a real difference between disagreeing and explaining on the one hand and trolling to be contentious on the other. No one here has been remotely trolling.

I do know people who don't like Sibelius, but I still like them.

Knight

[Jo498]

To be clear again, I do not dislike Sibelius or even the violin concerto. I just do not think that it is an extraordinarily great piece, either taken in comparion to other famous violin concerti or to other important pieces by Sibelius.

I am actually almost equally puzzled by the high enthusiasm for the composer as by the denigration from e.g. Leibowitz. (For whatever reasons composers I'd see as somewhat similar, e.g. Nielsen, do not seem to provoke such extreme reactions.)
In my impression he wrote some very original and interesting pieces (like symphonies 4-7, Tapiola) although I cannot claim that I have a deep emotional connection to them, some pieces I admittedly find rather boring (what I have heard of the piano music) or not terribly interesting late romantic "fluff" (nice once in a while but not essential, e.g. Finlandia or Karelia Suite). The violin concerto is better than that but I don't quite see it up there with the most interesting pieces by the composer. On the other hand it is one of his most famous works and probably the only one that was widely popular at times or in musical cultures when the composer was not all that popular.

[zamyrabyrd]

Sibelius reminds me of Mozart and Verdi, in that he was able to pen catchy tunes that perhaps the less musically educated would be attracted to (like when I was a teenager), but served as a crack in the door to world of profundity.

[Karl Henning]

Sibelius reminds me of Mozart and Verdi, in that he was able to pen catchy tunes that perhaps the less musically educated would be attracted to (like when I was a teenager), but served as a crack in the door to world of profundity.

Good insight.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[zamyrabyrd]

That is to say, just because a composer had such a facility for melodies, shouldn't be held as points against him. Sibelius' music, to me, is evocative of vast spaces - the grandeur, awe and even sheer dread of nature. It's not surprising therefore that these were expressed in symphonic form.

[Karl Henning]

That is to say, just because a composer had such a facility for melodies, shouldn't be held as points against him. Sibelius' music, to me, is evocative of vast spaces - the grandeur, awe and even sheer dread of nature. It's not surprising therefore that these were expressed in symphonic form.

For me, that was a seeming paradox which I found immediately engaging about the Sixth Symphony:  although it is breathtakingly economical in execution, it expresses space and vistas far out of proportion to its apparent footprint.

[Muse Wanderer]

I am currently listening to Sibelius' songs on The Complete Sibelius Edition by BIS. Many of these are wonderful to listen to but nothing hits me like Schubert Winterreise for example. I love his violin concerto, especially the first movement, but it does not reach the depths of my being as Beethoven's, Prokfiev 1st or even Ligeti's.

The symphonies (especially 4th -7th) and Tapiola is where Sibelius really shines to me. No wonder he spent so many years refining them. His 5th took him 7 years to finish. If only he didn't give up on the 8th!

I don't like to rank composers as I tend to like most stuff I listen to. Besides this composers speak different 'languages' to me and trying to compare is futile. How can I rank Bruckner against Wagner for example? If 'greatness' is defined by excellent quality of whole ouvre and influence on future direction of music, then Stravinsky and Schoenberg would rank very high on my 20th century list. But then, who cares? I love them too!