The Snowshoed Sibelius

[Renfield]

My recollection of Barbirolli in the 1st (and it only a recollection, as I don't have the set to hand), is that the finale was strikingly Italianate! By which I mean operatic, by which I mean very 'songful'.

I think that's the most apt descriptor I've come across for Barbirolli's Sibelius. Seen that way, it's no wonder it tends to be a 'nice to experience every once in a while' kind of thing, but somehow not a first choice for many (any?) of us.

[eyeresist]

This recent article by Leon Botstein: The Transformative Paradoxes of Jean Sibelius

I confess I don't know a lot about Sibelius's composition methods, but some of what Botstein says seems wrong to me:

... Sibelius [emancipated] music from language. His work is strikingly architectural, rather than paralleling in music the syntax, semantics, and grammar of language.

Admittedly, Botstein is contrasting Sibelius with Mahler here, but still, it seems a bit much to say Sibelius was the first to use a non-verbal based musical grammar. Dare I mention a little thing called SONATA FORM? The symphonic form itself is quite architectural when contrasted with opera or lieder.

[Sibelius's music] is concerned primarily with large forms and spaces, rather than melodic and harmonic variation and dialogue, much less outright literary inspiration.

Curiously, melodic and harmonic variation strike me as being essential to Sibelius's music. And he is of course known for using melodic "cells", contrasted against shifting harmonies.
What are these "large forms and spaces"? Is this a reference to Sibelius's use of suspended chords? Botstein seems here to be presenting vaguely expressed feeling as solid compositional fact.
As for rejection of literary inspiration, Botstein's very article ends with the poetic quotation appended to the score of Tapiola. Never mind that Sibelius wrote theatre music and a number of choral works including the Kullervo, and famously evoked a flight of swans in the finale of the 5th symphony.

For Sibelius, aggregate sounds—as much as melodies and themes—become constituent elements of composition. Orchestration becomes a basic element, not something one completes after a work is written. The music is more atmospheric than discursive.

Since it is my understanding that Sibelius worked up his orchestral works in short score, surely he DID complete his orchestration AFTER writing the work. He was not one of these Johnny-come-latelies who spends most of his time creating sounds, and then tries to package the result as a completed work.


Thanks for letting me share



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Addendum: I've been listening through Berglund's Helsinki cycle lately. To be honest, I find his 5th rather middling (Schmidt is my reference), and his 6th is not the one to convince me of this work. However, he really is terrific in the first three, especially the first two (his 3rd could be broader for my tastes). This 1st and 2nd could be benchmarks.

I haven't got around to his 4th and 7th yet.

[Mirror Image]

...Berglund's 6th is not the one to convince me of this work.

You should hear Vanska and Karajan. Two completely valid approaches to the work and both knockout performances. I was never convinced of the 6th until I heard these two performances.

[karlhenning]

Admittedly, Botstein is contrasting Sibelius with Mahler here, but still, it seems a bit much to say Sibelius was the first to use a non-verbal based musical grammar. Dare I mention a little thing called SONATA FORM?

You'd be depending on a distinction between verbal and rhetorical: sonata design does relate to rhetoric . . . [Thesis & Ant-thesis]:Exposition::Synthesis:Recapitulation.  But overall, I think you have a good quarrel with Botstein.

[karlhenning]

You should hear Vanska and Karajan. Two completely valid approaches to the work and both knockout performances. I was never convinced of the 6th until I heard these two performances.

Must allow that HvK did a good job with the Sixth. Although, I like Berglund's better yet. Chacun à son goût . . . .

[Renfield]

It should be noted that there are four Karajan studio 5ths in the catalogue (plus at least one live recording), and I think he was contemplating making another one, around the time he died. I presume most (all?) of you are talking about the DG.

[Elgarian]

My Maazel box arrived this morning. However, it finds me up to my knees, not in snow and ice, but in wallpaper paste and paint. (Ooooh, I hate redecorating, with a deep loathing.) Anyway, point is, I now have the box and will give the 4th a careful listen just as soon as I can find the hifi underneath all these wallpaper strippings....

[mc ukrneal]

My Maazel box arrived this morning. However, it finds me up to my knees, not in snow and ice, but in wallpaper paste and paint. (Ooooh, I hate redecorating, with a deep loathing.) Anyway, point is, I now have the box and will give the 4th a careful listen just as soon as I can find the hifi underneath all these wallpaper strippings....

At least you have some 'friends' to keep you company. Now if only they would do some of the 'dirty work'... 

[eyeresist]

You'd be depending on a distinction between verbal and rhetorical: sonata design does relate to rhetoric . . . [Thesis & Ant-thesis]:Exposition::Synthesis:Recapitulation.  But overall, I think you have a good quarrel with Botstein.

Validation!

I got out my Barbirolli set last night and listened to the disc of non-symphony orchestral. All very good stuff! Some of the Halle's better work.

[Brian]

Tonight my mom heard I'd been to a Prom concert of Sibelius, Nielsen, and Grieg, and she shuddered. "Ugh, the Nordics... their music is all so bloodless and cold." I immediately raced to my collection, whipped out a disc of Grieg's Piano Concerto and Symphonic Dances, and busted that myth.

...What Sibelius would be a similarly appropriate mythbuster? I'm contemplating the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th. The opening of the Violin Concerto is a little frosty, I'll admit...

[DavidW]

Listening to a ton of Sibelius lately I think the least frosty might be the Lemminkäinen Suite which has a wide range of emotion, and beautiful melodies it should be an easy win.  Out of the symphonies only I would go with the 5th for least frosty.

[DavidW]

And just wanted to add Brian I would be looking more at the tone poems than the symphonies.

[eyeresist]

The opening of the Violin Concerto is a little frosty, I'll admit...

IMHO usually not frosty enough. The whole thing is usually given with too much warmth for my liking.

[Mirror Image]

Tonight my mom heard I'd been to a Prom concert of Sibelius, Nielsen, and Grieg, and she shuddered. "Ugh, the Nordics... their music is all so bloodless and cold." I immediately raced to my collection, whipped out a disc of Grieg's Piano Concerto and Symphonic Dances, and busted that myth.

...What Sibelius would be a similarly appropriate mythbuster? I'm contemplating the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th. The opening of the Violin Concerto is a little frosty, I'll admit...

Sorry, Brian, but your Mom needs to have her hearing checked. Sibelius...bloodless? Cold? His music has a lot of warmth in it and the passion, although in some instances, subdued, but sometimes it's what isn't said in Sibelius that has more impact. Let your Mom hear Pohjola's Daughter or Kullervo. Nothing icy and frosty about these works.

[Brian]

Sorry, Brian, but your Mom needs to have her hearing checked. Sibelius...bloodless? Cold? His music has a lot of warmth in it and the passion, although in some instances, subdued, but sometimes it's what isn't said in Sibelius that has more impact. Let your Mom hear Pohjola's Daughter or Kullervo. Nothing icy and frosty about these works.

Aw, I should defend her a little bit - she loves the Big Romantics and good tunes, good architecture, etc. Grieg's Piano Concerto knocked her out - though she'd heard it before and forgot it was Grieg. She usually prefers really emotionally 'profound' musical experiences to be in concert and home listening to be more on the 'pleasing' side, but that's a for wide definition of 'pleasing.' This is, after all, the same mom who sent me a glowing e-mail about how much she loved tuning in to the Proms performance of Havergal Brian's "Gothic."

I actually haven't heard the full Lemminkäinen in a long time. Karelia seems an all-too-obvious choice. Pohjola's Daughter is definitely a good one too.

[Elgarian]

she loves the Big Romantics and good tunes

Wouldn't the second symphony fit the bill? It's so packed with great tunes, and they're such BIG tunes, that the frosting might seem more like marzipan once you're into it.

(You realise that I'm starting a drive to get Sibelius better-known in cake-decorating circles.)

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Sibelius...bloodless? Cold? His music has a lot of warmth in it and the passion, although in some instances, subdued, but sometimes it's what isn't said in Sibelius that has more impact. Let your Mom hear Pohjola's Daughter or Kullervo. Nothing icy and frosty about these works.

I like Glenn Gould's description of Sibelius: "a passionate but anti-sensual composer."

[karlhenning]

...What Sibelius would be a similarly appropriate mythbuster? I'm contemplating the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th.

I'd go with the Third. And perhaps Night-Ride & Sunrise.

[DavidW]

I actually haven't heard the full Lemminkäinen in a long time. Karelia seems an all-too-obvious choice. Pohjola's Daughter is definitely a good one too.

Yup Karelia and Pohjola's Daughter are great choices!

[Elgarian]

Maazel's 4th

Listened to this while having my lunch today; or rather, while repeatedly stopping eating my lunch in order to listen more intently.

I'd like to leave Rozhdestvensky's aside here. I haven't listened to them back to back (I don't think I want to), and the big point is that this Maazel performance is the only other except the Rozhdestvensky that has made a serious impact on me. I've no idea which is 'better'; I know I want both.

I remember thinking that Rozhdestvensky's recording was the first performance I'd ever heard that permitted me to experience the 4th as tragic, rather than merely bleak and depressing. Maazel's is something else again. Darker, I think; but also more like life as we live it in its starkest moments. I think, by the way, that one of the reasons why I couldn't click with the 4th when younger is that I hadn't experienced enough. The shock of listening to Maazel's performance was a shock of recognition - of knowing that I myself have lived an equivalent of this music. I'm thinking of those times when the light (for whatever reason - serious illness, loss, etc) seems to have gone out of life permanently. So we live against that backdrop, and yet there are times when we momentarily forget, and out of the darkness something rises - a fond memory, a fleeting hope - and we clutch at it, only for it to disintegrate when we remember that after all, everything is still desperate, nothing has changed, life can never be the same again after this. I'm reminded of CS Lewis's words after the death of his wife: 'No one ever told me that grief feels so much like fear.'

A kind of equivalent of that lived experience seems to be going on through the music. One thing that struck me was how sharply focused the musical 'incidents' are. They rise from darkness, or a kind of semi-vacant space, and then merge back into it. Nothing ever seems resolved, yet the hope of resolution is continually held out.

I can already see that I'm not doing a good job here, because first, I'm talking only about how I felt, not about the music; but also because I'm making it sound so dark that one might wonder why anyone would want to listen to it. But actually, it isn't depressing music. That's the message of Maazel (or of Rozhdestvensky). That's what makes the difference. It's the same kind of effect that Ted Hughes talks about when he writes poems about dead lambs: the aim is not to wallow in despair, but to learn from this dark experience and lift it into a realm where it can become healing and energising. Art can do that - that's the point.

And the only resolution possible in the 4th symphony is the one we get at the very end. No grand summing up. No bluster, no great Romantic gestures full of windiness and storm. Just open-ended. An acceptance that things are as they are, and life goes on. Well, I've never really understood that till now - which is a measure of Maazel's achievement, I guess.

My thanks to those who recommended it: Ray, Sarge, Karl, Renfield, and anyone else I might have missed. Even if everything else in the box is a dud, it's worth having it for this.

[Hey Brian - you need this one as well.]