The Snowshoed Sibelius

[vandermolen]

No. 2 gets so much radio & concert play here in Finland that I would like to stop listening to it occasionally.. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 & Tapiola I listen to much more often.

I feel the same about Vaughan Williams's 'The Lark Ascending' which is done to death over here, especially on Classic FM.

[Brahmsian]

At first I liked 2nd symphony's 1st and 4th movements best but nowadays I prefer Second movement. It is so immensely powerful and moving.

I do and still do today! 

[Karl Henning]

I feel the same about Vaughan Williams's 'The Lark Ascending' which is done to death over here, especially on Classic FM.

A pity, as it is such a beautiful miniature!

[Moonfish]

No. 2 gets so much radio & concert play here in Finland that I would like to stop listening to it occasionally.. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 & Tapiola I listen to much more often.

True! I guess one's ears get jaded after a while. Why do you think that the Finnish radio stations put less emphasis on the other symphonies/works?

[vandermolen]

A pity, as it is such a beautiful miniature!

I agree Karl and I used to really love it and still recognise it as you say a beautiful miniature but it is on the radio all the time here. I'm sure that my appreciation of it will return.

[North Star]

True! I guess one's ears get jaded after a while. Why do you think that the Finnish radio stations put less emphasis on the other symphonies/works?

Well it's not that they play the others less than some other classical radio station, say in the US, but those more 'national romantic' & 'heroic' things like the 2nd Symphony & Lemminkäinen's Return (and Finlandia, although even the radio guys seem to get saturated by that, and it's mostly played close to the Independence Day) are what is popular, although of course the later symphonies & tone poems are played on the radio (and in concert halls) too, just not quite as often.

[Ken B]

I absolutely cannot stop listening to Symphony No.2. I'm obsessed.

[asin] B0000042GV[/asin]

The first movement just astounds me. It's like an anti-sonata form. All the bits and pieces are there, but it sounds like an introduction... until eventually your brain realises that there isn't a big theme coming along, and that WAS the exposition.

And then there's all the drama of the second movement.

In both movements, the use of space and silence is just amazing.

Sibelius was known for his mastery and innovation of form, but to me what makes his music special is the forward motion and the emotional logic. Anyway the great thing about liking #2 is ... They just keep getting better from there. Each symphony is even better than its predecessor.

[Karl Henning]

They just keep getting better from there. Each symphony is even better than its predecessor.

It's true.  And of course, he started off with a good First.

[Madiel]

Sibelius was known for his mastery and innovation of form, but to me what makes his music special is the forward motion and the emotional logic.

No argument there. And indeed, that's a large part of why I see Holmboe as a successor. I definitely need to get more Sibelius outside the symphonies and see what kind of response I have. 3 discs are on the shopping list... but so are a lot of other things!

[Karl Henning]

No argument there. And indeed, that's a large part of why I see Holmboe as a successor.

+ 1

[Ken B]

No argument there. And indeed, that's a large part of why I see Holmboe as a successor. I definitely need to get more Sibelius outside the symphonies and see what kind of response I have. 3 discs are on the shopping list... but so are a lot of other things!

I really like Holmboe, except the quartets. He's very inconsistent, but at his best, like symphony 8, he's very good indeed. His chamber music for brass is outstanding.

[knight66]

This piece relates a visit I recently made to the house of Sibelius. I visited with my friend Juha and his colleague Arja. They have been engaged to produce the first translation from Swedish into Finnish of the diaries of Sibelius.

The highlight of this year's visit to Finland lay just outside Helsinki. Juha and Arja wanted to visit the Sibelius house, to marinade in the atmosphere of the man who has preoccupied them for very many months. I enjoyed the visit a great deal; we were fortunate that there was almost no one else there to disturb the domesticity of the house. When Arja told the guide that she and Juha were translating the Sibelius diaries into Finnish for the 150th Anniversary, we got to see rooms that are off limits. In the upstairs study, where he did a lot of his composing, there are still boxes and boxes of his Cuban cigars. He never composed at the piano, but wrote laboriously once the music was complete in his head. He makes reference in the diaries to having a sore arse from composing and that whereas he loves tables for bottles and glasses and booze, he hates them for his laborious work.

Standing in the kitchen we had a long discussion about the composer, very interesting; with me acting as Dr Watson to two versions of Sherlock Holmes. The translation has been a huge undertaking and it has been fascinating to get some insights into the process. Although one generation back, Sibelius came from a very comfortable middle class professional background; he hoped that research into the deeper roots of his family would expose a more exalted lineage. However, it discovered that he came from a line of farmers. This seemed to cause much public and disconcerting comment, even ridicule. He had married into Russian aristocracy and his humble ancestors caused him a deal of embarrassment and insecurity. Juha obtained Swedish/Finnish dictionaries from 1903 and 1911. Even though Sibelius was still quite young then, he was deploying an older, more formal, style of language and word usage than was in those dictionaries. I guess this may have been a subconscious way of trying to bolster the respect of the community in which he felt undermined. Some parallels here with the insecurities of Elgar.

He insisted on a deep green glazed brick fireplace in the lounge; as that colour denoted a specific musical key, as did brown. So little has been changed, despite the family living in the house until, I think, the 1970s. We then went to a very different house of a painter friend of Sibelius, huge with vast windows to ensure good light and roof beams made out of logs that had been dragged across the ice.


Even before Juha got involved with this project, I almost continually heard Sibelius in my head when I traveled about Finland. The air is so clean and the northern light is distinctive, the music catches the light here in a remarkable way.

It was also interesting to see how he lived very well for many years utterly without money. Sibelius lived largely off the generosity of patrons, money from his wife's aristocratic family, of Russian origin, and by obtaining loans and loans to pay loans. He produced piano exercises and small pieces he thought little of. The best known of them now is 'Valse Triste' which would on its own have kept him comfortably afloat in royalties had he not sold the piece for a pittance, copyright and all.

His main compositions did not enable him to live well. However, unlike Wagner, Sibelius kept a meticulous track of all the money borrowed and he tried to pay it back, there are lists of the loans in the diaries. It was only in the last 10 years of his life, when lauded nationally, that he became wealthy, seriously wealthy. A great preoccupation of the writings is the lack of money. But even in seeming penury there was a housekeeper and a maid, suits from Paris, Cuban cigars by the box etc. The house is wonderfully comfortable in a down to earth way, one could move straight in and live happily in it. This is in contrast to the artist's house close by, mentioned above, where the furniture looks exceptionally uninviting and people must have sat stiffly or basically gone to bed to obtain some comfort.

Latterly as Sibelius' knees gave out, he lived downstairs in a bedroom produced from the nursery and used the library; no longer writing in the tiny room next to the main bedroom upstairs. That upper study has evidence of one other composer, a painted bust of Beethoven. Sibelius played the violin, the battered case is lying there and his granddaughter presently uses the violin professionally. For the 150th anniversary she will make a recording in the house using that violin.

There is a Steinway grand piano in the drawing room, a birthday gift to him, over which tension arises as to whether it should be kept intact or the innards pulled out for display in Helsinki. As he almost never touched it and composed in his head, this kind of thing makes me roll my eyes. The house seems quite dark now, as there are mature trees close to it which block the light in a way that they would not have even 60 years ago. The garden is lovely and both Sibelius and his wife are buried under a large very plain stone in the garden. The outlook is into the woods in one direction and across fields in the other direction. Rather like Beethoven, he took long walks to work out his ideas and refers to them in the diary as growing like a baby inside him, not to be written down until arriving at full term.

He was a sort of manic depressive, perhaps bi-polar. One entry in the diaries has him relating how very closed in he is, he walks to no good end, then he sees a group of swans rising and flying right over his head. He watches them wheel in the air and fly away. His mood transformed, he suddenly has a piece ready to write, yes that very one. He could be petty and then berate himself for it, as he did after an entry where he suspects the staff, who were with him for over 30 years, were pilfering the housekeeping. He was aware of his defects and fought against alcoholism, being dry for well over a decade.

The diary was written for him and his wife only to read, so there are many entries that cannot really be fully understood and seemingly some where he was certainly drunk. Luckily, both Juha and Arija very much like the maddening, rambling, self doubting man they encounter in his fractured writings. Due to the private nature of them, the diaries were only published in Swedish, (Sibelius' mother tongue), in 2005. The musicologist who prepared the original publication and whose footnotes are encyclopedic is now over 80. But he has been eager to re-explore and update his notes for this edition and has seemingly made many changes arising from conclusions suggested by Juha.

Although I did not sense the music of Sibelius in his house, again when travelling and down at the lake where we stayed with Juha's family, my head was filled with it, and in the peace here I have mulled over and written about the visit my head loud with that music and keen understand more.

Mike

[Wanderer]

Thanks for the write-up, Mike!

[Karl Henning]

Aye, a most edifying read, thank you!

[Madiel]

I think I'm finally coming to terms with the finale of the Third Symphony. Letting the initial chaos wash over me... letting it be chaotic before it comes together and finds direction in that obsessive hymn/chorale tune.

Which is good, because the first movement is one of my favourite things by anybody, ever, and it's been kind of awkward having a symphony where I'm in raptures to begin with and going 'huh?' later on.

[vandermolen]

Fascinating posting Mike. I was at the Sibelius house last summer myself, also with a Finnish friend called Juha (but not the one translating the diaries). I am jealous of you being admitted to rooms that are usually closed to visitors - however it was a wonderful experience, surpassing expectations and fulfilling a long-term ambition. I think I probably posted some photos somewhere in this thread.
Jeffrey

[Ken B]

Am I nuts or is Hurwitz and all the critics I read?

I am listening to Colin Davis's RCA Third Symphony. It is freaking magnificent.

Colin Davis and the LSO ... Their previous cycle for RCA was very spotty indeed, slackly played and not at all well recorded, particularly in the Third Symphony ... a blot on [Davis's] career

[knight66]

Thanks guys. Jeffrey, quite a coincidence. I know that going round on my own I would only have got 10% of the enrichment that I did.  When we were there the entire upstairs had been shut as a fire precaution! I thought it was more to do with staffing. But it was upstairs we were shown privately and the very young guide had an in depth knowledge of every artefact. When Juha remarked that the dining set as being somehow out of place, the guide confirmed that it had been brought from the family's Helsinki flat and was not the old set they had used until the 1940s he even knew that sort of detail.

Mike

[vandermolen]

Thanks guys. Jeffrey, quite a coincidence. I know that going round on my own I would only have got 10% of the enrichment that I did.  When we were there the entire upstairs had been shut as a fire precaution! I thought it was more to do with staffing. But it was upstairs we were shown privately and the very young guide had an in depth knowledge of every artefact. When Juha remarked that the dining set as being somehow out of place, the guide confirmed that it had been brought from the family's Helsinki flat and was not the old set they had used until the 1940s he even knew that sort of detail.

Mike

Mike, how interesting! We also had a very young and very well informed guide - I wonder if it was the same one. My Finnish friend, Juha, being a sauna fanatic, was very interested to see Sibelius's sauna, in the garden. It was indeed moving to see the grave of Sibelius and Aino in the garden. I take it that you also saw the sculpture/memorial to Sibelius in a park in Helsinki. I enjoyed our visit very much, thought Helsinki to be a very attractive city and found the Finns to be really friendly and helpful, especially when we got lost! The Helsinki-Stockholm Ferry was also a great experience, especially going through the archipelago early in the morning. My Finnish friends took us to their summer cottage on a large lake. When we arrived both my brother and I thought independently of the opening of Sibelius's Second Symphony!
Best wishes,
Jeffrey

[knight66]

I am glad you also had the lake experience. I have been visiting annually for about 10 years I think. I was amazed by the sauna. It was like another cottage, beautiful wood. I have still never heard a concert in Finland, though there is a younish busker in Helsinki who plays the Sibelius Violin concerto very beautifully.

Mike