Sibelius: The Finnish Master
Whether we take their point of view or are content only to enjoy what we hear and let it spur our imaginations to flights of fancy, the music of Sibelius is at hand to tempt us.
Sibelius! His name looms large among the world's composers chiefly for his role in the history of the tone poem, next for his place among Scandinavia's most respected symphonists, and finally as the man who wrote the fifth-most popular violin concerto of all time. Almost anyone asked to name the top contenders would list those by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, hesitating only a second before concluding with the Finnish master's.
It is the sort of work which, if you are not acquainted with it, tells its secrets gradually with repeated hearings. Like Grieg's imperishable Piano Concerto, the Sibelius Violin Concerto has the power to conjure Nordic images in the mind. You seem to see the rugged terrain, to feel the bite of wintry cold. "I love the mysterious sounds of the fields and forests, water and mountains," Sibelius said. "It pleases me greatly to be called an artist of nature, for nature has truly been the book of books for me."
This rapport with nature has been experienced by many commentators on the work. There is an element of fantasy in such descriptions as "bardic songs heard against a background of torches or pagan fires in some wild Northern night" and "the settled melancholy of a Finland of Northern darkness, where the sea heaves heavily to the shore and human lives blossom only briefly and precariously to the joy of melody," but such is the music's power.
The Concerto's melodies evoke the spirit of folksong without actually quoting any. Its harmonies and orchestration, similar to those of Sibelius' great Second Symphony, have a sound all their own, darkly rich but never thick. In staking his claim among the most original of romanticism's nationalistic composers, Sibelius clung to his roots among the red granite rocks which spring from the pale blue Baltic Sea and which were the cradle of the Vikings. "When we see those granite rocks we know why we we are able to treat the orchestra as we do," he told a student. Thus, his works sound only like himself and, despite their romantic fervor, not at all like those of anyone else.
The post-romantics--composers such as Sibelius in Finland, Dohnanyi in Hungary, Mahler in Austria, Strauss
Germany, Respighi in Italy--worked against incredible odds: the combined legacies of the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, and Wagner. Their glory was to find a voice for themselves to set them apart from the many imitators whose works came and went during the latter years of the last century and the early years of this one. In the press, such men often have been (and are) dealt with rather harshly for writing the way they did. Today, we cherish their expressiveness.
Purists among critics and professors often try to direct those over whom they hold sway away from music which has story content, either explicit or implicit, and towards that in which esthetic value is abstract and internal, based on form. For them, formal perfection is everything. They want less to listen "between the notes" to the landscape or soul of a given nationality than to savor the composer's genius in handling the expository, developmental, and recapitulatory(!) demands of sonata form.
Whether we take their point of view or are content only to enjoy what we hear and let it spur our imaginations to flights of fancy, the music of Sibelius is at hand to tempt us. Handsomely performed, the Violin Concerto, premiered in 1905 when the composer was in his 40th year, and En saga, a haunting tone poem which was given its final form (after a decade-long gestation) in 1903, are examples of Sibelius' mastery. In a sense they stand as monuments to a great phase in history's musical impetus.
