Jean Sibelius was born in Hämeenlinna, Finland, on 8th December 1865, the second of three children. His father died when ‘Janne’ was only two. Although the language spoken at home was Swedish, Janne attended Hämeenlinna’s pioneering Finnish-speaking grammar school. Music was encouraged at home, and before long Janne was improvising and composing pieces of his own. Vattendroppar (Water Drops) for violin and cello (c. 1875) is believed to be his first surviving composition. In 1885 Janne finished school and moved to Helsinki, nominally to study law, although he also enrolled at the Music Institute. It was not long before the law studies were quietly dropped, and he started official composition studies under Martin Wegelius. His music from these years displays a seemingly inexhaustible melodic fecundity as well as an increasingly secure and original sense of form.

It was during his student years in Helsinki that Janne – now using the ‘music name’ Jean – met and fell in love with Aino Järnefelt. He numbered many future luminaries of Finnish culture among his friends, among them the authors Adolf Paul and Juhani Aho. He also befriended the composer and conductor Robert Kajanus and the pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni.

In 1889 Sibelius left Finland to pursue his studies abroad – first in Berlin and then in Vienna. In both cities he lived far above his means and enthusiastically nurtured a taste for fine wines and cigars. It was at this time that he became fully aware of the potential of the Finnish epic poem, the Kalevala, as a source of musical inspiration. He was soon hard at work on a massive five-movement piece for soloists, male choir and orchestra with a Kalevala text: Kullervo. Back in Finland, Sibelius conducted Kullervo to great acclaim in April 1892. The work marked his breakthrough and smoothed the way to his marriage to Aino that June.

The 1890s were a time of increasing political discontent in Finland. Although it was nominally an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian empire, the country’s powers of self-determination were gradually being eroded by a series of Russian decrees and manifestos. The reaction to such measures was defiant, not least in cultural circles. Sibelius produced a series of works that helped to confirm his position as the foremost musical champion of the Finnish nationalist cause. He was also a regular customer at Helsinki’s most fashionable watering holes, where he and his colleagues spent many an evening and night drinking and philosophising. Works such as En saga, Karelia, Skogsrået (The Wood-Nymph), the Lemminkäinen tone poems (including The Swan of Tuonela) and the Press Celebrations Music (including Finlandia) all date from this period, though many were later substantially revised. Sibelius dabbled with opera and with Wagner – and even visited Bayreuth in 1894 – but ultimately found that Wagner’s music repelled him as much as it attracted him. Sibelius’s only complete opera is a one-act piece, Jungfrun i tornet (The Maiden in the Tower) from 1896. An attempt that year to secure a teaching position at Helsinki University failed, but in 1897 Sibelius was awarded a small state scholarship. This by no means freed him from financial worries: indeed, he spent money so freely that he would remain in debt for several decades to come.

Just before the turn of the century Sibelius made his mark in two further genres. His first major theatre score was the music for Adolf Paul’s historical drama Kung Kristian II (King Christian II; 1898). The second genre was the symphony: his First Symphony, a pivotal work in Sibelius’s career, was premièred in Helsinki in 1899.

With the Second Symphony and Violin Concerto, Sibelius took his leave of the grand, national romantic style. The death of one of his daughters, Kirsti, from typhus in 1900 came as a profound blow, and the following year, while working on the Second Symphony in Italy, he came close to losing another daughter to the same disease. One of Sibelius’s most popular pieces, Valse triste (1903), started life as incidental music for the symbolist play Kuolema (Death).

The composer made the decision to move out of Helsinki, to Järvenpää. Here, in September 1904, Sibelius and his family moved into a villa built expressly for them and named Ainola after the composer’s wife. He had by then acquired a new confidant – Axel Carpelan – whose advice and support would help to sustain Sibelius through many a trial.

After his move to Ainola, Sibelius’s music acquired a more concise, classical tone, clearly demonstrated in the Third Symphony (1907). He was not greatly drawn to conventional religious music but preferred to express his deeply held pantheistic convictions in works such as the songs Höstkväll (Autumn Evening, 1903) and På verandan vid havet (On a Balcony by the Sea, 1903).

A few years later a throat tumour was diagnosed and, although it was removed in 1908, Sibelius had to abstain from cigars and alcohol for some years. It is often said that the predominantly dark mood of Sibelius’s major works from the ensuing years – among them the Fourth Symphony (1911) the tone poems The Bard and Luonnotar (both 1913) the string quartet Voces intimae (1909) and the Three Sonatinas for piano (1912) – is a by-product of his fear of a recurrence of the cancer. At any rate the bleakness of the Fourth Symphony came as a shock to his contemporaries.

In 1914 Sibelius paid a triumphal visit to the United States, where he conducted the première of the tone poem The Oceanides. Sibelius would have been keen to visit the USA again – but the First World War intervened. As much of his music was published by German firms, his income dwindled to a trickle, and for the next few years he had little option but to remain at home. Local publishers had a steady demand for short instrumental works and songs – and Sibelius did not disappoint. He turned once more to cigars and alcohol as stimulants, first in moderation but then with increasing compulsion. The major work from these years was the Fifth Symphony, which appeared in its original four-movement form at Sibelius’s fiftieth birthday concert in 1915 but was soon withdrawn for revision.

By the time he was fifty Sibelius was already an iconic cultural figure in Finland, and was a highly respected composer internationally as well. Nonetheless, the Sibelius family had to seek refuge in Helsinki during the civil war that followed Finland’s declaration of independence in 1917. Meanwhile the Fifth Symphony was going through extended labour pains. A revised version (1916) had also been withdrawn, and it was not until 1919 that Sibelius was happy with it.

The Sixth and Seventh Symphonies strike out yet again in new directions. The modally coloured Sixth (1923), is predominantly gentle and poetic, whilst the Seventh (1924), originally named Fantasia sinfonica, is a noble single-movement edifice that encapsulates and crowns Sibelius’s symphonic achievement.

After the Seventh Symphony Sibelius composed two more major works, the incidental music to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (1925) and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), before launching into a monumental struggle with his Eighth Symphony. Expectations were running high – but old age brought an increasingly rigorous self-criticism and, in the end, Sibelius admitted defeat. In the mid-1940s he burned a number of manuscripts and, as far as we can tell, the Eighth Symphony was among them.

The term ‘the silence from Järvenpää’ has been coined to describe the composer’s later years at Ainola, but in fact he continued to make occasional revisions and arrangements as well as playing host to innumerable visiting musicians, dignitaries and family members. Jean Sibelius died peacefully at home on 20th September 1957.

Sibelius’s character displays numerous of contradictions. On the one hand he was a solitary nature-lover and pantheist with a special fascination with the great migrating birds such as swans and cranes and a profound need for the isolation of the Finnish countryside. On the other hand he was a gregarious socialite who mixed easily in high society and thoroughly enjoyed being the focus of attention in great cities throughout Europe and on his one visit to America. His relationships with his wife Aino and with close artistic associates such as Robert Kajanus could be tempestuous, but were founded on a deep and enduring respect that allowed them to survive the various crises.

In an interview in 1948 Sibelius offered the advice to younger composers: ‘Never write a superfluous note; every note must live’. His music presents compelling proof of how he himself applied this principle throughout his long and distinguished career.

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A “fantasy concert” of Sibelius’ music would be:

Finlandia (Choral Version)

Violin concerto in D minor, Op. 47

Interval – A vanilla ice cream please.

Symphony No. 5. In E Flat Major, Op. 82

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Finlandia (Choral Version)

Finlandia was written in 1899 and revised in 1900. The piece was composed for the Press Celebrations of 1899, a covert protest against increasing censorship from the Russian Empire, and was the last of seven pieces performed as an accompaniment to a tableau depicting episodes from Finnish history. The premiere was on 2 July 1900 in Helsinki with the Helsinki Philharmonic Society conducted by Robert Kajanus.

In order to avoid Russian censorship, Finlandia had to be performed under alternative names at various musical concerts. Titles under which the piece masqueraded were numerous and often confusing but examples include Happy Feelings at the awakening of Finnish Spring, and A Scandinavian Choral March.

Most of the piece is taken up with rousing and turbulent music, evoking the national struggle of the Finnish people. Towards the end, a calm comes over the orchestra, and the serene and melodic Finlandia Hymn is heard. The hymn is often incorrectly cited as a traditional folk melody but in fact this section is of Sibelius’ own creation.

Sibelius later reworked the Finlandia Hymn into a stand-alone piece. This hymn, with words written in 1941 by Veikko Antero Koskenniemi, is one of the most important national songs of Finland. Today, during modern performances of the full-length Finlandia, a choir is sometimes involved, singing the Finnish lyrics with the hymn section. This is what we hear in this performance from a BBC Proms concert in 2017. 

Violin concerto in D Minor, Op. 47

The Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47, was written in 1904 and revised in 1905. It is Sibelius’ only concerto. 

Sibelius originally dedicated the concerto to the noted violinist Willy Burmester, who promised to play the concerto in Berlin. For financial reasons, however, Sibelius decided to premiere it in Helsinki, and since Burmester was unavailable to travel to Finland, Sibelius engaged Victor Nováček, a Hungarian violinist who was teaching in Helsinki at what is now the Sibelius Academy. Sibelius had barely finished the work in time for the premiere which gave Nováček little time to prepare, and the piece was of such difficulty that it would have sorely tested even a player of much greater skill. Given these factors, it was unwise of Sibelius to choose Nováček, who was a teacher and not a recognised soloist, and it is not surprising that the premiere was a disaster.

Sibelius withheld this version from publication and made substantial revisions. He deleted much material he felt did not work. The new version premiered on 19 October 1905 with Richard Strauss conducting the Berlin Court Orchestra. Sibelius was not in attendance. Willy Burmester was again asked to be the soloist, but he was again unavailable, so the performance went ahead without him, the orchestra’s leader Karel Halíř stepping into the soloist’s shoes. Burmester was so offended that he refused ever to play the concerto, and Sibelius re-dedicated it to the Hungarian “wunderkind” Ferenc von Vecsey.

One noteworthy feature of the work is the way in which an extended cadenza for the soloist takes on the role of the development section in the sonata form first movement. Donald Tovey described the final movement as a “polonaise for polar bears”. However, he was not intending to be derogatory, as he went on: “In the easier and looser concerto forms invented by Mendelssohn and Schumann I have not met a more original, a more masterly, and a more exhilarating work than the Sibelius violin concerto”.

Much of the violin writing is purely virtuosic, but even the most showy passages alternate with the melodic. This concerto is generally symphonic in scope, departing completely from the often lighter, “rhythmic” accompaniments of many other concertos. The solo violin and all sections of the orchestra have equal voice in the piece.

Symphony No. 5. In E Flat Major, Op. 82

“Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon. Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo. The swan-call closer to the trumpet … A low refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s angst! The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: legato in the trumpets!!” -Sibelius in his diary dated 21 April 1915

Sibelius was commissioned to write his 5th symphony by the Finnish government in honour of his 50th birthday, 8 December 1915, which had been declared a national holiday. The symphony was originally composed in 1915. It was revised in 1916 and 1919. The original 1915 version is occasionally performed today but the 1916 revision is lost. The version mostly performed these days is the 1919 revision. This is what we hear in this film.

If one work could be said to characterise Jean Sibelius’ mature style, it is the Fifth Symphony. The first movement grows organically, from nebulous beginnings and the majestic emergence of a theme of compelling grandeur, through music of scherzo-like momentum surging with life and growing ever more fleet, to a final, exhilarating rush of energy. It’s a stunning example of Sibelius’ ability to build a symphonic movement on the dynamic development of a single idea, in this case the first four notes of the horn theme that opens the work.

In the symphony’s breathless moto perpetuo finale, Sibelius introduces one of his most memorable ideas: a bell-like tolling of chords among the four horns that is said to have come to him after he watched a flock of swans pass overhead. This “swan theme,” which emerges from the giddy rush of the tremolo strings, is the soul of the movement, and it’s accompanied by a poignant, singing subject given out in octaves by the woodwinds and cellos.

Sibelius brings the finale to climax by means of a grand slow-down, the reverse of the method he used in the first movement. The last pages of the symphony offer a mighty apotheosis of the “swan theme,” capped by six isolated, powerful chords. It is one of the greatest symphonic endings in history.

https://youtu.be/dACRUFfmMeo

I hope you enjoyed listening to this Sibelius fantasy concert. 

Keith.