#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE 2015 – LETTER “J” – JEAN SIBELIUS, FINNISH COMPOSER

 

I think the first piece I ever played by Jean Sibelius was “Finlandia” and I was in the San Jose Youth Symphony. I'm sure it was pretty horrible, but it was loud and busy and that was all we kids needed to keep us occupied. The orchestra was filled with pretty talented kids, from ages 12 to 18 and I spent several happy years in this orchestra. Our conductor was a tyrant, who really had very little English, but knew enough to call us “little worms” and yell at the cellos, violas and 2^nd violins to shut up, when he was trying to work out passages with the 1^st violins and the rest of the orchestra was bored, bored, bored. Rehearsals frequently ran until 11 pm on Monday nights, instead of 10 pm, and we'd be tired and cranky. But, I see Youth Symphonies are still a thing and I'm sure the discipline is much better now than it was in the early 1970s.

courtesy:sjsy.org                                     

Geeze, these kids even look more professional than some working orchestras I've seen. Although it's been forty-some years since I played, we looked like a bunch of refugees from the nerd factory.

Anyway, in my first season there, we did play “Finlandia” and I've played it since then. I think it is the least favorite of mine, of any piece that Jean Sibelius has ever written. Sibelius was born on December 8, 1865 and died September 20, 1957, a huge and important span of time in the musical scene. His music played in integral part in the development of Finnish National Identity.

The core of his ouevre is his set of seven symphonies (which I have had the great good fortune to play). Like Beethoven, he used each successive work to further develop his own personal compositional style. His music continues to be performed and recorded in the concert hall.

Yes, he does. It's difficult to find a composer who has NOT been influenced in some way by Beethoven.

In addition to the symphonies, he also composed a number of “tone poems” besides the anthem-like “Finlandia”. “The Karelian Suite”, “Valse Triste”, “Kullervo” and “Swan of Tuonela” (one of four movements of the “Lemminkäinen Suite”) and his superb “Violin Concerto in D minor”. Apart from that, he also wrote choral music, with 21 publications.*

*Citation needed.

This is probably my favorite interpretation of the "Karelian Suite." It's joyful and brooding, but don't be put off by it; it's delightful!

Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony, he composed no more large-scale works. Although reputed to have stopped composing completely, he is known to have developed sketches for an Eight Symphony, written some Masonic music and re-edited some of his earlier works. He retained an active interest in music, although he didn't always view modern music favorably. Until adoption of the Euro, his likeness graced the Finnish 100 mark bill. In 2011, Finland adopted Flag Day, on December 8^th, the composer's birthday, a day of Finnish music.

Jean Sibelius, circa 1891.

I have always had a deep fondness for Sibelius' music. It is arctic and passionate all at once. This is nowhere more obvious than in his “Violin Concerto in D minor”. The opening movement seems ominous, and, like much of his music, the chord changes and movement are slow. The violin sweeps in and rises to, what seems an impossible height and cuts loose with a melody in parallel 6^ths, and I defy anyone to listen to this and not get the “feels”; the fireworks. The 3^rd movement is a balancing act in tempi; you are off-balance through the entire thing. It almost sounds like the violin is rushing, on the climbing runs, but that is a trick that Sibelius employed to great effect.

Jean Sibelius, 1939. Sweet Moses on a buttered cracker! He looks like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family! What a great picture!

This sort of thing and the repetitive obbligato, in the 4^th movement of his Second Symphony in the celli, basses and violas for 25 measures the first time, and 39 measures the second time and finally, 6 measures towards the end, baffled and left some critics cold. One critic, René Leibowitz, a renowned theorist, composer and conducter, went so far as to call Sibelius “Sibelius the worst composer in the world.” To which Sibelius replied, “Pay no attention to what critics say; no one ever put up a statue to a critic.”

courtesy:deviantart.com

Okay, so Jean Sibelius didn't get a whole statue, but he got a head. There us also a monument in his name that looks like a bunch of organ pipes glued together. I'm not a modern art afficionado, as you can tell.

He was also a rival of Gustav Mahler and felt that Mahler's approach to symphonic writing was entirely undisciplined. For every symphony that Sibelius wrote, he addressed some issue with form, harmonic movement, resolution, development, or thematic material in his own unique way, while Mahler tended to be all over the place. The two had a chance to discuss this while in a sauna. Sibelius later reported that during the bath:

“I said that I admired the severity of style and the profound logic the created an inner connection between all the motifs. . . Mahler's opinion was just the reverse. 'No, a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.'”

Gustav Mahler lived and worked in Vienna and Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was an eminent composer-conductor and a huge rival of Richard Strauss, who was a neo-classicist. Mahler set in stone the foundations of the 2^nd Viennese School of composition, which went down the road of 12-tone music and serialism, with composers like Arnold Schoenbert, Anton Weber and Alban Berg.

The two could agree on the usage of indigenous folk music, however. After Sibelius got over his Wagnerian period, he tended more towards using naked tri-tones, Haydn's built-in dissonances and bare melodic structures, with jagged melodies, at times. In other words, what would was recognized as the 2^nd Viennese School of composition, something Mahler, Alban Berg and Anton Webern embraced, although once again, Sibelius was not a proponent of “modern” music. He was sometimes referred to as “antimodern modernism” a true paradox to be sure.

Violin Concerto in D minor, played by Maxim Vengerov. I can think of no finer interpretation. His tone is warm, and his technique flawless.

Again, it is most notable in his Violins Concerto in D minor, which is breathtaking. He remains an important figure in 20^th century music, and in the development of later composers, Vaughan Williams, William Walton (That Viola Concerto!) and Arnold Bax.

BLOGGING FROM A TO Z APRIL 2013 – LETTER “S”

IGOR STRAVINSKY

If Beethoven bridged 2 musical eras, the classical and the romantic, Stravinsky defined and shaped the neo-romantic and helped lend legitimacy to the 12-tone or dodecophany style as it was once known. Being Russian didn't hurt, and he wrote about what he saw in the world around him. Unlike Prokofiev, who would leave Russia, shortly after the Revolution with the regime's blessings, only to return later to approbation for most of his works, Stravinsky, having left well before the Revolution, was free to come and go as he pleased.

I played for a conductor who looked like this once; he scared the hell out of me.

Thus, he was never hamstrung in the type of music he wrote. Don't get me wrong; they are both 2 of my favorite composers to listen to and play. But for sheer courage, one must listen to Shostakovich. He lived in Leningrad during the siege during WWII, wrote 15 symphonies and dared Stalin every inch of the way. His music is dripping with the tragedy of a nation. Prokofiev gives us glimpses and what-might-have-beens. His 7^th symphony, the “American” is beautiful and heartrending in it's joyful abandon.

There are no "do overs" here.

Stravinsky was another kettle of fish. From “Firebird” which is probably my favorite piece to play (lots of growling around on the “C” string and the “Danse Infernale!) to the wonderful, game-changing “Le Sacre du Printemps” or The Rite of Spring, which was premiered in 1903 in Paris, as a ballet, no less!. The Parisians rioted in the streets. Diaghelev had choreographed the thing and I heard it was just a few scraggly ballerinas in chicken feathers, thus the riot. Most likely, it was because no one had ever really heard anything like this before. You can't read the bitch. It must be memorized. This music is a depiction of spring, exploding. It explodes in Russia, apparently. That, I can believe.

I have heard that Diaghilev and Stravinsky had an "intense" working relationship. You can just take one look at Igor and guess that...

Tempo changes. Different key signatures every measure. 1/7 measure, followed by 5/12 measure. Split measures. You cannot count it out in your head, you have to memorize it. Anyway, Stravinsky still had other things to write after this. Admittedly, I haven't played his later works, such as “Canticum Sacrum.” Of course, I don't sing. It is a vocal piece; exceedingly difficult and is a 12-tone work. Stravinsky was a seeker and sought out different sounds, tempi, chord changes, rhythms. and threw out all the rules, he learned so assiduously. Other composers, such as Aaron Copeland recognized Stravinsky's monumental greatness as a 20^th century composer and his continual need to push the envelope in expansion of the expression of neo-romanticism as well as 12-tone music. Composers such as Arnold Schoenbert who started out writing neo-romantic pieces such as “Verklarte Nachte,” ended writing with his 12-tone masterpiece, “Pierre Luniere.” So much of his inspiration and writing stemmed from the groundwork set by Stravinsky.

Lt. Kije; it looks like they are letting cars into Red Square now!

While Prokofiev is a powerhouse as a composer in his own right, he had to answer to none other than the Soviet machine and there is little doubt that any radicalism he displayed in his earlier works was tamped. He took to writing more programmatic pieces, “Peter and the Wolf,” in collaboration with Disney, “The Scythian Suite,” “Lieutenant Kije,” “Alexander Nevsky” and “Love for 3 Oranges.” Along with several symphonies. The Russians were and remain, some of my favorites, to play and listen to, starting with Tschaikovsky all the way through Shostakovich.. However, Igor Stravinsky surpasses them all; ferocious music, written mostly during ferocious times. But, he had to leave his homeland to do it.