Classical Break - Sibelius ll
Mike Burrows
reads a short extract from Sibelius’ Vienna Diary.
Lemminkainen’s Homecoming was
composed in 1896. In the definitive form
found four years later it is a locus classicus of Sibelius orchestral style,
particularly his mastery of pacing, economic thematic consequence and judicious
scoring. After many adventures
concluding in his being torn to pieces and thrown into the river of hell and
his reanimation by his mother, Lemminkainen returns exultantly to Kalevala -
the domain of the national patriarch, Kaleva - from the land of the North,
Pohjola. Sibelius never wrote anything
with more élan, humour and understated but true nobility. It has real sweep. As he himself observed, as Finns should, it
wears its cap on the side of its head.
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Mike Burrows
reads a short extract from Sibelius’ Vienna Diary.
Intro: Runic Song
Interrupted By War-music
Hullo, this is Classical Break and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s programme is a tribute to the nationalist
Finnish Composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), whose birthday falls on December
The Eighth (two days after Finnish Independence Day). We’ll be playing music inspired by Finnish
national folk-poetry, primarily by the epic, Kalevala. Inspired is the word. Sibelius dedicated his life to what he saw as
the heritage of a proud people denied nationhood for some six hundred
years. His own life was mythologized by
the Finns and Western world until it came to seen as as potent a symbol of
determination by self and environment as anything to be found in Kalevala,
enchanting in its stories of endeavour, legend and magic.
You have just heard Runic Song Interrupted By War-music,
a movement from the Karelia Music, written near the outset of Sibelius’ career,
in 1893: it was composed for a festival
of folk-poetry and music held by Viborg University, specifically to accompany tableaux
vivants of significant events in Finnish history. The province of Karelia, most of which now
lies within the Russian Federation, is held by Finns to be the
cradle of Finnish culture and nationalism. The chant heard here is a representation of
the peculiar, pentatonic melodic patterns of Kalevala-singing, in which two
performers tell a story by statement and reply.
Kalevala is written in lines of a trochaic rhythm familiar from
Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha, which was written in imitation of it. Sibelius was educated at a
Finnish Duchy Grammar School, where he learned Finnish - his first language was
Swedish - and first read folk-poetry.
Now, here is Laulu Lemminkaiselle, Song To Lemminkainen. This is a Spring poem, dedicated to a journey
made by Lemminkainen, an important character in Kalevala, and often compared to
Don Juan! This choral and orchestral
work was an offshoot of a vivid group of tone-poems, The Four Legends, completed
in 1896, a colouring in musical terms of stories about this character. Originally, it formed a purely orchestral
passage found towards the close of the last legend, Lemminkainnen’s
Homecoming. Sibelius excised the
passage and modified it to create the new work, completed in the same
year. By this time, Sibelius had become
a master of homophonic Kalevalan singing wedded to techniques of Late Romantic
Classical music.
Track Two: Laulu
Lemminkaiselle
This
is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. We are presenting a tribute to the Finnish
Composer, Jean Sibelius, whose birthday falls on December The Eighth. The
Kullervo Symphony was Sibelius’ first large-scale orchestral and choral work,
for baritone and soprano soloists as well as choir and orchestra. Massively and powerfully scored, it was
completed and performed in 1892. In every
sense, it is an extraordinary achievement.
In five complex movements, the third and fifth of which are choral, and
lasting about 70 minutes, it was later withdrawn by its composer, but never revized.Its style
was unique in 1892. The Symphony was
written the year after he first heard Kalevalan folk-singing by a mistress of
the art, Larin Paraske.
It is a work of instinctive inspiration and imagination as well
as study, a unique synthesis of late Romantic grandeur and pictorialism and ancient music usually played on a
five-string zither.
Kullervo was the dispossessed hero, his inheritance seized and
Parents murdered in his childhood. The
Symphony tells his story, culminating in the overwhelming finale, where Kullervo commits suicide: the baritone asks his sword if, now that he
has revenged his parents, he can use it to kill himself!). Sibelius’ elemental imagination is fully
displayed in depicting the wooded scene of Kullervo’s Death - where he
unknowingly committed incest with his sister..
The sister, discovering afterwards that he was her brother, despaired
and threw herself into a nearby cataract.
Incidentally, their act of love in the third movement is represented with amazing verism for the time. The symphony’s end is dominated by a blazing
motif of fate first heard in the first movement.
Track Three, Kullervo’s Death
Lemminkainen’s Homecoming was
composed in 1896. In the definitive form
found four years later it is a locus classicus of Sibelius orchestral style,
particularly his mastery of pacing, economic thematic consequence and judicious
scoring. After many adventures
concluding in his being torn to pieces and thrown into the river of hell and
his reanimation by his mother, Lemminkainen returns exultantly to Kalevala -
the domain of the national patriarch, Kaleva - from the land of the North,
Pohjola. Sibelius never wrote anything
with more élan, humour and understated but true nobility. It has real sweep. As he himself observed, as Finns should, it
wears its cap on the side of its head.
Track Four:
Lemminkainen’s Homecoming
The tone-poem, Pohjola’s Daughter is a work of Sibelius’
maturity, written in 1906, as he was venturing into a new region in his musical
thinking. It tells of how the Maiden of
the North, who sits spinning thread above the rainbow, is wooed by the elderly
musician-wizard, Vainomoinen. In
mockery, she sets him various impossible tasks to prove his suitability as a
husband, which he accomplishes easily by his magic: until she challenges him to make a boat from
the fragments of her spinning-wheel (a spinning-wheel gloriously portrayed in
one of the themes of the tone-poem). He
strikes his shin with his axe and departs, unable to stanch the bleeding! There is a Wagnerian quality to the harmony
at this point, but physical pain is most effectively expressed! Incredibly, Sibelius originally intended this
piece of organic musical argument and seeming pictorial exactness to tell the
story of the Daughter of The Air - Luonnotar - who gave birth to creation.
Track Five: Pohjola’s
Daughter
Luonnotar is a
nine-minute scena for soprano and orchestra written for Aino Acté, and was
first performed at the Three Choirs Festival in 1913. The Daughter of The Air becomes pregnant and
gives birth to the world. This may have
a claim to be Sibelius’ most uncanny evocation of the elements and also, of the
spirit of Finland. It is like an apotheosis
of womanhood and childbirth, its moods strangely and beautifully conveyed by a
vast range of vocal and orchestral touches.
It has been said that the greatest beauty is always strange. Sibelius is often portrayed as a
granitic-faced nordic hero, almost a statue in himself. He was probably the warmest and most
sensitive of men, with a strong streak of the feminine in his nature. As an artist, he would have seen obvious
parallels between the mother of creation and the creator of music. Certainly, he suffered dreadfully in writing
the majority of the pieces in which he sought to do real, lasting justice to
his art and country, not to mention himself.
The pain drove him to drink, caused a cancer-scare in his forties and
silenced him as a major composer for the last 30 years of his life. “You must not join in any race,” he wrote;
his artistic ideals must be his own and right for the work in hand. On the other hand, he could describe in music
of unforced greatness a unique myth of the creation of the universe. Here is Luonnotar.
Track Six: Luonnotar
Kalevala was a collection
of some one hundred and more sequenced (and resequenced) fragments of the
poetry of the ancient Finnish people.
Its compiler, Elias Lönnrot, also gathered folk-lyrics in a book, Kanteletar,
The Daughter of The Kantele. The
kantele is the Finnish national instrument, a form of zither; it is the
instrument of the wizard Vainomoinen, and accompanies most forms of songs. In 1894, Sibelius wrote a set of part-songs
based on poems from Kanteletar:
Rakastava - The Lover.
One likes to think of the work as being associated with his wife of
fifty-five-odd years, Aino Järnefelt, whom he had married in the Summer of
1892, not long after completing Kullervo.
Here is the delightful The Path Of The Beloved.
Track Seven: The Path of
The Beloved (choir)
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To end this programme celebrating Sibelius’ inspiration by
Finnish folk-poetry, let’s hear his setting of verses from Kalevala, Venematka,
The Boat Journey of Vainomoinen. This
was written in 1893 and re-arranged in 1914.
The rearrangement is for mixed
choir, Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass.
This was Classical Break and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s programme on the music of Jean
Sibelius, was researched and written by Mike Burrows. We hope that you enjoyed it and will join us
again soon! Goodbye!
Track Eight: Venematka
