Sibelius and the Mystery of the Forests

Sibelius and the Development of Finnish Nationalism

Introduction

Sibelius was born in Haminleena in 1867 and died in 1957. He was the middle of three children and grew up in a stern Lutheran environment. His father, who was the GP to the army barracks stationed in Haminleena, was an alcoholic and died when Sibelius was three. His mother grew increasingly resentful at being left destitute to bring up her family alone.

The family moved to Helsinki when he was 18. There was family pressure to study Law, but he also enrolled in the newly opened Helsinki Music Institute, when he began composing prolifically, initially for family and friends. It was in Helsinki that he also started drinking heavily, blurring the boundaries between that and alcoholism.

His reputation began expanding nationally and internationally from the 1890’s onwards. He married Armas Jarnefelt in 1892, a relationship that lasted until his death in 1957. His creative compositional period spanned around thirty years, from the 1890’s to 1926. During this period, he alternated between trips to the European musical capitals of Berlin, Paris and London, returning to live deep in the Finnish countryside at in his country cottage of Ainola, then for the last thirty years of his life at Jarvenpaa.

Finland in the nineteenth century

Finland is one of several European countries that came into its stable independence relatively recently, in the case of Finland, in 1918.

From the thirteenth century until early in the nineteenth century, Finland was an annex or province of the Swedish monarchy, which long was the predominant Scandinavian power. In 1809, Finland was invaded by Alexander 1st of Russia, one of the most ambitious and expansionist of the Russian czars. Somewhat surprisingly, Alexander granted Finland semi-autonomous status as a Grand Duchy. This was because Alexander wished to undermine Swedish influence and to create a robust buffer zone. For this reason, the Finnish language was encouraged, an elected national forum established, and was allowed to formulate its own constitution.

Ironically, Russia did a lot to establish the conditions in which a robust Finnish national identity could flourish. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards there were a host of Finnish poets and writers who embodied this. For example, in a highly influential poem entitled ‘The Ice Breaking on the River Oulou’ Topelius said: “Oh let me be worthy of my country by sunlight and by night. Free I was born and free I wish to die.”

That sense of Finnish identity was closely related to the Finnish countryside. Finland came late to industrialisation, and throughout the nineteenth century was predominantly a rural country. The predominant season was a stark and inhospitable nine-month winter, huge areas of forest, innumerably lakes (around 190,000) with hamlets and towns sprinkled amongst this rather gaunt landscape.

A particularly critical event was the publication in 1835 of the Kalevala. The Kalevala is essentially a vast collection of Finnish myths and legends, passed on from verbally from generation to generation mainly in the form of songs. These were gathered together by Elias Lonnrot and synthesised into a coherent series of twelve ‘runes’. This very rapidly became established as a main source of Finnish cultural identity.

Sibelius and Finland

There is no doubt that the Kalevala deeply influenced Sibelius, as he kept on drawing inspiration from it throughout his career. Undoubtedly, it was Sibelius who gave definitive expression to this emergent sense of Finnish nationhood in a series of works throughout the1890’s and the first years of the twentieth century.

For example, in his diary Sibelius noted in 1891: “I am certain the time is not too distant when people will realise what is hidden in our Finnish folksongs. They will see that the ancient Finns who created the Kalevala were on a high level musically. I am working on a new symphony which is thoroughly Finnish is spirit. The authentically Finnish has turned into flesh and blood in me. …I am the best for that sort of thing. Moreover, the Finnish has become sacred to me. I am convinced that a Finnish man should feel and think Finnish. “

1. 1891 Kullervo

This was his third published piece, and his first major orchestral work. It was inspired by the Kalavala. With five movements spanning over an hour, in part choral and in part orchestral, he evokes the tragic story of Kullervo, the central heroic character in the Kalevala.

The first movement sets the heroic yet sombre and tragic scene. Before he is born, his uncle kills all members of his family except his pregnant mother, who will give birth to Kullervo. The second movement depicts his youth, in which he is sold into slavery. In the third movement, he escapes and returns home. On his return, he meets a young girl to whom he is intensely attracted. When she resists he rapes her, only to discover she is his long-lost sister, who when she discovers that Kullervo is her brother, leaps to her death. In the fourth movement, Kullervo - consumed by grief - attempts to seek death and redemption on the battlefield. In the fifth movement, wandering through the forest, he rediscovers the spot where he raped his sister, and overcome by remorse impales himself on his own sword, which had been forged for him by the king of the gods.

2. 1893 Karelia music: intermezzo

Following the success of Kullervo, he was commissioned by the Vilpuri Student Association to compose a piece commemorating the history of Karelia, an eastern province of Finland, from the thirteenth century, culminating in a reconstruction of a melody that was to become the Finnish national anthem.

He originally composed eleven musical episodes. The piece was first performed in Helsinki, and was received rapturously: “ You couldn’t hear a single note of music – everyone was on their feet cheering and clapping” (Sibelius, personal correspondence)

It is a huge, sprawling composition consisting of an overture, eight tableaux and two intermezzos:

Overture

Tableau 1 – A Karelian home, news of war 1293

Tableau 2 – The founding of Vipuri castle

Tableau 3 – Narimont, the Duke of Lithuania, levying taxes in the province of Kakisalmi (1333)

Intermezzo (1)

Tableau 4 Karl Knutson in Vipuri castle (1446)

Tableau 5 Pontus De la Gardie at the gates of Kakisalmi (1580)

Intermezzo (2)

Tableau 6 – The Siege of Vipuri (1710)

Tableau 7 - The reunion of Old Finland (Karelia) with the rest of Finland (1811)

Tableau 8 – The Finnish National Anthem

The piece as a whole is seldom performed nowadays, although Sibelius himself did devise a Karelia suite which does have modern currency, consisting of three elements, the Intermezzo, and Tableaux 4 & 5.

3. 1899 Press Celebrations Music (Finlandia/Tableaux 5 & 6)

Finlandia was written in 1899 and revised in 1900. It was composed as the closing element of a more complex and lengthy piece for a commission comprising seven sections, celebrating freedom of the press and intended as a covert protest against increasing press censorship imposed by the Russian state led by Tsar Alexander 1st, as a response to the Finnish independence movement which was gathering momentum.

The piece was based on a poem by Zachria Topelius entitled ‘The Melting of the Ice on the Ulea river. One of its most famous lines is: “I was born free and free I will die”.

The complete work consisted of seven sections including an introduction and six tableaux drawn from Finnish history:

Preludium: Andante

Tableau 1 - The song of Vainamoinen

Tableau 2 – The Finns are baptised by Bishop Henry

Tableau 3 – Scene from Duke Johan’s court

Tableau 4 – The Finns in the Thirty years war

Tableau 5 – The great hostility

Tableau 6 – Finland Awakes

Sibelius later reworked tableaux 5 & 6 into a standalone piece we now know as Finlandia. Words were later added in 1941 by Veikero Koskenniemi and is now one of the most important national songs of Finland:

Finland behold, thy daylight now is dawning The threat of night has now been driven away The skylark calls across the light of morning The blue of heaven lets it have its way And now the powers of night are scorning Thy daylight dawns O Finland of ours. Finland arise and raise towards the highest Thy head now crowned with mighty memory Finland arise, for to the world thou criest That thou hast thrown off thy slavery Beneath oppression’s yoke thou never liest Thy morning’s come, O Finland of ours!

Translation by Keith Bosley

4. 1913 Luonnotar

Luonnotar is a tone poem for soprano and orchestra completed in 1913. It received its first performance at the Three Choirs festival in England where its reception was less than enthusiastic. The piece is based on Finnish mythology, drawn from the Kalevala (Lonnrot, 1835). The text is from Rune 1; it is essentially a creation myth.

Luonnotar is the spirit of nature and mother of the seas. She is wandering lonely and abandoned in the heavens. Longing for her loneliness to end she descends towards the ocean and is impregnated by sea spray. After seven hundred years, a bird which settles on her lays seven eggs, which when hatched yield six aspects of the earth. The seventh is man.

In primaeval times, a maiden Beauteous daughter of the Ether Passed for ages her existence In the great expanse of heaven, O’er the prairies yet unfolded. Wearisome the maiden growing, Her existence sad and hopeless, Thus, alone to live for ages In the infinite expanses Of the air above the sea foam, In the far outstretching spaces In a solitude of ether, She descended to the ocean, Waves her carriage and waves her pillow. Thereupon the rising storm-wind Flying from the East in fierceness, Whips the ocean into surges, Strikes the stars with sprays of ocean Till the waves are white with fervour To and fro they toss the maiden, With her sport the rolling billows, With her play the storm-wind forces, On the blue back of the waters. On the white-wreathed waves of ocean, Play the forces of the salt-sea, With the lone and helpless maiden, Till at last in full conception, Union now of force and beauty, Sink the storm-winds into slumber.

Translated by John Martin Crawford

5. 1915 Symphony no 5

The first decade of the 20th century saw Sibelius concentrate primarily on the composition of symphonies, which provided the foundation of his international reputation, and his abiding place in the contemporary concert hall. His first symphony was completed in 1900, and the second in 1902.

These are both large sprawling romantic symphonies. The second in particular is arguably a masterpiece, rapturously received in Finland; both adhere to traditional symphonic form, in four movements. With his third symphony (1907) Sibelius began to take a new more innovatory austere neo-classical direction. The third symphony was innovatory in symphonic form, being composed in three fairly brief movements.

These early years of the twentieth century had seen him unfavourably compared to other composers such as Mahler, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. In his diary in 1913 he wrote: “A recognised name? Well yes that’s all. And all those lovely dreams? This is the result of my return to classicism. Go your own modest but sure way.”

He made a commitment to his own musical path, whether or not it was favourably received internationally: “Musical themes are the things which will define my destiny…I should like to compare the symphony to a river. It is born from various rivulets that seek each other and in this way the river proceeds wide and powerful to the sea. The will of the selected material decides its own form…the content is always the primary factor whilst form is secondary, the music itself deciding its outer form.” Sibelius’s solution has been called ‘rotational form’, large scale circular restatements of multi-thematic blocks of sound (Hepokoski, 1993).

By the time he started his fifth symphony (1914), he had further revised his ‘philosophy of composition’; he completed his 5th symphony in 1919, spanning the years of the first world war. The first world war had secluded him in Finland, spending most of his time in his home Ainola located deep in the Finnish countryside overlooking a lake.

His diaries from that time reveal someone deeply immersed in the sights and sounds of nature, almost pantheistically in union: “Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences. Lord God, that 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 tremulo. The swan-call closer to the trumpet, although it’s obviously a sarrusophone sound. A low-pitched refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s Angst! The fifth symphony finale-theme: legato in the trumpets! …That this should have happened to me, who have been for so long the outsider. Have thus been in the sanctuary today” Sibelius diary, 21st April 1915.

Then a few days later: “The swans are always in my thoughts and give splendour to my life. It’s strange to learn that nothing in the whole world affects me – nothing in art literature or music – in the same way as do these swans and cranes and geese. Their voices and being.” This experience later became ‘the swan theme’ and the closing finale to the whole symphony.

6. 1926 Tapiola

Although he lived until 1957, Tapiola was his last orchestral work. For this, he again drew inspiration from the Kalevala. Tapiola (the realm of Tapio), evokes the animating forest spirit, the god of the forest:

Widespread they stand, the Northland’s dark forests, Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams, Within them dwells the Forest’s mighty God, And wood-sprites in the dusk weave magic spells.

It is recognised as the greatest of his tone-poems, after which, quite literally, there was the ‘Jarvenpaa silence’.

Conclusions

Was Sibelius a Modernist, post-modernist or…?

Sibelius composed a significant body of work throughout the 1890’s and the first twenty years of the twentieth century, This understandably enough led to him to him craving Finnish, and international recognition. He always was a great national hero for Finland. Yet internationally his reputation struggled to take hold against the younger generation of composers such as Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky, Prokoviev and Schoenberg.

The truth (for me) is that labels do not really suit Sibelius. He was undoubtedly, with Mahler, one of the great composers of symphonies in the first half of the twentieth century. More than anything else, he embodied a unique voice, one in which his own musical identity fused with that of his nation.

He combined a pantheistic identification with Finnish nature with a passionate love of Finnish mythical origins as expressed in the Kalevala, which was given unique expression in his symphonies and tone poems. This is a voice with a blend of stark pessimism and exuberant optimism, of stubborn persistence in ‘his way’ no matter what.

Sources:

David Burnett-Jones Sibelius: his life and times 1989

James Heposki Sibelius: Symphony no 5 1993

Tomi Makela Jean Sibelius 2011