Tonight its Silbelius ... all night long. So little time. I have 7.6 hours of music and only 4.5 hours until I turn into a pumpkin.
My introduction to the work of Jean Sibelius took place in high school when I participated in the symphonic band. For the Spring concert of my sophomore year we performed Finlandia, and being a trombone - baritone player, I got charged up by the opening bars. Ominous, brooding, imposing, anticipatory, dark and dramatic, they stirred in me some sense of adventure and called to life the expectation of descent from a stony vista overlook into a fog filled ravine with a defined notion of the goal. Sounds like a lot for a piece of music, but once you've experienced it, there's no going back. In fact, Allen Bloom (Closing of the American Mind) revels in such experience while detesting rock and roll because rock merely stirs juvenile passions with no context for the richer appreciation of achievement. While preparing for the concert I purchased an LP of Finlandia, En Saga and The Swan of Tuonela. I drove my poor mom crazy, because the high volume wasn't high enough.
Shortly after that concert, I found a recording of Symphony No. 5 and Pohjola's Daughter. That was it, I was hooked. The liner notes declared Sibelius' compositions to be nationalistic, anchored in his love of the Finnish landscape and the brooding shadows of the fjords. While I barely comprehended nationalism, I did detect that there was more. There was ancient story, legend, mythos, identity of people and their place. His music was a conversation concerning the battles of the gods and the kings. It recalls the stealthy approach of Beowulf to Grendel and the bloodletting that ensued. It reminisces about the Volsung and their exploits. It prefigures the ride of the Rohirrim against the amassed forces of the Dark Tower on the wide fields of Pellinor outside Minas Tirith.
It was ten years later when I stumbled upon yet a fourth recording of Symphony No. 4 that I actually fell in love with Sibelius. I had heard the 4th Symphony several times before and didn't like it. I don't know what it was exactly: ... sluggish, swampish, confused, a bad adagio, fairies dancing over a slime pit?? it was hard to put my finger on. These were probably the same kind of reasons that audiences hated it when Sibelius first performed it ...he was booed off of one stage. But he never changed it .. he was resolved... this is how it would be. The recording that captured me was by Paavo Berglund and the Helsinki Orchestra. Berglund interpreted the symphony with a clarity and vigor that I had not heard before. (This isn't really surprising since composers occasionally find someone else who do a better job at communicating their compositions; Samuel Barber for example relied upon Thomas Schippers to present his work.) Somewhere deep in the liner notes an aside was made regarding Sibelius' health; he wrote the symphony during a time when he was fearful of throat cancer and was awaiting the results of tests. That was it. And that's where I fell in love. The symphony was brooding worry laced with dark patience and the struggle for hope. No wonder he wouldn't change a note of it. It was his very heart and psyche. To the devil with anyone who didn't like it. His every composition was a letter, a poem, a diary entry, a confession. And thus with every other composer ...
Tonight its Sibelius. So much music, and so little time.
Today's Influences and Soundtrack:
Jean Sibelius, Finlandia
En Saga
Pohjola's Daughter
Swan of Tuonela
Valse Triste
Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 7
Scenes Historique
Pelleas et Mellisande
Symphony No. 2
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