Jean Sibelius and His World
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110. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 2:146.
111. Letter to Aino Sibelius, 19 August 1894, quoted in Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:158.
112. Pierre Vidal, “The Symphonic Poems of Jean Sibelius and the European Tradition of the Form,” in Tarasti, Proceedings from the First International Jean Sibelius Conference, 203–7 (203).
113. Veijo Murtomäki, “‘Symphonic Fantasy’: A Synthesis of Symphonic Thinking in Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and Tapiola,” in Goss, The Sibelius Companion, 147–63.
114. Ibid., 151.
115. David Haas, “Sibelius’s Second Symphony and the Legacy of Symphonic Lyricism,” in Goss, The Sibelius Companion, 77–94.
116. Tina K. Ramnarine, “An Encounter with the Other: Sibelius, Folk Music and Nationalism,” in Murtomäki, Sibelius Forum, 166–73.
117. William A. Wilson, “Sibelius, the Kalevala, and Karelianism,” in Goss, The Sibelius Companion, 43–60, esp. 55–56.
118. Letter to Aino Sibelius, 31 October 1891, in Sydämen aamu: Aino Järnefeltin ja Jean Sibeliuksen kihlausajan kirjeitä, ed. Suvi Sirkku Talas, trans. Oili Suominen (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), 279–80.
119. Murtomäki, “Russian Influences on Sibelius,” 158.
120. Simon Parmet, The Symphonies of Sibelius: A Study in Musical Appreciation, trans. Kingsley A. Hart (London: Cassell, 1959), 107. Parmet’s book was first published in 1955 (in Swedish).
121. Gray, Sibelius, 76.
122. Stupel', Yan Sibelius, 48.
123. Vera Aleksandrova and Elena Bronfin, Yan Sibelius: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1963), 141–42.
124. Robert Layton, “Sibelius—Twenty-Five Years On,” in Tarasti, Proceedings from the First International Jean Sibelius Conference, 106–12. The melodies transcribed by Sibelius are reproduced in Veijo Murtomäki, “Sibelius and Finnish-Karelian Folk Music,” Finnish Musical Quarterly 3 (2005): 32–36.
125. Goss, Sibelius, 130.
126. See also Murtomäki’s description of the Third Symphony, which links the Finnish and Russian folkloric traditions, both directly and through their treatment in symphonic works: “The youthfully energetic main theme which opens the symphony is characterized by its narrow range and its rhythmical repetitiveness. The semiquaver rhythms in particular are related to Finnish and Estonian (also Russian) folk tunes, and can be compared, for example, with the Finnish folk song ‘Tuku, tuku lampaitani’ as well as with the theme of the Finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.” Murtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 62.
127. V. Ya. Yevseyev, Istoricheskiye osnovï karelo–finskogo eposa, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk, 1957–60), 1:14–16. For a modern study of the relationship between the Kalevala and the bïlinï, see Z. K. Tarlanov, Geroi i epicheskaya geografiya bïlinï “Kalevala” (Petrozadovsk: Petrozadovskiy gosudarstvennïy universitet, 2002). Tarlanov’s study is a typological study of names of characters and locations in the two traditions, with little attempt at detailed comparative analysis other than the observation that the Kalevala and certain of the bïlinï are epic works with origins in the same geographical area and dating from roughly the same period (the analogies are made on 225–31).
128. Vsevolod Miller, Ocherki russkoy narodnoy slovesnosti, 3 vols. (Moscow: Sïtina, 1897– 1924), 1:289–99.
129. For a study that combines both historical and typological approaches to myth and makes a great many parallels between Sibelius and Slavonic music, see Eero Tarasti, Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, Especially that of Wagner, Sibelius, and Stravinsky (Helsinki: Suomen Musiikkitieteellinen Seura, 1978).
130. Murtomäki, “Sibelius’s Symphonic Ballad Skogsrået,” 97.
131 Johnson, Sibelius, 116.
132. Edward Garden, “Sibelius and Balakirev,” in Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown and Roland John Wiley (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 215–18.
133. Burnett James, The Music of Jean Sibelius (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Association University Presses, 1983), 64.
134. Ibid., 52.
135. This statement is omitted in Layton’s English translation, and is cited here from Erik Tawaststjerna, Jean Sibelius, 5 vols. (Helsinki: Otava, 1965–88), 3:95; and Jean Sibelius, 5 vols. (Helsinki: Söderström, 1991), 3:90.
136. Goss, Sibelius, 300.
137. Marina Frolova-Walker, Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 140–225.
138. S. Taneyev, Dnevniki, 3 vols. (Moscow: Muzïka, 1981–85), 3:360.
139. Goss, Sibelius, 336.
140. Ibid., 336.
141. For a survey of approaches, see Timo Virtanen, Jean Sibelius, Symphony No. 3: Manuscript Study and Analysis (Helsinki: Sibelius Academy, 2005), esp. 109–22.
142. Goss, Sibelius, 339–41.
143. Ibid., 339. On the role played by Glinka’s Kamarinskaya in the development of Russian music, see Richard Taruskin, “How the Acorn Took Root: A Tale of Russia,” 19th-Century Music 6/3 (1983): 189–212, repr. in Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 113–51; and Marina Frolova-Walker, “Against Germanic Reasoning: The Search for a Russian Style of Musical Argumentation,” Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Musical Culture 1800–1945, ed. Harry White and Michael Murphy (Cork, Ire.: Cork University Press, 2001), 104–22.
144. Howell, Jean Sibelius, 9. Howell’s comment relates primarily to the First Symphony, but can be justifiably extended to later works, such as the Third Symphony discussed here.
145. James Hepokoski, “The Essence of Sibelius: Creation Myths and Rotational Cycles in Luonnotar,” in Goss, The Sibelius Companion, 121–46.
146. Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5, 24. Hepokoski also suggests that repetition “asks to be perceived as an identifier of a Finnish folk ethos” (23), and that it evokes “the characteristic melodic and metric configurations of Kalevalaic recitation.” Moreover, Schubert and Bruckner provide cognates “within the Austro-Germanic tradition” (24).
147. Hepokoski, “Structural Tensions in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony: Circular Stasis, Linear Progression, and the Problem of ‘Traditional’ Form,” in Murtomäki, Sibelius Forum, 213–36. The “principle of teleological progress” is borrowed from Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 307.
148. Hepokoski, “The Essence of Sibelius,” 128.
149. Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through “Mavra,” 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1:951–65.
150. Howell, Jean Sibelius, 7–10.
151. Ibid., 108.
152. Ibid., 194.
153. As Tawaststjerna notes: “Busoni had conducted Nuages and Fêtes the previous month, and it is reasonable to assume that he showed the scores to Sibelius, since we find the latter writing to Robert Kajanus recommending him to study and perform them. This was probably the first time he had encountered an important large-scale Debussy score, and Debussy’s influence, along with that of Strauss, manifests itself already in Pohjola’s Daughter” (Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 2:21). A more decisive encounter took place in 1909, when both men met in London. Writing to Axel Carpelan, he includes Debussy’s latest songs and the Nocturnes among those works that “have all confirmed my thoughts about the path I have taken, take and have to take.” Letter to Axel Carpelan, 27 March 1909, quoted in ibid., 109.
154. Howell, Jean Sibelius, 219.
155. On the Russian influences on French music, see Steven Baur, “Ravel’s ‘Russian’ Period: Octatonicism in His Early Works, 1893–1908,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52/3 (1999): 531–92.
156. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:114.
157. Goss, Sibelius, 277.
158. M
urtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 37.
159. Layton, Sibelius, 96.
160. Howell, Jean Sibelius, 217. As originally performed, the movements were played in the following order: “Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island,” “Lemminkäinen in Tuonela,” “The Swan of Tuonela,” and “Lemminkäinen’s Return.” In Sibelius’s 1947 revision of the suite, the order of the middle two movements is reversed.
161. Murtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 50 and 52, respectively. Elsewhere, Murtomäki considers the mediant relations structuring the movements of Brahms’s First Symphony. See Veijo Murtomäki, “On the Symphonic Thought and Techniques of Sibelius,” in Tarasti, Proceedings from the First International Jean Sibelius Conference, 113–17.
162. Murtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 50.
163. Ibid., 52.
164. Richard Taruskin, “Chernomor to Kashchey: Harmonic Sorcery; Or, Stravinsky’s ‘Angle,’” Journal of the American Musicological Society 38/1 (1985): 72–142 (quote at 79). Much of this material is repeated in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 1:255–306.
165. Taruskin, “Chernomor to Kashchey,” 86–87.
166. Murtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 19.
167. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:245–46.
168. Murtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 82.
169. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 2:181.
170. Ibid., 176.
171. Ibid., 180–81 and 184.
172. Elliott Antokoletz, “The Musical Language of the Fourth Symphony,” in Jackson and Murtomäki, Sibelius Studies, 296–321.
173. Joseph C. Kraus, “‘From Fragments into Themes’ Revisited: Sibelius’s Thematic Process,” in Huttunen, Sibelius Forum II, 193–210.
174. For a related study of similar harmonic progressions as an embodiment of the “uncanny” in turn-of-the-century European music (with a particular emphasis on Wagner), see Richard Cohn, “Uncanny Resemblances: Tonal Signification in the Freudian Age,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57/2 (2004): 285–323.
175. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 2:170–71.
176. Ibid., 175.
177. Ibid., 57.
178. Murtomäki, Symphonic Unity, 143.
179. Ibid., 221.
180. “His thematic structures are more closely related to the Lisztian style while the influence both of Wagner and Tchaikovsky can be discerned.” Quoted in Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:166.
181. “Kajanus, for example, observed that with his Second Symphony, Sibelius demonstrated the flexibility of the allegedly old–fashioned symphonic form, just as Tchaikovsky has done with his Pathétique. . . . Other critics also made comparison to earlier composers: Flodin heard in the first movement the same rejoicing of nature . . . as he heard in Wagner’s Siegfried, while the second movement could only be compared, he believed, with the finale of the Pathétique.” See Kari Kilpeläinen, “Introduction,” in Jean Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43, ed. Kari Kilpeläinen (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2000), viii–xi.
182. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:39.
183. Ekman, Jean Sibelius, 67.
184. Letter to Aino Sibelius, 8 January 1891, quoted in Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:87.
185. Hepokoski, “Structural Tensions in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony,” 215.
186. Smeds, “The Image of Finland at the World Exhibitions,” 14–23.
187. Letter to Aino Sibelius, 27 July 1900, quoted in Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 1:230.
188. Helena Tyrväinen, “Sibelius at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900,” in Murtomäki, Sibelius Forum, 114–28; and “Helsinki–Saint Petersburg–Paris: The Franco-Russian Alliance and Finnish-French Musical Relations,” Finnish Musical Quarterly 1 (2003): 51–59.
189. Hepokoski, “Structural Tensions in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony,” 215.
190. Elaine Brody, “The Russians in Paris (1889–1914),” in Russian and Soviet Music: Essays for Boris Schwarz, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1996), 157–83.
191. Vignal, Jean Sibelius, 312.
192. Diary entry, 14 November 1910, quoted in Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 2:160.
193. Sibelius’s diary of 7 March 1912 records his reaction to Kajanus’s visit to Russia in March 1911: “Strange to have him here in the house. He has now gone to St. Petersburg to listen to Glazunov who is his latest love.” Quoted in Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, 2:213.
From Heaven’s Floor to the Composer’s Desk:
Sibelius’s Musical Manuscripts and
Compositional Process
TIMO VIRTANEN
In the summer of 1943, while in conversation with his son-in-law conductor Jussi Jalas, the seventy-seven-year-old composer Jean Sibelius is reported to have declared: “Remember that after my death all my sketches must be burned. I don’t want anybody to write ‘Sibelius’s letzter Gedanke,’ or the like.” And, he added: “Sketches are often finer than the original. Michelangelo, for instance.”1 Even a devoted admirer such as Jalas, who dutifully took notes from his discussions with Sibelius and often quoted the composer’s statements in his own writings, knew that his master’s words were to be taken with a certain reservation. And, fortunately, neither of Sibelius’s rather puzzling demands came to pass: the composer’s sketches were not thrown into the fire after his death, nor have scholars or musicians restrained themselves from occasionally attempting to discover, speculate upon, or write about his “final thoughts,” or his authorial intentions, at least as far as his music is concerned. Today, we can study Sibelius’s sketches and other musical manuscripts in an attempt to determine how his compositions evolved, how he wanted his music to sound, or how his musical sources should be interpreted and his works performed. Certainly, we would not know nearly as much about Sibelius’s music—or his creative process—if his wishes had been followed and his sketches burned or left unattended for some other reason.
That is not to say, however, that all of the relevant primary documents have necessarily survived intact. Sibelius burned or destroyed some of his manuscripts himself—the fate of the Eighth Symphony, for example, has provoked the most spirited discussions and conjectures in the critical literature—and other sources are lost or otherwise unavailable.2 In addition, there may be external factors that have determined the varying number of manuscript sources that have survived. For example, there are significantly fewer manuscripts preserved from works completed before 1904, when Sibelius moved to his villa, Ainola, than from the period following that date. Before 1904, Sibelius changed his address frequently (he had ten residences in Helsinki alone), and he evidently did not always transfer all of his papers from an old address to the new. We have, for instance, the following recollections of a Kerava girl who lived next door to the composer at one of the three residences (two in Helsinki, and one in nearby Kerava) where Sibelius stayed during the composition and revision of the First Symphony: “A laundry-basket full of music and writings was left” in Sibelius’s apartment after his move back to Helsinki, which the housekeeper “Mrs. Jokela said would have made her rich, if she had saved them.”3 Despite such losses, the number of surviving Sibelius manuscripts is impressive. In 1982, the Sibelius heirs donated the entire manuscript collection from Ainola to the University of Helsinki Library (since 2006 known as the National Library of Finland), and in his annotated catalogue, Sibelius scholar Kari Kilpeläinen lists around 2,000 manuscript units of various sizes and type (though the total manuscript pages must reach well beyond that number). The primary materials offer both scholars and performers a rich and fruitful field for research.4
The largest number of manuscripts that have survived are most commonly those associated with Sibelius’s large-scale—typically orchestral—works, dating especially from the Ainola years after 1904. He often worked on these projects over a lengthy period of time, or revised such works thoroughly so that they exist in two or more different versions. A typical example is the Violin Concerto, op. 47, with its two versions dating from 1904 and 1905, or the Fifth Symphony, op. 82, which Sibelius re
vised twice after the premiere of the original version in 1915 (the first revision is from 1916 and the final revision 1919). Other works that left behind an unusually extensive amount of sketch material include the symphonic fantasy Pohjola’s Daughter, op. 49 (1906), the Third Symphony, op. 52 (1907), and the Seventh Symphony, op. 105 (1924). But, surprisingly perhaps, some of the works with substantial amounts of manuscript material were not very large-scale or “complicated” symphonic pieces; a good example of this latter category is Cassazione, op. 6 (1904), a work of about ten minutes’ duration that exists in versions for full orchestra and smaller ensemble. The existence of two different versions does not really explain the astonishingly large number of sketches that have survived for this piece. It is more likely that material for the work was gathered and developed over several years, and that Sibelius was working on several different projects simultaneously at the beginning of the century.5
The fundamental problem in sketch studies is that we can never be sure whether the manuscript material for a certain work has survived in its entirety, or whether some of the sources—perhaps a large number, or even the majority of them—are lost. Drawing conclusions merely from the number of manuscripts available therefore always contains a seed of doubt and uncertainty. For instance, it may often be tempting to think that because a large number of sketches survive for a particular piece the work must have been especially troublesome or laborious for the composer. This is not necessarily the case: there may be other circumstantial reasons why an exceptional number of manuscripts survived. Among possible explanations, extensive sketch material could result from a lengthy compositional process with several interruptions caused, for instance, by traveling or work on other projects (meaning that the composer had to gather and collect his thoughts repeatedly by rewriting sketches when returning to the old material)—or possibly even from the relatively trivial concern that the composer was not always able to locate the right sketch pages when returning to his daily work and had to rewrite some passages before carrying on from where he had left off. More revealing than the number of (existing) manuscripts, therefore, are the characteristics of the sketches themselves. A single surviving sketch page for a certain work can sometimes be more revealing than tens of pages for another project. And this certainly appears to be the case for some of Sibelius’s music.