Reger may indeed have been an important inspiration for Sibelius in the years around 1910. He was both critical and enthusiastic about Reger (diary, 15 October 1919): “National, German, complicated, also boring, but good just on account of its German kind.” Beyond Reger and the idea of “German” style, one might expect Sibelius to focus on Bach, too, but Bach’s name rarely appears in his writings (and never as a model). Less sensitive than Sibelius in many respects, not least as far as “German” style is concerned, was Sibelius’s close friend and confidant Axel Carpelan, who frequently wrote down his personal thoughts about music and its prospects as though he were quoting Sibelius. Carpelan had a political mind. Even if he was practically penniless, he was able to raise money for Sibelius. On 26 April 1911 he wrote in an article on the composer: “In Germany above all, the home of the symphony, instrumental music is merely technique, a kind of science or engineering. It tries to conceal its inner emptiness with a huge technical apparatus.”32 James Hepokoski regards this as Sibelius’s authentic opinion,33 but rather than believing what contemporary commentators, friends, and the press wrote on his behalf, we should, as a matter of principle, be skeptical about anything written down outside Sibelius’s diary and the original drafts of his letters. (The final versions of Sibelius’s letters often tend to be more diplomatic and moderate in expression than the first drafts, which adopt positions that Sibelius was afraid of making public.) Even if Carpelan’s (typically Scandinavian) polemics against all that was, or might be, perceived as “German” were not shared by Sibelius himself, he certainly was critical of inner emptiness wherever he sensed it. Nevertheless, he realized that he needed to learn a little more modernist “engineering” in music in order to be able to work more easily and manage more effectively his output and the “claims of tradition,” as Max Paddison might say.34 Certainly, one could argue that it is precisely because Sibelius recognized the limitations of such musical engineering that his music is as original and “Life-giving” as it is.35
The principal result of this self-critical reflection upon inner emptiness and counterpoint was the Fourth Symphony. It was supposed to have nothing of the “circus” in it.36 On 20 July 1909 Sibelius criticized the “circus presentations of some conductors” as composers. He maintained that, by contrast, a “heavenly logic” was audible in his music.37 James Hepokoski suggests that “the diffuse expansionism of Mahler and the technological sensationalism of Strauss and the younger Straussians” were the focus of Sibelius’s criticism.38 Theoretically, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (1904–5) might have irritated Sibelius and given him some reason to talk about a musical “circus,” and Hepokoski is justified in pointing out that Sibelius disliked “younger Straussians.” It is more likely, however, that Sibelius was thinking of popular orchestral compositions by colleagues such as Felix Weingartner and Siegmund von Hausegger, whose work was particularly prominent in contemporary German concert halls. In a diary note of 1 August 1912 Sibelius compared modern musical tendencies to a river under human control, with an artificial catchment and a strictly controlled flow, like a channel rather than a natural stream. This is a typical metaphor (and, in terms of water management, even a wise approach). According to Sibelius, however, a “natural” symphony should be more like a river that gets its water from smaller brooks. The motives should gain their shape organically and be able to find their own way. The metaphor is similar to the famous vision of Edgard Varèse: “There will no longer be the old conception of melody or interplay of melodies. The entire work will be a melodic totality. The entire work will flow as a river flows.”39 Both Sibelius and Varèse fell under the loose influence of Busoni. And both had old-fashioned counterpoint teachers in their formative years: Varèse learned with Vincent d’Indy and Charles-Marie Widor, Sibelius with Albert Becker and Robert Fuchs (whose nickname was “Fugenfuchs”). Sibelius and Varèse reacted independently but similarly to the academic practices of the previous generation of teachers. For them, the future of their music lay in natural processes and organic evolution, not man-made constructivism.
Between Influence and Irritation
Even though one cannot detect the shadow of a younger composer in any of Sibelius’s works (his stylistic allusions and quotations include Wagner, Bruckner, Beethoven, Chopin, and other earlier composers), he was continuously aware of their music. As late as 29 April 1926 he wrote to Aino from Berlin: “In the music shops I study modern German and French music.” At that time he was working on Tapiola, a composition that in many respects (above all texturally) would have been considerably more advanced than anything he might have purchased from a commercial music shop in Berlin even as late as 1926. So far no one has been able to demonstrate the influence of any contemporary artist on late Sibelius, either in general or on Tapiola in particular (interestingly, visits to other composers’ homes are also not documented). Instead Tapiola has been compared rather with Ligeti and post-1945 minimalist music.40 Even the expected quotations from Wagner or other similar sources are absent here—though the work’s subject might suggest similar textures to those used in the Fourth Symphony, which refer to Parsifal and the music associated with Klingsor’s castle. This, of course, does not make Tapiola better than the Fourth. Only critics strictly beholden to modernist premises see intertextuality in a negative way. Sibelius’s obvious desire to construct his works in a complex manner (the key words in both works are logic and architecture) was ultimately classicist rather than up-to-date modernist.
According to the Wolfgang Rihm scholar Joachim Brügge, the reason for many of his colleagues’ fascination with the Fourth Symphony is the “radical modernity of the musical language and the uncompromising consequence of the form.”41 (According to a comment in conversation with Reinhold Brinkmann, it is Rihm’s favorite and “the most dissonant symphony.”)42 The central intervallic role of the tritone is one of the reasons for the “dissonant” character of the composition. But the work’s peculiarities begin with the treatment of the keys. The main key, written on the front page of the score, is A minor. The second movement is in F major, the third in C-sharp minor, and the finale in A major, closing in A minor. Surprisingly enough for a symphony with such a formidable reputation, this is well within the tonal “norms” of late Viennese classicism. More interesting is Sibelius’s loose manner of presenting the keys within the movements: the clarity of tonal processes is obscured by the “forward-leading melodic energetics” (vorantreibende melodische Energetik) of the work’s opening gesture, its shapeless gestalt connoting “early expressionist aesthetics,” as Brügge points out. Even more progressive here are Sibelius’s soundscapes. From measure 4 onward, he divides the double bass line as it oscillates between F and E, enriching the cellos acoustically. This creates what we would today call a stereophonic effect. The rhythm of the first measures is a written out ritardando. This is an example of the precise notation of texture in Sibelius’s scores, and is typical also of the Schoenberg school, above all Alban Berg. It was already common in Vienna before the modernist era, and can therefore be attributed to Sibelius’s study in Vienna under Karl Goldmark and Robert Fuchs. The meter is 4/4 throughout, but Sibelius notates the subliminal slowing of the pulse in eighth-note stages:
Example 1. Sibelius, Symphony no. 4, opening.
Another important Sibelian detail is that the tones C, D, E, and F have motivic value as a collection rather than simply outlining the characteristic interval of a tritone. There is no melody or motive in the traditional sense. Instead, a magnificent kaleidoscope of colors emerges from the opening measures, as though Sibelius is indicating a blended, decidedly unmodernist wash of sound. The melodic profile of these tones is limited initially by the lower register, but becomes somewhat sharper following the entrance of the solo cello in measure 6. Gradually, some new tones are introduced: G, A, and G, and slowly the opening collection is transformed into a melodic line with a specific rhythmic identity. In measure 55 a counter-melody appears, followed by further contrapuntal voices,
and the tritone dynamics of the beginning are replaced by a strong A-minor frame. The totality of six tones: C, D, E, F, G and A form almost a complete A-minor scale. Yet the key of A minor remains weak due to the overlapping and alternating bass tones F and E. F indicates the direction of the following modulation, leading toward F-sharp major after rehearsal letter B (Adagio). The point where the tones A, C, and E sound for the first time over a bass F (measure 7) creates a diminished seventh. However, the broader process whereby a small number of tones first become a scale, then a chord, then a melody, and finally a melody with counterpoints and a fully polyphonic texture, is like the demonstration of a modernist (Weberian)43 introduction to the history of Western music in twenty measures. First we hear, symbolically, the tone C, both as a harmonic ground in the upper cellos and double basses, as well as the beginning of the pseudo-melodic line in the first bassoon and first violoncello. Equally important, all the instruments are divided and contribute to the multidimensional sound space.
More postmodern than modern is the easily recognizable quotation from Wagner’s Parsifal in measure 40. It is preceded by no significant preparation. Hardly any other allusion in Sibelius’s music is as obvious as this. The motive appears in the exposition in B minor, in the recapitulation in D minor. Despite its isolation, it functions as a syntactic bridge, with little if any contextualization in the detail of the surrounding measures. Yet in the very opening of the symphony Sibelius evokes an atmosphere similar to Klingsor’s magic castle from the opera’s second act. The music similarly passes through several tritones—“heftig, doch nicht übereilt”—with frequent leading tones. So in this broad sense, the Parsifal quotation in measure 40 is at least semantically prepared.
In measure 57 begin what Brügge calls “shadowy melodies, typical for Sibelius, . . . that disappear into nothing.”44 As Brügge suggests, “This passage is among the most exiting and modern in the history of symphony in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”45 Here, if anywhere, Sibelius shows how well he has understood Schoenberg’s freely phrased and asymmetrical melodies, composed with Wagner’s melodic innovations in mind. It is clearly risky to describe one of the most progressive passages in the modern symphony as essentially Wagnerian, but this label emphasizes the conservative yet simultaneously utopian character of Sibelius’s work.
Another section that has often been compared with Wagner’s Parsifal is the rhapsodic but monumental third movement, Il tempo largo.46 Little can be achieved by applying the categories of traditional formal analysis, and more is perhaps revealed by invoking derivations of the narrative techniques of the 1910s: the programmatic background of the symphony lends particular direction to a narrative interpretation (“thoughts of a Wanderer,” the Koli Mountain, etc., with the Wanderer perhaps even meaning Wotan).47 With its wealth of Wagnerian solos and brass effects, Il tempo largo tends toward French impressionism—in some passages more directly than others. But ultimately we have a movement that is pluralist in style and thus truly Sibelian, with a broad spectrum of musical characters from mysterious chromatic lines to hymn-like tutti passages within the space of a single measure. One of the highlights of this remarkably rich movement occurs five measures after rehearsal letter F. Sibelius suggests a chorale-like apotheosis in the manner he would later adopt in his Fifth and Seventh symphonies. But in the Fourth the anticipated flight ends earlier than expected, and the promising musical material is suddenly cut short. Sibelius allows a few rather vague motives to appear, and reduces the stability of the meter and the melody. The texture tends toward the pitch C. Two upward-oriented figures remain of the principal motive in the final measures. Functionally they are based around dominant harmony: first D, E, F, A, G, and then G, A, B, D, C. Both figures are built over a pedal point on the low C (To translate this into a more Debussyan context, the D should be raised by a half-step to complete a whole tone collection G, A, B, C, and D.) Whether calling this passage C-sharp Locrian does justice to Sibelius’s compositional logic must be left open to debate. That the interval of a tritone plays such a marked role in this work certainly supports an analysis of the whole composition based on Locrian processes, since this mode lacks a perfect fifth scale degree (the strategic fifth is substituted by a tritone, or diminished fifth). Generally speaking, modality is the third important element of pitch organization in Sibelius’s music (besides diatonic tonality and post-Wagnerian chromatics). But the particular presence of the Locrian mode is symptomatic. This mode is hardly used elsewhere in Western music history or traditional European music. It can also be heard as a tonal scale with strong emphasis on the leading tone. Indeed, whether it is possible to identify individual modes in modern, post-tonal music with the same ease as tonality and chromaticism might one day become one of the most important questions in music theoretical work on Sibelius.
On Linear Intimacy
A brilliant example of Sibelius’s use of chromatic tonality can be found in his String Quartet in D Minor, op. 56, Voces intimae, of 1909. It follows similar lines to Schoenberg in his early works; Sibelius was confronted with Schoenberg’s chamber music soon after this project, if he had not encountered it earlier. Sibelius would never publish anything like Voces intimae again—neither for string quartet nor for comparable ensembles, even though the string quartet had been an early working medium and the format for four complete compositions. At least two of Sibelius’s quartets can be considered of national value and one,Voces intimae, of international rank. Chamber music in general was by no means foreign to Sibelius, and he had plenty of practical expertise himself as a violinist in a string quartet. In Spring 1912, Sibelius did start to compose a new quartet (diary entry of 22 April), but it was never finished or elaborated. The project is almost irrelevant as it was often unclear to Sibelius in the early stage of composing a new work what would happen to the material he was currently modeling on piano or on paper—or during a walk around his grounds at Ainola or in a foreign city (see Timo Virtanen’s essay in this volume).
Voces intimae, his fourth and hence final quartet, richly deserves its subtitle. Sibelius wrote the Latin inscription in his copy of the printed score above a set of chords in the slow movement. In measure 21 and following the Adagio di molto (in a section called Piú adagio), the phrase refers to a series of isolated triads played at a low dynamic level. It would be interesting to know at least whose voices Sibelius intended to capture here. The same idea occurs in another note for the publisher in the fair copy of the score, written on 12 June 1909.48 Beyond the work’s shared key, D minor, the quartet reveals a number of similarities with Schoenberg’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht, op. 4, of 1899. Unfortunately, we do not know if Sibelius knew it when he composed op. 56 ten years later. Schoenberg’s composition has five movements like Voces intimae, but three of them are in a fast meter. Certainly, Verklärte Nacht’s program, after a poem by Richard Dehmel, is an intimate text. But Sibelius’s title, Voces intimae, also reflects his fluent (and unsentimental) use of Latin. It might have something to do with the fear of death. At the same time, it reflects the often sinister but suddenly optimistic mood documented on the opening pages of his diary, which he also began to maintain in 1909. The quartet was composed largely in London, Paris, and Berlin. In February 1909 Sibelius was undertaking corrections in the central third movement with the intimate chords, despite distressing pains from a small tumor in his throat. On 1 April 1909, he suddenly wrote in the diary: “Why do I flee from my quartet?” On 15 April, he continued on the same topic: “Quartet ready! I—my heart is bleeding—why this tragedy of life. Woe! Woe! Woe! That one exists! My God—!”49 The existential “Woes” most likely have more to do with financial problems than difficulties in fulfilling the task of composing a string quartet. On the same day he wrote to Aino about the composition: “(It has been ready for ages already. But I have not given it away.) Lienau received it today. It has become beautiful. Of a kind that brings a smile to your lips even in the moment of death. I won’t say more.”50 These sentences
to his wife are more informative and less sinister than the cryptic lines in the diary. But the idea of a smile upon one’s lips at the hour of death is appropriate, as the quartet easily sounds like an elegy. Sibelius smiles in Voces intimae rather like Schubert in his D-minor quartet Der Tod und das Mädchen (1824; D 810).
Sibelius’s intimate voices can be heard from the very beginning of the first movement, Andante—Allegro molto moderato (Example 2). The eight-measure introduction starts as a dialogue between just two instruments: violin and cello. The tonal disposition is untypically clear. Sibelius begins in D minor, the functional dominant (A major) is present via the leading tone C—all this evoked without chords, using purely linear means. Even the unison at the start of the Allegro molto moderato (measure 9) is fundamentally linear: every voice gains a high degree of linear individuality. In general—even though the polyphony in Voces intimae and the Fourth Symphony is refined—Sibelius’s voice leading is hardly a strength. Compared with his colleagues abroad, Sibelius’s artistry lies more in his sense of harmony and orchestration than in counterpoint.
Jean Sibelius and His World Page 15