The Sibelius Society, which organized the competition and supports the monument’s realization, is unsatisfied with Eila Hiltunen’s proposal. They stress that the design does not pay sufficient respect to Sibelius’s figure. But what this is intended to mean is unclear: does it suggest rather an old seated gentlemen? Their objections to the projected cost of the monument, which the artist estimates to be 200 million marks, are easier to understand. This is undeniably a lot of money, and the Society admits that it does not have the appropriate funds at its disposal. These costs should be calculated more precisely before any final decision is taken. And finally, one might then ask: if the money for a decent monument is not available, should one be satisfied with a poor one? Is it not better to do without any monument at all, which, in these monument-crazed times, might ultimately be the best solution? Either we need an artwork that meets the very highest standards and pays no sidelong glances to nationalism and its level of public accessibility, much less to such trivialities as those raised by Sibelius’s figure—or we need no monument at all. Surely the money could be used for many other equally valuable purposes: perhaps an annual international composition competition—or a generously supported fund for Finnish composers? The possibilities are endless, and perhaps a way forward can be found that bestows greater permanence to a composer—since that is what he is, after all—than a monument somewhere in a park.
Organ Pipes or a Bronze Statue
Simon Parmet
Hufvudstadbladet, 16 October 1962
Translator’s note: This article follows a second round of the competition, when Hiltunen’s revised entry had been placed first in the new rankings. As Parmet’s contribution and subsequent exchange with Kruskopf reveals, the decision was by no means an uncontroversial one, and it was five years before the monument was finally unveiled.
To judge by the memorial statues that have risen one by one across our fair city, we have of late become utterly “monument-minded.”6 Yet the commendable desire both to immortalize the memory of the country’s leading man and to furnish the capital city with a beautiful new monument has failed to live up to its well-intended result as far as the second is concerned. Now, unfortunately, it seems as though we are also about to place yet another obstacle in the path of the first desire. It stands to reason that opinion has been widely exercised, sounding a warning note before misfortune can occur. For the question is now of none other than Jean Sibelius, one of our greatest minds, a greater object of our nation’s affection and admiration than any other figure this century. The cause of this unanimous and often unreflectively widespread feeling of affectionate reverence for the great Finnish composer lies buried deep within the popular consciousness and has less to do with music and art than with the profound spiritual bond that ties Sibelius to the most insignificant and musically least-trained members of his world.
It is therefore unsurprising that the idea of a Sibelius monument was met with such enthusiasm when it was first proposed. This was evident from the large sums of money raised among the master’s admirers across the country, and likewise by the pains the authorities took to achieve a monument worthy of its great subject. Unfortunately, as the voluminous correspondence and discussion in the newspaper columns suggests, enthusiasm no doubt cooled significantly or was transformed into opposition once the result of the monument competition became known. The general dismay, not to say ill will toward the prizewinning proposal, which in its final modified form appears to be precariously close to approval and realization, glaringly reveals the gulf that separates the parties over the divisive issue of what is art and what is not.
Those who believe that all art must to a certain extent preserve its connection with time-honored forms of expression and the elementary realism that constitutes our life refuse to accept the recommended proposal partly on fundamental aesthetic and philosophical grounds. We can all agree that it presents a spectacle with no connection to either conventional form or simple human realism. To take sides over the fundamental question of whether the controversial project is art or not is in this case entirely unimportant. What is of the greatest importance—and cannot be emphasized enough—is that in most people’s eyes the project is not art. They will never experience it as art, and no one, not even all the world’s experts with their most convincing arguments, could persuade them otherwise. Let ultramodern artists issue their dictates that seek to standardize the idea of art in our time; the often unconscious but no less pressing demand for spiritual integrity in vital artistic questions does not allow our people to abandon themselves in cozy escapism. If an artwork praised for its modernity strikes them as ugly, they say so without fear, at the risk of being called foolish or old-fashioned. So especially now, on the question of erecting a monument to one of the nation’s greatest sons, they feel compelled to articulate their opinion: a monument should be seriously conceived and authoritatively justified; it should not become a battleground for artistic speculation and experiment.
The artistic aim of the radicals is precisely the emancipation from such overworn convention and human realism. Their ideal has grown out of our time’s fertile intellectual soil and is shared by artists across the world: they say that ultramodernism alone produces the true artistic expression of our epoch. Many of the entrants in this competition have pursued this conviction in trying to create a national memorial to an intellectual giant of our time. If we consider the outcome of their efforts, especially in the prizewinning entries, we cannot escape the conclusion that their artistic intentions, over and above the unrealized aim of representing the master’s musical inspiration in sculpture, are primarily less concerned with preserving the memory of the great composer and his achievements than with marking how our contemporary generation—above all, the radical artists themselves and their interpreters—have experienced him and his work. Such a conception of the monument project will be an ideal impression of the representative’s personality rather than the represented, of the time that succeeded the latter rather than the space he himself occupied.
One should reject this kind of interpretation as a fundamental idea for any monument conceived as the homage to a single individual. Such a monument is principally a gesture of gratitude toward a departed citizen who has won his fellow creatures’ love and respect. Its primary purpose is to immortalize the object of these affections, not those who entertain them. Nonetheless, it is not inconsistent with the idea of a monument to a great man to transfer the weight of artistic expression toward the symbolic representation of the feelings he awoke within his contemporaries, or to the manner in which they experienced him. In a literary form both might be possible, but in sculpture it is quite simply impracticable beyond the fixed boundaries of its mode of expression. Such clumsy attempts to poeticize in stone are entirely unnecessary, and in the deepest sense inartistic. Misled by their imagination, these dithering artists have announced nothing more than what was stated by the mere fact that a monument is being raised. That this has happened effectively with the practical support of the whole nation is telling evidence of Jean Sibelius’s status among his contemporaries and the intensity with which they experienced him.
In the combination of purely abstract and heavily rendered realism that characterized the prizewinning entry (organ pipes!) let us suppose that the artist, as suggested above, has wished through her choice of form to produce a sculptural-architectonic interpretation of the mysteries of the master’s music. An allegorical reference to music is extremely difficult in any circumstance, and doubly so when it concerns that of Sibelius, a full-blooded musician. Music can be expressed in a symbolic manner only awkwardly, and so any ambitious attempt to form, allegorically, a monument to Sibelius’s music, is bound to be unsuccessful. Any allegorical representation, it emerges, whether realist, romantic, or non-figurative, can only be marked as the direct opposite or trivialization of everything Sibelius and his art represents. The master himself condemned as an abomination any attempt to interpret music other than thro
ugh music itself. To recognize this means to regard as a failure any attempt, hopeless or faithful, to describe his music in a sculptural medium, whether stone or metal. Keeping in mind Sibelius’s opposition to any translation of music into another artistic medium merely confirms for us how far the current proposal for a Sibelius monument stands from the master’s own artistic ideals. All the more disastrous that the prizewinner evidently sees in her monument a sculpturally rendered expression of the spirit of Sibelius’s music, celebrating among other things precisely that ideal.
No one can admonish an artist about the right to be as radically modern as anyone else in his private work, especially if he believes that, in the battle of ideas, his convictions will come good when the time is right. But one must question the radical artists’ self-assumed right to monopolize the intellectual current of our time. Assuredly, these artists constitute a large and undoubtedly vociferous part of all those who have dedicated their life to art. But nothing aside from their own self-declaration indicates that they are the best suited or form the best part to represent our epoch. In many parts of the world, including our own nation, are groups of artists who rest on more traditionally based cultural-ideological grounds than the radicals and who, without constantly blowing their own trumpets, march with honor at the head of their time, following their own declared path. All talk that justifies the radicals’ claim to be the sole adequate expression of our time and its spirit must therefore be resisted. A Sibelius monument in good, traditional style could give posterity an impression of how our time conceived of art and how it understood Sibelius, as well if not better than any enigmatic, non-figurative work. (In the case of the monument to Mannerheim, the idea emerged naturally.)7 We recognize, as suggested above, that artists may be as radical as they like in their private artistic work, but it does not necessarily follow that the same applies in the case of an official commission. Even the ultramodernism of its day is often helplessly aged and antiquated the next morning—think of Eliel Saarinen’s 1905 proposal for a concert hall in Helsinki, a project nowadays terrifying but in its day truly high modernist, which luckily never came to fruition. As far as style is concerned, we should in such cases pursue an artistic moderation, and stick more to the tried and tested than to the experimental. For this reason, in erecting an official monument to one of the country’s great men, we need to take into account more than purely artistic opinions. The challenge is to produce nothing less than a genuine work of art, one which does not compromise artistic requirements but, unlike so many discarded radical fashions, has the qualities to ensure a certain degree of universality and chronological independence. Only the artist who, without abandoning artistic standards, takes note of the non-artistically inclined majority’s capacity to experience art can expect to create a work that has the necessary qualities to rise to the level of an official, national monument. In the opinion of many, the prizewinning and expertly recommended proposal does not have these necessary qualities.
However we twist and turn this proposal, we find in it no association with the idea of Sibelius. All claims to the contrary must be regarded as wishful thinking. However, the proposal does certainly lead thoughts toward its author and her circle’s advanced conception of art, and to much else besides—but not to Sibelius. A sculptural impression of Sibelius can only succeed through Sibelius, through an impression of the man as he lived and worked among us. Plain and simple: a portrait carved in stone or cast in bronze. This is what we who saw him in the flesh and posterity will see: the great composer’s powerful figure and noble profile. The monument should be a memorial to Sibelius the man, and nothing else. The master has erected in his own music a monument to his life’s work, to his brilliant individuality. It stands there indestructibly aloft, where future generations can read as much as they wish about the breadth and depth of the world created by Sibelius. We do not need to speak of it on their behalf, least of all in indecipherable ways.
The preceding article being inspired by a wish to support those who, in the final hour, attempt to avert the danger of an unfortunate decision in this matter, attention must also be directed toward another blunder that threatens to be committed. This does not concern the monument itself, but rather its placement in the city. For some unexplained reason there seems to be a general assumption that the Sibelius monument should be placed in Sibelius Park. Why this park, other than that it bears the master’s name, when the right place for the monument is one of the other streets that emerged in association with the planned monument? Sibelius Park lies a long way outside the city center, in certain respects on the downtown’s periphery. It is hard to grasp why the monument to Sibelius, this great central figure in our nation’s cultural history, should be banished to one of the city’s outer corners. With some good will and a bit of imagination, a worthy place in the city center could surely be found for this purpose. Sibelius belongs to the heart of Helsinki, where Runeberg and Mannerheim also belong. Space should be found for poet, warrior, and composer.
It has been a long time since Europeans, or any other people, have had occasion to celebrate one of music’s masters by erecting a monument to his memory. Now that we in Finland find ourselves in the fortunate position to have both the will and desire to do so, we should stay sharply vigilant so that the great opportunity is used correctly, that nothing happens which in the future we wish had never been done. As an exemplary demonstration of the risk of handling things poorly, I will conclude with a story that took place on one of Helsinki’s streets many years ago, one that involves Sibelius and a friend of his, an architect by trade. The two gentlemen passed a prominent building of the townscape, built by the architect friend, but totally rejected by him since on artistic grounds.
“You, Janne, can either tear up or burn a poor composition,” he complained. “But what in God’s name should I do with this unhappy building?”
One can only hope that a similar question will never be asked in connection with the prospective Sibelius monument.
Only the Best Will Suffice
Erik Kruskopf Hufvudstadsbladet, 17 October 1962
Unfortunately, discussion of the Sibelius monument has to a large extent degenerated into general wrangling, in which complex intrigues and mutually aggressive exchanges have emerged in swift succession.8 I do not direct myself toward the justifiably important question of the financial implications that it raises, in the cold light of day. But the uncomfortable whiff of a quarrel has served to deter many who would otherwise have had important contributions to make from taking part in the debate. It is therefore pleasing that in a reasonably worded article Simon Parmet has taken up the question sensibly and from a point of view that is undeniably important: what is the fundamental purpose of this monument, what function should it fulfill? In such matters he is undoubtedly right: the question is not one of art and artistic qualities alone.
So far as I can tell, Simon Parmet represents a consensus of opinion among the more conservative of the artistically inclined as well as a wider public largely unfamiliar with artistic questions. But I am surprised when Parmet, while considering it unimportant “to take sides in the fundamental question of whether the controversial project is art or not,” nevertheless maintains that in most people’s eyes the current proposal is not art. Such discussion is often extremely misleading. Without venturing the use of a single known opinion poll, it amounts to advance betting on the outcome of a fight. That many in Parmet’s circle happen to speak against the proposal does not mean that “most people” are therefore against it. No more than the many people I have been in contact with who are for the proposal means that, without further ado, the opposite can be assumed. Nothing less than an inventory of the correspondents’ views can give any objective impression of the division of opinion. My impression in this case is rather the opposite from Parmet’s: a surprising number of people have supported the project, many of whom clearly stand far outside the circle of “radicals,” as Parmet describes them in his article.
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nbsp; There must be a way of gaining clarity on this issue, and it could take the form of a public vote. Perhaps it would then emerge that Parmet was right. But is this really the way a monument should happen? Examples can be found of monuments that have been realized after the public voted between two or more different proposals. I know of no case, however, in which the public has not been sorry afterward. One of the most recent examples can be found in Kajana, where the public voted between two proposals for a Per Brahe statue—and of course chose the wrong one. Today many are readily prepared to recognize this. Still, today the wrong sculpture stands there—and it is too late to take it away, just as it was too late for Sibelius’s architect friend to undo his work. I absolutely do not believe that what one calls popular taste should be decisive when it comes to erecting a monument. We all know from our own experience that some things that initially seem beautiful and attractive can quickly lose their charm and become sad, tired, or perhaps cloyingly sweet or superficial. Both so-called experts and others fall into the trap of such effects and sensations—the only difference is that the so-called expert knows, through experience, the types of things that function this way and swiftly becomes tired of them. He also knows that some other things do not immediately reveal all their individual qualities, disclosing themselves only after long contemplation. This applies equally to music and to visual art, as far as I understand. All forms of art demand of their recipients a certain kind of activity, a truth as relevant to the older arts as to those Parmet describes as modernist or radical.
Surely we should not set up a Sibelius statue only to become sick to death of it after a few weeks?
Jean Sibelius and His World Page 48