"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Sunday Classics: An intrepid voice from the rugged North -- Jan Sibelius
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The concluding rondo of Sibelius's Violin Concerto gets a rousing performance by David Oistrakh with the Moscow Radio Symphony under Gennady Rozhdestvensky, February 1966. A different Oistrakh recording of the piece was one of my first three classical LPs -- but totally by accident. What I wanted on that record was what the world considered the "filler" work -- see below.
by Ken
I worry -- okay, I worry a lot -- about the lack of exposure our young (and not-so-young) folk get to classical music. Damned if I know what to do about it, but this week I've been remembering how much music has stayed with me from first exposure in a "music appreciation" ordeal I and my eighth-grade classmates were subjected to and made fun of.
I'm not sure it had much impact on the other kids, though. It made a difference that I'd already had some exposure. We always had a piano in our house (my mother had played), and I'd taken lessons, though not very fruitfully; I wasn't much for practicing. We had my mother's old classical 78s, and even a few classical LPs. Perhaps most important, there was no open hostility to classical music in our household. (I shudder to think what it must be like now when culture generally and classical music in particular are free targets for derision.)
That summer I got to pick out my first own classical LPs, my first stereo LPs (though I'm not sure I even had a stereo record player yet!), as a graduation present from my grandmother. The three LPs I picked were all based on things I'd heard in that silly music appreciation ordeal. I would add that they're all exceptionally beautiful records, which I still listen to with great pleasure.
They all featured the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, which indeed became one of my early classical passions. I not only bought their records but went to some of their New York concerts. (By then we were living in New York.) And again it's a passion that has stayed with me. I have to admit that deep down I still kind of wish every orchestra could sound like the Philadelphia did in the Ormandy years.
So what were the three records? First there was Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite, the first Ormandy-Philadelphia stereo version -- a piece, a performance, and a recording job I still adore. Then there were two LPs bought for pieces by Finland's master composer, Jan Sibelius (1865-1957): his stirring patriotic symphonic poem Finlandia (1899-1900) and one of the Four Legends from the Kalevala (the Finnish national epic), The Swan of Tuonela (1895).
With Finlandia we find ourselves smack back in the "Age of Nationalism," which we last visited in the Czech realm of Smetana and Dvořák. It just took the wave of national liberation longer to reach the northerly Finns, literally squeezed throughout their history between Sweden and Russia. At this point, Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia, and listeners quickly picked up on the nationalistic fomenting going on in Sibelius's symphonic poem. (Titles given consideration, en route to Finlandia, included The Awakening of Finland and multiple forms of Fatherland.)
It's straightforwardly enough put together: a dark and brooding, even menacing initial section; a more urgent working out of some of this same material announced by the trumpets at 2:47; at 3:22 a newly confident, even celebratory section ushered in by a strangely striding five-beat figure; all resolving at 5:10 into the famous hymnlike tune stated first by the woodwinds, then taken over at 6:04 by the strings.
Finlandia, Op. 26
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded c1969
Give me a string of gray Winter days in Oregon, Sibelius alternating with immersion in one of the great mystery novels coming out of Scandinavia, and I can really get into "dark and brooding" instead of fighting it. I emerge with a more complex emotional state than "grim"; it is nuanced, rich, and rewarding. Works for me. I can't see this particular form of moody introspection becoming trendy, although rock does have its own version of darkly brooding. A friend once remarked that the best music is ethnic. That kinda startled me, but when I thought about the great variety of my favorite music, I saw a lot of truth in it. I guess I can understand symphonic composers drying up. Where do you go with that form after the great works of Sibelius, even if you are Sibelius? Looking forward to sunshine forecasted for this afternoon.
The CD of the violin concerto that I have, and love, is Ormandy and the Philadelphia with a very young Dylana Jensen playing violin. Also Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performing Symphony No. 2 in D and Scene with Cranes from Kuolema.
Hi, Dean, and thanks for the interesting comments. I love the "ethnic music" observation. That's music that speaks most directly from who the creators and intended listeners are -- and in that mysterious way I tried to articulate, some piece of that is part of all of us.
I do remember the Jensen-Ormandy Sibelius Concerto -- or anyway I remember that it exists. I don't remember the performance at all. I really should listen to it again. Ormandy certainly had a terrific feeling for Sibelius.
Those 30 years of un-creation must have been hard on Sibelius, but he had already stockpiled a good lifetime's worth of achievement, and gained wide recognition for it. I like to think that made it easier.
"I guess we need to say something about those final, er, 30 years, after the symphonic poem Tapiola, in which Sibelius essentially composed nothing." ____________________________
Ken, I'd have to get out my sources, but I distinctly recall reading that according to Sibelius' daughter, he had a finished manuscript of another symphony, and had promised its premiere to Koussevitzky in the early 1930s. But he was extremely self-critical, and ultimately destroyed it.
Of course, that's still essentially nothing, as you write. Nothing survives, and he didn't write anything but that long-vanished symphony.
In any case, very nice essay. I'm a great fan of Neveu's, so I'm delighted to see you included her. You're right: there really was some kind of dark fire in her art.
Nah, B, I don't place much stock in those manuscripts you can't bring yourself to show to anyone. Heck, even I've used that ploy with persistent editors. We know that in Elgar's case, when the pressure to produce the long-promised Third Symphony became too intense, he kind of fibbed about what he'd written. It was what his musical colleagues wanted to hear, and what he himself no doubt wanted to believe.
I don't want to minimize how horrible this must have been for the silent composers. As I've said earlier, I have to hope that Sibelius derived appropriate satisfaction from the body of work he had produced. It may have gone in and out of "fashion," but I'm not much interested in musical fashion. I'm confident that Sibelius's music will continue to stand the test of time.
Well, either way--whether Sibelius did write another symphony, or didn't--we haven't got it, and you're absolutely right: speculation is pretty silly at this point. What we do have is music that, despite all the snide comments of the dodecaphonists has survived into the 21st century as great music. Can't say that about the Webern crowd, or the ones that throw dice to figure out their next notes, or the ones who pound two pieces of siding together.
_______________________________ "We know that in Elgar's case, when the pressure to produce the long-promised Third Symphony became too intense, he kind of fibbed about what he'd written...."
Well, yeah, but he did write quite a lot of his Third, as I'm sure you know, enough so that a reasonably intelligent editor was able to craft it together with some intelligence, guesswork, and a lot of effort. Is it actually Elgar's Third? Not at all, because we miss all the editing that would have been done after everything was written out. But still, it sounds damn good.
I think we're in solid agreement on the big points, B, but I still have to disagree about the supposed "Elgar Third Symphony," which even the "arranger" comes darned close to acknowledging in the fine print is just this side of a hoax. It's just bits and scraps Elgar left behind -- in reality the very stuff that he himself knew amounted to nothing, which tormented him until his death -- whipped into a vaguely Elgarian concoction. I believe the correct musicological term is "phony baloney."
After all, those scraps were known for decades and rightly ignored. In effect, they had to wait for the people who knew better to die off before being reborn as revelations. It's musical necrophilia, and a posthumous shame that Elgar did nothing to deserve.
I don't think Sibelius had writer's block. I think he simply ran out of things to say. He wanted to take the next step with his composing, but all the steps were already taken and he didn't know where to go. If he couldn't build upon what he had accomplished already, I think he'd rather have silence. And with Tapiola, we saw great stretches of silence creeping into his music.
One of the greatest pieces of music ever written was his 7th. The finale in particular. In it he says what many composers take hours to say. (I'm thinking of Mahler and Bruckner--they come close, but their music took hours to accomplish what Sibelius achieved in under 5 minutes). It is simple, beautiful, moving, profound AND it takes his musical expression to a mountain peak--and it keeps going up from there. It is perfection. What could he possibly write that would improve on that?
10 Comments:
Give me a string of gray Winter days in Oregon, Sibelius alternating with immersion in one of the great mystery novels coming out of Scandinavia, and I can really get into "dark and brooding" instead of fighting it. I emerge with a more complex emotional state than "grim"; it is nuanced, rich, and rewarding. Works for me. I can't see this particular form of moody introspection becoming trendy, although rock does have its own version of darkly brooding.
A friend once remarked that the best music is ethnic. That kinda startled me, but when I thought about the great variety of my favorite music, I saw a lot of truth in it.
I guess I can understand symphonic composers drying up. Where do you go with that form after the great works of Sibelius, even if you are Sibelius?
Looking forward to sunshine forecasted for this afternoon.
The CD of the violin concerto that I have, and love, is Ormandy and the Philadelphia with a very young Dylana Jensen playing violin.
Also Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performing Symphony No. 2 in D and Scene with Cranes from Kuolema.
Hi, Dean, and thanks for the interesting comments. I love the "ethnic music" observation. That's music that speaks most directly from who the creators and intended listeners are -- and in that mysterious way I tried to articulate, some piece of that is part of all of us.
I do remember the Jensen-Ormandy Sibelius Concerto -- or anyway I remember that it exists. I don't remember the performance at all. I really should listen to it again. Ormandy certainly had a terrific feeling for Sibelius.
Those 30 years of un-creation must have been hard on Sibelius, but he had already stockpiled a good lifetime's worth of achievement, and gained wide recognition for it. I like to think that made it easier.
Ken
"I guess we need to say something about those final, er, 30 years, after the symphonic poem Tapiola, in which Sibelius essentially composed nothing."
____________________________
Ken, I'd have to get out my sources, but I distinctly recall reading that according to Sibelius' daughter, he had a finished manuscript of another symphony, and had promised its premiere to Koussevitzky in the early 1930s. But he was extremely self-critical, and ultimately destroyed it.
Of course, that's still essentially nothing, as you write. Nothing survives, and he didn't write anything but that long-vanished symphony.
In any case, very nice essay. I'm a great fan of Neveu's, so I'm delighted to see you included her. You're right: there really was some kind of dark fire in her art.
Nah, B, I don't place much stock in those manuscripts you can't bring yourself to show to anyone. Heck, even I've used that ploy with persistent editors. We know that in Elgar's case, when the pressure to produce the long-promised Third Symphony became too intense, he kind of fibbed about what he'd written. It was what his musical colleagues wanted to hear, and what he himself no doubt wanted to believe.
I don't want to minimize how horrible this must have been for the silent composers. As I've said earlier, I have to hope that Sibelius derived appropriate satisfaction from the body of work he had produced. It may have gone in and out of "fashion," but I'm not much interested in musical fashion. I'm confident that Sibelius's music will continue to stand the test of time.
Ken
Well, either way--whether Sibelius did write another symphony, or didn't--we haven't got it, and you're absolutely right: speculation is pretty silly at this point. What we do have is music that, despite all the snide comments of the dodecaphonists has survived into the 21st century as great music. Can't say that about the Webern crowd, or the ones that throw dice to figure out their next notes, or the ones who pound two pieces of siding together.
_______________________________
"We know that in Elgar's case, when the pressure to produce the long-promised Third Symphony became too intense, he kind of fibbed about what he'd written...."
Well, yeah, but he did write quite a lot of his Third, as I'm sure you know, enough so that a reasonably intelligent editor was able to craft it together with some intelligence, guesswork, and a lot of effort. Is it actually Elgar's Third? Not at all, because we miss all the editing that would have been done after everything was written out. But still, it sounds damn good.
I think we're in solid agreement on the big points, B, but I still have to disagree about the supposed "Elgar Third Symphony," which even the "arranger" comes darned close to acknowledging in the fine print is just this side of a hoax. It's just bits and scraps Elgar left behind -- in reality the very stuff that he himself knew amounted to nothing, which tormented him until his death -- whipped into a vaguely Elgarian concoction. I believe the correct musicological term is "phony baloney."
After all, those scraps were known for decades and rightly ignored. In effect, they had to wait for the people who knew better to die off before being reborn as revelations. It's musical necrophilia, and a posthumous shame that Elgar did nothing to deserve.
Ken
I don't think Sibelius had writer's block. I think he simply ran out of things to say. He wanted to take the next step with his composing, but all the steps were already taken and he didn't know where to go. If he couldn't build upon what he had accomplished already, I think he'd rather have silence. And with Tapiola, we saw great stretches of silence creeping into his music.
One of the greatest pieces of music ever written was his 7th. The finale in particular. In it he says what many composers take hours to say. (I'm thinking of Mahler and Bruckner--they come close, but their music took hours to accomplish what Sibelius achieved in under 5 minutes). It is simple, beautiful, moving, profound AND it takes his musical expression to a mountain peak--and it keeps going up from there. It is perfection. What could he possibly write that would improve on that?
I enjoyed your Sibelius musings very much.
--Ben Garrison
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