THE BUST OF JEAN SIBELIUS IN THE SCANDINAVIAN CENTER
A small, white plaster bust, five and one half inches high, rests on a shelf in the Scandinavian Center in Thousand Oaks. It is not necessary to read the word inscribed on the base to recognize it as a portrait of Jean Sibelius (1865-1955). The massive skull, the strong jaws and the piercing eyes are familiar from his photographs and also the portrait by his friend, Akseli Gallén-Kallela (The Symposion, 1894). Sibelius is Finland’s greatest composer, and his music embodies the character of Finland, a land of fierce winters, glacier-scoured granite rocks, sparkling lakes and dense forests. Its soil is reluctant to yield crops, its furious rivers to give ford, and its lakes remain frozen well into the brief summers. Yet, the people and the music of this country’s best-known composer are warm and earnest. The little plaster image represents not only an individual, but Finland itself.
Baptized Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, he was known to his family as “Janne.” The early death of his father of typhoid caused his mother to move from the capital city of Helsinki back to her home in Hämeenlinna in southern Finland. At this time the country was experiencing a strongly nationalistic spirit. He attended a newly established Finnish grammar school in the small town, and, so, in addition to speaking Swedish, “Janne” acquired the ability to read the Finnish national epic, the Kalavala, in its original language.
Sibelius was attracted to music very early, and especially enjoyed the popular songs by the Swedish composer, Carl Bellman. He began the study of piano at the age of seven under his aunt, Julia, who urged the boy to experiment in improvising. While not precocious, his first composition was Vesipisaroita viululle ja sellolle (“Waterdrops for violin and cello”), in which the ten-year old demonstrated a secure grounding in classical composition. Moving from the study of piano to the violin when he was fourteen, he produced a number of chamber pieces upon the models of Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Grieg and the Viennese composers. He often visited his uncle Pehr, an amateur musician, in the port city of Turku (Åbo), where he heard a symphony orchestra for the first time.
In 1885 he entered the University of Helsinki to study law, but, at the same time, he enrolled at the Helsinki Music Institute. Soon, his university books became less attractive than music, and under the distinguished Martin Wegelius, he studied composition. He also continued his studies of violin, performing in concert the concerti of Mendelssohn, Viotti and Rode, as well as in the Institute’s quartet and its Academic Orchestra. In 1886, Sibelius took up the French form of Johan, “Jean,” as his professional name, as had his uncle.
While writing school exercises in the current Germanic style, unknown to his teachers, Sibelius produced almost one hundred songs, chamber pieces, piano trios, a violin sonata and string quartets. When one of the latter was performed at an Institute concert, the music critic, Karl Flodin wrote: “At one stroke Mr. Sibelius has stepped into the first rank of those on whom the future of Finnish creative composition relies.”
After four years, Sibelius continued his studies in Berlin, then Vienna, absorbing the rich musical ambience. But, far away from his home, he became interested in everything Finnish—the language, the musical traditions, and, especially the Kalevala. He began working on a tone poem based upon its story of the search for the magical harp, the kantele. Returning to Finland to complete his task, the Kullervo was premiered in April, 1892, to tremendous success. He married Aino Järnefelt (1871-1969) that summer, and the couple journeyed to the Karelia province where the Kalevala had originated. There, he listened eagerly to folk singers and copied down their songs. From this came his tone poem En Saga and the Karelia Suite (1892), the Four Lemminkäinen legends (1893-95), and an incomplete opera based on the epic, Veneen luominen (“The Building of the Boat”).
This Romantic period of Sibelius’ works came to an end in his First Symphony. Here, the thirty-three year old Sibelius set out on something new. He ardently denied that there were any programmatic qualities in his symphonies. In rejecting the Romanticism of the nineteenth century, he insisted that he was undertaking a different path between the sprawling, encyclopedic works of Gustaf Mahler and the melodious, but emotional Tchaikovsky, his contemporaries. While numbered “one,” this symphony is not Sibelius’ earliest symphonic music, nor is it “immature” (already he had thirty-eight opus numbers in his portfolio).
His First Symphony was lean and fit. He once advised aspiring composers: “Never write any unnecessary notes because every note should have a life of its own.” Rather than stating a theme and then unfolding ever more complex variations out of it, Sibelius announces bits and pieces of his themes, gradually weaving these together into a great synthesis. His development uses elements of the musical language of Romanticism, but “theme-packets” grow and metamorphose into surprising shapes, and he superimposes and overlaps them in long-breathed constructions.
While Sibelius sought to create “absolute” music with his symphony, free of Romantic associations in order to establish an original, “Finnish” musical tradition, there may have been a political subtext. After being ruled for some five hundred years by Sweden, Finland was occupied by Russia during the Napoleanic wars in 1809. It was loosely ruled until February, 1899, when the Czar Nicholas II embarked on a program of “Russanization” that abridged the autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Finland, dissolved long-held agreements and forced young Finns into military service. A ruthless secret police stifled the freedom of speech and the press.
It was just several months after this, on April 26, 1899, that Jean Sibelius’ First Symphony was premiered in the Duchy’s capital of Helsinki. The same concert had the premier of the powerful Aténurnes sång (“Song of the Athenians”), a thinly disguised protest against the grating policies of the Russian Czar. That year also saw the introduction of his intensely patriotic symphonic poem, Finlandia that became a symbol of the struggle for independence. It is not implausible to consider the First Symphony, with its hints of folk music and prominent idealism, as patriotic as these other compositions. (Independence was finally declared on December 6, 1917, and on January 4, 1918, Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries recognized the new country).
During his final years, Jean Sibelius was regarded as one of the foremost composers of the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. Richard Strauss remarked: “I have more skill, but he is greater.” He was most popular in Great Britain and America, and festivals of his music were held in his honor. His 90th birthday was celebrated throughout the world (the former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill even sent him a box of his favorite Havana cigars).
In the end, Sibelius admitted to some Romantic elements in his eight symphonies. Thus, we can be forgiven if we hear echoes of his beloved Finland, of the quivering leaves of birch trees in the whispering strings, the soaring mountain peaks in the thundering horns, and the sun-filled skies and sparkling, forested lakes in the wistful lines of the woodwinds. But, the melancholy moods, ravishing themes, sweeping forms and titanic climaxes in his music transcend Finnish nationalism, for Sibelius’ music is truly universal. It is as the old Finnish proverb declares: “The echo knows all languages.”
Ernst F. Tonsing, Ph.D. Thousand Oaks, California