Jean Sibelius

“ In the first symphony he did not escape the influence of Tchaikovsky, an influence shown particularly in the second movement. But the voice of Sibelius himself speaks in no uncertain tones: a virile voice that has new things to say; is not ashamed of screaming outbursts, sudden contrasts; not a whining egoist, not a despairing pessimist; a strong soul not disturbed by the sensuous charm of woman.
And so this symphony is more than conventionally interesting. It is dramatic, as if Sibelius had had a drama in his mind, perhaps one of his own life. The music is free, outspoken. ”

“ And, certainly, the sense of the needfulness of his work, the sense of the large value set upon his best and purest attainments by life itself, must have been with Sibelius always, must have supplied him with a powerful incentive and made enormously for his achievements. He must have felt all the surge of the race driving him. He must have had continually the marvelous stimulus of feeling about him, for all the night and the cold, the forms of comrades straining toward a single lofty goal, felt himself one of an army of marching men. ”

“ The structure is all bone. The style is sharpened to a biting terseness. The coloring is the refinement of all his color; the rhythms have a freedom toward which Sibelius's rhythms have always aspired; the mournful melody of the adagio is well-nigh archetypical. All his life Sibelius has been searching for the tone of this music, desiring to speak with its authority, and concentrate the soul and tragedy of a people into a single and eternal moment. All his life he had been seeking the prophetic gestures of which this work is full. For the symphony is like a summary and a conclusion. ”

“ Few modern composers of eminence are as singularly uneven as Sibelius. Moods like that which mothered the amiable elegance of the "Valse Triste" and that which produced the hard and naked essentiality of the Fourth Symphony are almost foreign to each other. The creative power itself is extraordinarily fitful in him. It is as if, for all his physical robustness, he has not quite the spiritual indefatigability of the major artist. He has not that inventive heat that permits the composer of indisputably the first rank to realize himself unflaggingly in all his independence and intensity. ”

“ But it is only with his Fourth Symphony, dubbed "futuristic" because of the unusual boldness and pithiness of its style, the absence of a general tonality, the independence of the orchestral voices, that Sibelius's gift attains absolute expression. There are certain works that are touchstones, and make apparent what is original and virtuous in all the rest of the labors of their creator, and give his personality a unique and irrefragable position. The Fourth Symphony of Sibelius is such a composition. ”

“ In the Valse Triste the sad majesty, as if absorbed in infinite grief, overcomes the spectator so irresistibly that he almost forgets the morbidly beautiful music of Sibelius. On occasions, impressively executed with unsurpassed loftiness and freedom, she places before us a visionary being, though on the verge of death, in whose presence everything low falls from us, and our feelings express the same elevation that they do in genuine tragedy. ”

“ Rosenfeld must have heard a tea-table performance of the symphony. There is almost continually the tragic note in the music, but the tragedy is hardly “lowly.”
This music is extremely Northern, at times bleak and windswept. Arresting and impressive music; and lo, suddenly Sibelius drops into Tchaikovskian mood, and even speaks the self-torturing Russian’s speech. Yet Sibelius is generally in the foreground, and his speech is generally his own. It is when he would touch the heart of the public that Tchaikovsky pushes him aside. ”

“ Some of Sibelius's best music has been written to accompany dramatic performances. That for Adolph Paul's play, 'King Christian II,' has been widely played as an orchestral suite. The introduction is especially fine. The warm and sweetly melancholy nocturne, the 'Elegy' for strings, and the profoundly moving Dance of Death are all movements of rare beauty. The lovely Valse Triste, a mimic drama in itself, written for Järnefelt's play, Kuolema, has carried his reputation far and wide, as the C sharp minor prelude carried Rachmaninoff's, or the 'Melody in F' Rubinstein's. ”

“ The ballad, Des Fahrmanns Braut, which has been arranged for orchestral accompaniment, is weaker musically, but shows the same genius for expressive melodic recitative. And not the least important and characteristic part of Sibelius's work has been in the form of male choruses. Of these we may mention 'The Origin of Fire' and 'The Imprisoned Queen,' both with orchestral accompaniment, and, above all, the magnificent 'Song of the Athenians,' which has come to have a national significance among the Finns. ”

“ I challenged.
“Y. . . es,” she admitted grudgingly. “His New England Idylls and Fireside Tales. And I like that Finnish man’s stuff, Sibelius, too, although it seems to me too soft, too richly soft, too beautiful, if you know what I mean. It seems to cloy.” ”

“ The musical ideas of those of the compositions that are finely realized recall the ruggedness [Pg 247] and hardiness and starkness of things that persist in the Finnish winter. The rhythms seem to approach the wild, unnumbered rhythms of the forest and the wind and the nickering sunlight. Music has forever been a movement "up to nature," and Schoenberg's motto is but the precision of a motive that has governed all composers. But Sibelius has written music that seems to come as the very answer to the call, and to be the North indeed. ”

“ Sibley himself was a particularly immaculate person. Being somewhat of the Latin type, black eyed and olive skinned, he was shamefacedly afraid of looking picturesque. He dressed, therefore, as precisely as a fashion-plate. The man who had got out of the lift might have bought his clothes at a junk-shop, and a foreign junk-shop at that. They were not clothes a gentleman could wear—yet Sibley received a swift impression that a gentleman was wearing them at that moment: a remarkably tall fellow, so thin that his bones looked somehow too big for him. ”

“ The Sibyls are of different ages, but all listen to angels who are whispering to them the words which they are to write. The composition is full of life, beauty, and nobility. These Sibyls remind me of a Sibylla which you ought to see, if you come to Rome. It is by Guercino and is in the museum of the Capitol, a figure of more solemn earnestness than those of Raphael, but with as profound a gaze, as nobly beautiful, as truly turned away from the world and fixed alone upon the eternal truth. ”

“ Oh, I shall laugh then, when they find the old house empty!”
“May our dear Lord bless thee—bless thee, child,” sobbed Sibyll, clasping the boy in her arms, and kissing him, while her tears bathed his cheeks.
A light gleamed on the threshold; Madge, holding a candle, appeared with Warner, his hat and cloak thrown on in haste. “What is this?” said the poor scholar. “Can it be true? Is mankind so cruel? What have I done, woe is me! what have I done to deserve this?”
“Come, dear father, quick,” said Sibyll, drying her tears, and wakened by the presence of the old man into energy and courage. ”

“ Oscar Merikanto (born 1868) has written, besides one opera, many songs and piano pieces, most of them conventional and undistinguished, and Selim Palmgren (born 1878) has already attained a wide reputation.
In Sibelius we meet one of the most powerful composers in modern music. Masterpiece after masterpiece has come from his pen, and the works which fall short of distinction are few indeed. He is at once the most national and the most personal composer in the whole history of Scandinavian music. His style is like no one else's ”

“ We all of us live too much in a circle. You will assist me, I am sure," added Egremont; "your spirit will animate me. You told me last night that there was no other subject, except one, which ever occupied your thoughts."
"Yes," said Sybil, "I have lived under two roofs, only two roofs; and each has given me a great idea; the Convent and the Cottage. One has taught me the degradation of my faith, the other of my race. You should not wonder, therefore, that my heart is concentrated on the Church and the People." ”

“ Both in and out of Finland this music is as much an eloquent voice for its country as its national anthem. One can go even further and say that more people in the world know the melodies of Finlandia than the Finnish anthem. So stirring are its themes, so identifiably Finnish in personality and color, that for a long time it was believed Sibelius had utilized national folk tunes; but the music is entirely Sibelius’. It opens with a proud exclamation in the brass. After this comes a sensitive melody for the woodwind, and a prayer-like song for the strings. ”

“ For all I knew it could have opened on the Pit itself: but a shaft of light guided me stumbling into a stone-flagged kitchen, low and dim and smoky in fact as some lesser inferno.
By the hearth a woman turned from tending the kettle to overlook us steadily. She was alone, but my faith! she had no need to fear. Figure to yourself this massive sibyl with a face planned on a mason's square, deep-chiselled and brooding in the flush of firelight. She was like that. Yes, a sibyl in her cave, to whom Bibi-Ri entered gingerly as a cat.
"I am here, Mother Carron," he said. ”

“ He sat watching Sibylla as she played with her baby-boy. He took a hand in the game now and then, since, for a bachelor, he was at his ease with babies; but most of the time he watched. But he watched sympathetically; Sibylla did not fear to show her love before his eyes. The baby was very young for games—for any that a man could play. But Sibylla knew some that he liked; he gave evidence of a strangely dawning pleasure distinct from physical contentment—of wonder, of amusement, of an appreciation of fun, of delight in the mock assaults and the queer noises which his mother directed at him. ”

“ And love of you, Sybil," he continued, in a tone of impassioned pathos, "has been to me for years the hoarded treasure of my life. For this I have haunted your hearth and hovered round your home; for this I have served your father like a slave, and embarked in a cause with which I have little sympathy, and which can meet with no success. It is your image that has stimulated my ambition, developed my powers, sustained me in the hour of humiliation, and secured me that material prosperity which I can now command. ”

“ Even after your studied rudeness to him, your open preference of Sibley's society to his, and your remark explaining your course, 'congenial society or none at all'" (Ida fairly groaned as he recalled her folly) , "he tried to treat you politely. That you should refuse the society of a gentleman like my friend for the sake of such a low fellow as Sibley, is to us all a disgusting and fathomless mystery. The belief that you could throw yourself and your rare beauty into this abominable slough, was so revolting to Van Berg, that he never would wholly accept of it until to-day." ”

“ James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sybil, mother," he cried, "watch over her."
"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special care. Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a most brilliant marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple. His good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them."
The lad muttered something to himself, and drummed on the window-pane with his coarse fingers. ”

“ He stopped, for his voice failed him, and the tears rolled down his cheeks.
"Come and speak comfort to my father, Master Nevile," exclaimed Sibyll; "come and tell him that whoever is above the herd, whether knight or scholar, must learn to despise the hootings that follow Merit. Father, Father, they threw mud and stones at thy king as he passed through the streets of London. Thou art not the only one whom this base world misjudges." ”

“ Sibyll changed countenance, and her father answered gravely, "We incurred the king's displeasure, and the excuse was the popular hatred of me and the Eureka."
"Heaven made the people, and the devil makes three-fourths of what is popular!" bluntly said the man of the middle class, ever against both extremes.
"And how," asked Sibyll, "how, honoured and true friend, didst thou obtain the king's warrant, and learn the snare into which we had fallen?"
This time it was Alwyn who changed countenance. ”

“ Du Maurier represented a character in Sibley with the defects of his qualities, to the greater emphasis of the qualities. To attribute to a man the genius to be king of Bohemia, and to receive from everyone forgiveness for everything, à cause de ses gentillesses to make him witty also, and a most exquisite and original artist—this would have been enough for most men, though it was not enough for Whistler. Joe Sibley, not Little Billee, is the real creation of "an artist" that is in the book. ”

“ We have no better equipment for thee, lady; but the first haquenee we find shall replace the mule, and meanwhile my knaves will heap their cloaks for a pillion."
"But what mean you?—you mistake us!" exclaimed Sibyll. "We are poor; we cannot ransom ourselves."
"Poor!—tut!" said the captain, pointing significantly to the costly robe of the maiden—"moreover his worship's wealth is well known. Mount in haste,—we are pressed." And without heeding the expostulations of Sibyll and the poor scholar, the rebel put his troop into motion, and marched himself at their head, with his lieutenant. ”