Symphonies and Their Meaning Part 17

SIBELIUS. A FINNISH SYMPHONY[A]

[Footnote A: Symphony No. 1, in E minor, by Jan Sibelius, born in 1865.]

We must expect that the music of newer nations will be national. It goes without saying; for the music comes fresh from the soil; it is not the result of long refined culture. There is the strain and burst of a burden of racial feeling to utter itself in the most pliant and eloquent of all the languages of emotion. It is the first and n.o.blest sentiment of every nation conscious of its own worth, and it has its counterpart in the individual. Before the utterance has been found by a people, before it has felt this sense of its own quality, no other message can come. So the most glorious period in the history of every country (even in the eyes of other nations) is the struggle for independence, whether successful or not.

All on a new plane is this northernmost symphony, with a crooning note almost of savage, and sudden, fitful bursts from languorous to fiery mood. The harmony, the turn of tune have a national quality, delicious and original, though the Oriental tinge appears, as in Slav and Magyar music, both in bold and in melancholy humor. Though full of strange and warm colors, the harmonic scheme is simple; rather is the work a tissue of lyric rhapsody than the close-woven plot of tonal epic. A certain trace of revery does find a vent in the traditional art of contrary melodies. But a constant singing in pairs is less art than ancient folk-manner, like primal music in the love or dance songs of savages.

The symphony begins with a quiet rhapsody of solo clarinet in wistful minor, clear without chords, though there is a straying into major.

There is no accompaniment save a soft roll of drum, and that soon dies away.

[Music: _Andante, ma non troppo_ _espress._ (Clarinet)]

The rhapsody seems too vague for melody; yet there are motives, one in chief, winding to a pause; here is a new appealing phrase; the ending is in a

[Music]

return to the first. Over the whole symphony is cast the hue of this rhapsody, both in mood and in the literal tone.

All opposite, with sudden spring of buoyant strings, strikes the Allegro tune ending in a quick, dancing trip. The first voice is immediately pursued by another

[Music: _Allegro energico_ (2d violins) _Piu forte_ (Violins with higher 8ve.) (Cellos with higher 8ve. in violas)]

in similar phase, like a gentler shadow, and soon rises to a pa.s.sionate chord that is the main idiom of the movement.

[Music: (Strings, wood and horns)]

A second theme in clear-marked tones of reed and horns, as of stern chant, is taken up in higher wood and grows to graceful melody in flowing strings.

[Music: _marcato_]

There is a series of flights to an ever higher perch of harmony until the first Allegro motive rings out in fullest chorus, again with the companion tune and the cadence of poignant dissonance.

A new episode comes with s.h.i.+mmering of harp and strings, where rare and dainty is the sense of primal

[Music: _marcato_ (Flutes) (Strings with chord of harp)]

harmony that lends a pervading charm to the symphony. Here the high wood has a song in constant thirds, right from the heart of the rhapsody, all bedecked as melody with a new rhythm and answer. Soon this simple lay is woven in a skein of pairs of voices, meeting or diverging.

But quickly we are back in the trance of lyric song, over palpitating strings, with the refrain very like the former companion phrase that somehow leads or grows to a

[Music: _Tranquillo_ (Oboe, with other wood) (Strings with higher E)]

rhythmic verse of the first strain of the rhapsody. Here begins a long mystic phase of straying voices (of the wood) in the crossing figures of the song, in continuous fantasy that somehow has merged into the line of second Allegro theme, winging towards a brilliant height where the strings ring out the strain amid sharp cries of the bra.s.s in startling hues of harmony and electric calls from the first rhapsody.

From out the maze and turmoil the shadowy melody rises in appealing beauty like heavenly vision and lo! is but a guise of the first strain of rhapsody. It rises amid flashes of fiery bra.s.s in bewildering blare of main theme, then sinks again to the depth of brooding, though the revery of the appealing phrase has a climactic height of its own, with the strange, palpitating harmonies.

In a new meditation on bits of the first Allegro theme sounds suddenly a fitful burst of the second, that presently emerges in triumphant, sovereign song. Again, on a series of flights the main theme is reached and leaps once more to impa.s.sioned height.

But this is followed by a still greater climax of moving pathos whence we descend once more to lyric meditation (over trembling strings).

Follows a final tempest and climax of the phrase of second theme.

The movement thus ends, not in joyous exultation, but in a fierce triumph of sombre minor.

The Andante is purest folk-melody, and it is strange how we know this, though we do not know the special theme. We cannot decry the race-element as a rich fount of melody. While older nations strive and strain, it pours forth by some mystery in prodigal flow with less tutored peoples who are singing their first big song to the world. Only, the ultimate goal for each racial inspiration must be a greater universal celebration.

The lyric mood is regnant here, in a melody that, springing from distant soil, speaks straight to every heart, above all with the concluding refrain. It is of the purest vein, of the primal fount, deeper than mere racial turn or trait. Moreover, with a whole coronet of gems of modern harmony, it has a broad swing and curve that gives the soothing sense of fireside;

[Music: _Andante ma non troppo lento_ (Muted violins) (Sustained horns and ba.s.ses with lower 8ve.; constant stroke of harp) (Clarinets)]

it bears a burden of elemental, all-contenting emotion. In the main, the whole movement is one lyric flight. But there come the moods of musing and rhapsodic rapture. In a brief fugal vein is a mystic harking back to the earlier prelude. In these lesser phrases are the foil or counter-figures for the bursts of the melody.

It is the first motive of the main tune that is the refrain in ever higher and more fervent exclamation, or in close pressing chase of voices. Then follows a melting episode,--some golden piece of the melody in plaintive cellos, 'neath tremulous wood or delicate choirs of strings.

But there is a second tune, hardly less moving, in dulcet group of horns amid s.h.i.+mmering strings and harp, with a light bucolic answer in playful reed.

[Music: _Molto tranquillo_ (Violins) _dolce_ (Horns) (With arpeggic harp)]

And it has a glowing climax, too, with fiery trumpet, and das.h.i.+ng strings and clas.h.i.+ng wood.

Gorgeous in the warm depth of horns sound now the returning tones of the first n.o.ble melody, with playful trill of the wood, in antiphonal song of trumpets and strings. And there are revels of new turns of the tune (where the stirring harmony seems the best of all) that will rise to a frenzy of tintinnabulation. A quicker counter-theme lends life and motion to all this play and plot.

A big, solemn stride of the middle strain (of main melody) precedes the last returning verse, with all the tender pathos of the beginning.

The Scherzo is wild race-feeling let loose--national music that has not yet found a melody. Significantly the drums begin the tune, to a dancing strain of _pizzicato_ strings. The tune is so elemental that the

[Music: _Allegro_ (Violins) (_Pizz._ cellos double above in violas)]

drums can really play it; the answer is equally rude,--an arpeggic motive of strings against quick runs of the higher wood. Out of it grows a tinge of tune with a fresh spring of dance,--whence returns the first savage motive. This is suddenly changed to the guise of a fugal theme, with new close, that starts a maze of disputation.

Right from the full fire of the rough dance, sad-stressed chords plunge into a moving plaint with much sweetness of melody and higher counter-melody. Then returns again the original wild rhythm.

[Music: _Lento ma non troppo_]

In the last movement the composer confesses the "Fantasy" in the t.i.tle.

It begins with a broad sweep of the returning rhapsody, the prologue of the symphony, though without the former conclusion. Now it sings in a strong unison of the strings _largamente ed appa.s.sionato_, and with clang of chord in lower bra.s.s. The appealing middle phrase is all disguised in strum as of dance. The various strains sing freely in thirds, with sharp punctuating chords. Throughout is a balance of the pungent vigor of harmonies with dulcet melody.

In sudden rapid pace the strumming figure dances in the lower reed, then yields to the play (in the strings) of a lively (almost comic) tune of a strong national tinge,--a kind that seems native to northern countries and is not unlike a strain that crept into

[Music: _Allegro molto_]

American song. A tempest of pranks is suddenly halted before the entrance of a broad melody, with underlying harmonies of latent pa.s.sion.

The feeling of fantasy is in the further flow, with free singing chords of harp. But ever between the lines creeps in the strumming phrase, from the first prelude, returned to its earlier mood.

[Music: _Andante a.s.sai_ (Violins) _cantabile ed espressivo_ (Horns) (Clarinets) (_Tremolo_ cellos, with lower C in ba.s.ses)]

With baffling mystery anon come other appealing phrases from the beginning, that show the whole to be the woof almost of a single figure, or at least to lie within the poetic scope of the prologue. A fugal revel of the comic phrase with the quick strum as counter-theme ends in a new carnival,--here a das.h.i.+ng march, there a mad chase of strident harmonies. Now sings the full romance and pa.s.sion of the melody through the whole gamut from pathos to rapture. It ends with poignant stress of the essence of the song, with sheerest grating of straining harmonies.

In the midst, too, is again the mystic symbol from the heart of the prelude. Then with a springing recoil comes a last jubilation, though still in the prevailing minor, with a final coursing of the quick theme.

The whole is a broad alternation of moods, of wild abandon and of tender feeling,--the natural dual quality of primal music. So, at least in the Finale, this is a Finnish fantasy, on the very lines of other national rhapsody.