If you had asked music lovers
100 years ago (around 1915, in other words) which living composers were most
likely to stake a claim at immortality, one of the leading candidates would be
Jean Sibelius, the pioneering Finnish composer whose works had taken Europe—and
then America—by storm. Along with
contemporaries such as Mahler and Rachmaninov, Sibelius represented the last
gasp of Romanticism, which both he and Rachmaninov were doomed to outlive. But whereas Rachmaninov largely held onto the
principles of Russian Romanticism, Sibelius found his own way to adapt to
Modernism, producing works that are today every bit as bold and enigmatic as
they were in the early 20th century. Strangely,
Sibelius quickly lost his foothold after WWII, dismissed as a cheap Romantic, either
jeered for his “big hit,” the sentimental Valse Triste, or grudgingly tolerated
for his moody tone poem, The Swan of Tuonela. Serialism and the twelve-tone technique had
no place for such a throwback to fin di seicle emotionalism, even if
concert halls never entirely banished him to the purgatory of forgotten
composers. Important works such as
Symphonies 1, 2, and 5 remained in the repertoire, and occasionally
masterpieces such as En Saga, Pohjola’s Daughter, and Tapiola
would make an outing. The advent of CD
technology encouraged complete cycles of his symphonies (notably by Simon
Rattle in the late 80’s), and forced a reassessment of his symphonic
legacy. For someone considered a purveyor
of second-rate Tchaikovsky, Sibelius conjured up works which defied all the “isms”
of his day, whether Romanticism, Serialism, or New Classicism. His stark, introspective Fourth Symphony left
most scratching their heads, as did its polar opposite, the sunny, lyrical
Sixth (can something so undramatic be a symphony, many asked)? And what about the Third Symphony, which is
neither Romantic, nor classical, nor Modernist, but a strange form which the
composer, himself, never really followed up on?
