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Sibelius

The call of the wild

Andrew Barnett
Yale, 445pp, £25,

Oliver Gilmour

Wednesday, 28th November 2007

Oliver Gilmour

Barnett is excellent in tracing the evolution of his seven symphonies (eight if he had not thrown the last in the fire — a roster of fine conductors, including Karajan and Ormandy, already queuing up to perform it). The first two symphonies married nationalistic with Russian influences, notably that of Tchaikovsky. Barnett parallels the role of Sibelius in Finland’s liberation from Russia with that of Verdi in the Risorgimento. His famous tone-poem ‘Finlandia’ was called ‘Finland awakes’ in its original form; and indeed it should snarl . . . .

In the Third Symphony he changed tack to a more classical approach: ‘To my mind a Mozart Allegro is the perfect model for a symphonic movement.’ But it is his Fourth that is his masterpiece.

Surprisingly, Barnett does not expand on the composer’s trip to the Koli mountains in northern Finland in the autumn of 1909, which gave rise to this astonishing work:

My solitude begins . . . a symphony is an inner confession . . . I see the whole of my childhood before me . . . with its dreadful swellings of the sea . . . Bodies rise to the surface. This is hell. I suffer so much that my heart bursts . . . Where do they come from, these tensions of the spirit and the pain?

For many Finnish musicians this piece is like the Bible. ‘In this work Sibelius had seen the unfathomable tragedy of life’s inconsistency,’ adjudged Jussi Jalas, a conductor who became the composer’s son-in-law.

Perhaps Barnett understates the spiritual side of Sibelius and the effect of nature upon him, both diary entries revealing the very essence of the man, yet omitted by the author:

Nothing in the whole world affects me like the cranes, swans and the wild geese . . . their cries and their very being. This is the thread running through my life. I have seen them flying south calling their music to the winds and relived the spontaneity of their sound.

The modernism of the Fourth had flummoxed audiences and orchestras (the Vienna Philharmonic refused to play it). He now wanted to take a path in which form was more determined by content while remaining accessible. The Fifth succeeded in this, and it remains hugely popular; but as indecision was almost a way of life for Sibelius and his wife Aino, it is not surprising that it went through multiple revisions.

Barnett is illuminating about Aino and the domestic and financial problems that beset the couple. After the failure of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, he spent on drink much of the money earmarked for the builders of Villa Ainola, their new home. Not surprisingly, the happiest years of Aino’s life were those that followed the removal of a tumour from his throat, when he gave up both alcohol and cigars. He abstained for seven years.

The Sixth Symphony was the most tranquil and intimate of all; but the Seventh Symphony proved a tour de force in every sense, and his energies were duly depleted. Despite its success — it is consummately crafted in one continuous movement — he was dispirited, concluding that ‘alcohol is the only friend that never lets one down’.

‘Sibelius is, along with Tchaikovsky, the only non-German who really works symphonically. So why is this gift so rare?’ (Wilhelm Furtwängler, Notebooks, 1940.) This reflection from the greatest conductor of the 20th century attests to the stature of Sibelius. Likewise, Barnett’s book is the perfect one-volume biography to mark the 50th anniversary of the grand old man’s death at the age of 91.