Sibelius
Symphony No. 4
By the turn of the 20th century, Jean Sibelius was the preeminent composer of his native Finland. His earliest works–such as Kullervo (1893), the Karelia Suite (1893), the Lemminkänen Suite (1895)–were inspired by the epic set of Finnish poems, the Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lönnrot sixty years earlier. Finns saw in it, and in the works created by Sibelius, an expression of their deepest national pride. Sibelius prospered: he married into one of the most influential families in Finland, built a villa outside of Helsinki, and was awarded a life-time pension in lieu of a professorship at the Helsinki music school, which years later was renamed after him.
But in 1908, doctors discovered a throat tumor, and Sibelius underwent a series of operations to remove it. His doctors urged him to stop smoking, and to stop drinking alcohol as well (his father had been a heavy drinker, and Sibelius had picked up the habit). He followed their instructions for several years, and the darker mood his music took during this period is often attributed to his intimations of mortality–as well as giving up his cigars!
Other potential influences were the growing unrest that would brew into World War I, and the composer’s growing familiarity with contemporaries such as Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Sibelius was not comfortable with trends in music at this time, and wrote to his biographer Rosa Newmarch that his fourth symphony “stands as a protest against present-day music. It has absolutely nothing of the circus about it.”
Whatever the cause, it is clear that the mood of his Symphony No. 4 (1910-11), is darker than that of its predecessors. A critic described it as the Barkbröd symphony, referring to a historical famine when Finns had to eat the bark of trees to survive. When asked about the work, Sibelius quoted August Strindberg: “Det är om människorna” (Being human is misery). The work was stark enough that after its premiere, in Helsinki on April 3, 1911, his wife Aino described the reaction as polite but withdrawn: “People avoided our eyes, shook their heads; their smiles were embarrassed, furtive, or ironic.”
The first movement, Tempo molto moderato, quasi adagio, declares immediately its dark intent, with the first brusque stroke in C on the lower strings and a elegiac theme for cello. We soon hear the work’s harmonic core: a constant play of clashing tritones. A tritone is the interval exactly one half-octave apart, so that one note of the tone is as far as it can be, in either direction, from the other note. This interval was called by medieval musicians the “diabolus in musica,” and it is a tone that to Western ears strains to resolve to a major fifth. Sibelius will get there–but not until the symphony’s finale, and even then, not for long.
From the brooding first movement we find ourselves in what appears to be a brighter landscape. Because his opening was slower than typical for a classical symphony, Sibelius has turned the typical symphonic order around, placing the “fast” movement (Allegro molto vivace) second rather than third. A brilliant oboe leads dancing strings–but even here we cannot escape foreboding. A timpani crash announces ominously swelling brass, and though we attempt to return to the dancing major, soon the low strings bring the movement to its own dark center. The ending seems almost an afterthought, with just a quiet tap on timpani to signify complete capitulation to the minor.
The third movement, Il tempo largo, has been described as the symphony’s emotional core. Here Sibelius sings in lovely, broad sections for the full strings, but it is a longing, sometimes anguished song. Individual voices–a clarinet, an oboe, a horn–rise up at different moments, while brooding strings, a bassoon, and at one point a pressingly urgent timpani, seem to insist that despair cannot be avoided: “Being human is misery.”
In the fourth movement, Allegro, we once again hope for more cheerful times. Once again, Sibelius taunts us, adding the second violins to the firsts in a brief but striking dissonance. Yet the enthusiasm of the allegro leads us through a number of abrupt changes in mood and color. Conductor Herbert Blomstedt describes the movement’s finale as “an essay in trying to be happy which fails–on purpose.” Musicologist Michael Steinberg points out that in the entire symphony, we move from A minor in the first movement to F major in the second, C-sharp in the third, and now A major in the finale–each time, we descend another third. Rather than rising in victory, we seem to descend in defeat. The movement resolves into minor tremolandi; the flute makes a comment and the oboe “responds heartlessly,” as one critic would have it. The chords that close are quiet and dour.