Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 6
The long career of Jean Sibelius is inextricably bound with the history of his home country, Finland–and not simply because he is that country’s most famous composer. Born during increasing Russian repression in the 1870s that led to a Finnish nationalistic movement, Sibelius attended one of the first Finnish-language schools, in Hämeenlinna. His schooling in Finnish literary tradition provided him the thematic basis for much of his life’s work, as his musical compositions consistently referred to the Finnish mythological cycle, the Kalevala, for inspiration. Indeed, some of his early successes as a composer were symphonic poems based on tales from the Kalevala: Kullervo (1892) and the Lemminkäinen Suite, which includes his well-known Swan of Tuonela (1893). His other inspiration came from the very landscape around him: the mountains, lakes, and river valleys of Finland. By 1897 his work was considered so important to his country’s culture that the Finnish government gave him a pension for life so he could compose his works undisturbed by more mundane matters.
Sibelius began work on the Symphony No. 6 in 1918, and at that time wrote to a friend that it would be “wild and passionate in character”–a description that would astonish any who have heard what the final work became. Rather than wild passion, this symphony pays homage to the polyphonic music of the Renaissance, especially Palestrina. Although there are slower and faster sections, the overall effect of the symphony is one of reserved grandeur, forever in motion and yet at the same time oblique and mysterious. In a letter to a friend in 1943, Sibelius later described the work in metaphorical terms: “The sixth symphony always makes me remember the scent of the first snow.”
Although the symphony is usually listed as being in D minor, it is more precisely in D Dorian–the scale that sounds if you play every white note from D to D on the piano keyboard. This means the C-sharp expected in a harmonic D-minor scale is rarely heard, and gives the opening movement, Allegro molto moderato, its somewhat unearthly quality, not quite major nor minor in feeling. The movement opens with ethereal chords in the strings, soon joined by lyrical motifs from the woodwinds and swelling and receding brass. This segues to pairs of woodwinds playing winding phrases in thirds, eventually echoed by the strings. The movement develops to a sweeping C-major, but after a brief, almost ominous interlude leading to a triumphant C-major chord, shifts back into D Dorian and a calm coda.
The Allegretto moderato opens with flutes and bassoons playing chords that resolve to G Dorian. The meter is difficult to pinpoint, as the number of beats per measure increases in threes, from three to six to nine to 12. Although this is the nominal ‘slow movement’ of the work, the polyphonic melodies build into tense motion, which Sibelius ends, with the movement, somewhat abruptly.
The Poco vivace serves as the scherzo. Woodwinds, strings, and brass play pulsing patterns that lead to the unifying motif of the movement, a rising pattern contrasted with swelling chords in the brass. The forward motion is finally allowed, in this movement at least, to reach a conclusive fortissimo on an unambiguous D-major chord.
The finale, Allegro molto, is perhaps the closest in character to the “wild and passionate nature” that Sibelius first envisioned for this symphony. This movement is in the form of a sonata and rondo, though nothing like the classical form found in a symphony such as Haydn’s No. 86, heard later in today’s concert. In the sonata, rising patterns contend with forceful falling chords that grow in emphasis and vigor. The rondo section features paired woodwinds and a dancing theme for upper strings over a swelling ostinato in the lower strings. Then, without preamble, Sibelius returns us to chords in D Dorian, and the mysterious, ethereal effect of the opening returns at the close.