VI
Finland's music, centred in its capital Helsingfors, was from the first under German domination. The national spirit, as we have seen, grew up under the inspiration of the Kalevala, then newly made known to literature. The first national composer of note was Frederick Pacius (1809-1891), born in Hamburg, but regarded as the founder of the national Finnish school. He was under the Mendelssohnian domination, but gave no little national color to his music and helped to centre the growing national consciousness. Besides symphonies, a violin concerto and male choruses, he wrote an opera 'King Karl's Hunt,' and several Singspiele which contained national flavor without any specific national material. To Pacius Finland owes her official national anthem. Other Finnish composers of note were Karl Collan (1828-1871), F. von Schantz (1835-1865) and C. G. Wasenus. The Wagnerian influence first penetrated the land of lakes in the works of Martin Wegelius (1846-1906), able composer of operas, piano and orchestral music, and choral works. But the first specific national tendency in Finnish music is due to Robert Kajanus (born 1856), who achieved the freshness and primitive force of the national folk-song in works of Wagnerian power and scope. Besides his piano and lyric pieces we possess several symphonic poems of his—including Aino and Kullervo—all markedly national in feeling.
Among the modern Finnish composers of second rank Armas Järnefelt (born 1869) is distinguished. In orchestral suites, symphonic poems (for example, the Heimatklang), overtures, choral works, piano pieces, and songs, he has shown spontaneity and technical learning. Poetic feeling and sensitive coloring are marked in his work. Much the same can be said of Erik Melartin (born 1875), except that his genius is more specifically lyric. His songs reflect the energy and freshness of a race just coming to consciousness. His smaller piano pieces show somewhat the salon influence of Sweden, but in all we feel that the artist is speaking. Ernst Mielck (1877-1899) had made a place for himself with his symphony and other orchestral works when death cut short his career. Oscar Merikanto (born 1868) has written, besides one opera, many songs and piano pieces, most of them conventional and undistinguished, and Selim Palmgren (born 1878) has already attained a wide reputation.
In Sibelius we meet one of the most powerful composers in modern music. Masterpiece after masterpiece has come from his pen, and the works which fall short of distinction are few indeed. He is at once the most national and the most personal composer in the whole history of Scandinavian music. His style is like no one else's; his themes, his mode of development, his harmonic 'atmosphere,' and his orchestral coloring are quite his own. But his materials are, with hardly an exception, drawn from the literature and folk-lore of the Finnish nation; his melodies, when not closely allied to the folk-melodies of his land, are so true to their spirit that they evoke instant response in his countrymen's hearts; and the moods and emotions which he expresses are those that are rooted deepest in the Finnish character. This powerful national tradition and feeling of which he is the spokesman he has vitalized with a creative energy which is equalled only by the few greatest composers of the world to-day. He has touched no department of music which he has not enriched with powerful and original works. As an innovator, pure and simple, he seems likely to prove one of the most productive forces in modern music. No deeper, more moving voice has ever come out of the north; only in modern Russia can anything so distinctly national and so supremely beautiful be found.
Jean Sibelius was born in Finland in 1865 and at first studied for the law. Shifting to music, he entered the conservatory at Helsingfors and worked under Wegelius. Later he studied in Berlin and thereafter went to Vienna. Here, under Goldmark, he developed his taste for powerful instrumental color, and under Robert Fuchs his concern for finely wrought detail. But even in his early works there was little of the German influence to be traced beyond thorough workmanship. With his symphonic poem, En Saga, opus 9, he became recognized as a national composer. The Finns, longing for self-expression, looked to him eagerly. They had, as Dr. Niemann[11] has put it, been made silent heroes by their struggles with forest, plain, cataract and sea, and by the bitter recent political conflict with Russia. And, as always happens in such cases, they sought to give expression to their suppressed national ideals in art. Sibelius's symphonic poem, Finlandia, is a thinly veiled revolutionary document and his great male chorus, 'The Song of the Athenians' (words by the Finnish poet Rydberg), gave verbal expression to the thoughts of the patriots of the nation. The former piece has explicitly been banned in Finland by Russian edict because of its inflammatory influence on the people. But all this has not made Sibelius a political figure such as Wagner became in 1848. He has worked industriously and copiously at his music, watching it go round the civilized world, keeping himself aloof the while from outward turmoil, though his personal sympathies are known to be strongly nationalistic.
It was the symphonic poems which first made Sibelius a world-figure. These include a tetralogy, Lemminkäinen, consisting of 'Lemminkäinen and the Village Maidens,' 'The River of Tuonela,' 'The Swan of Tuonela,' and 'Lemminkäinen's Home-faring'; Finlandia, En Saga, 'Spring Song,' and the more recent 'Spirits of the Ocean' and 'Pohjola's Daughter.' The Lemminkäinen series is based on the Kalevala tale, which narrates the adventures of the hero Lemminkäinen, his departure to the river of death (Tuonela), his death there, and the magic by which his mother charmed his dismembered limbs to come together and the man to come to life. Of the four separate works which make up the series 'The Swan of Tuonela' is the most popular. It was in this that Sibelius's original mastery of orchestral tone was first made known to foreign audiences. With its enchanting theme sung by the English horn it weaves a long, slow spell of the utmost beauty. Finlandia tells of the struggles of a submerged nation; the early parts of the work are filled with passionate excitement and military bustle; then there emerges the motive of all this struggle—a majestic chorale melody, scored with the strings in all their resonance, a song at once of battle and of devotion, a melody for whose equal we must go to Beethoven and Wagner. En Saga, the earliest of the great nationalistic works, is without a definite program, but is dramatic in the highest degree. It is a masterpiece of free form, with its long, swelling climaxes and passionate adagios, surrounded by a haze of shimmering tone-color, as though the bard were singing his story among the fogs of the northern cliffs. The national character of these works is quite as marked in their themes as in their subject-matter. Sibelius is fond of the strange rhythms of the old times—3/4, 7/4, 2/2, or 3/2 time. His accent is almost crudely exaggerated. His original themes are so true to the national character that they seem made of one piece with the folk-tunes. The mood of these works is rarely gay; the animation is primitive and savage. The prevailing spirit is one of loneliness and gloom. In the symphonic poems, which grow increasingly free in harmony, we see in all its glory the orchestral scoring which is one of Sibelius's chief claims to fame. It is no mere virtuoso brilliancy, as is often the case with Rimsky-Korsakoff. It is always an accentuation of the character of the music with the character of the tone of the instrument chosen. It is color from a heavy palette, chosen chiefly from the deeper shades, showing its contrast in modulation of tones rather than high lights, yet kept always free of the turgid and muddy.
The same qualities are shown in the four symphonies. Of these the last is a thing of revolutionary import—a daring work whose full meaning to the future of music has not begun to be appreciated. The other three are perhaps less symphonies than symphonic rhapsodies. They seem to imply a program, being filled with episodes, dramatic, epic, and lyrical, interspersed with recitative and legend-like passages. But, however free the form, the architecture is cogent. In his development work Sibelius is always masterly. Some of the passages, like the main theme of the first movement of the first symphony, or the slow movement from the same, are amazing in their imaginative power and beauty. The fourth symphony is a work apart. In the first and second movements the harmony is quite as radical as anything in modern German or French music. It is, in fact, hardly harmony at all, but the free interplay of monophonic voices.
Jean Sibelius
After a photo from life (1913)
From this method, which at the present moment is almost Sibelius's private property, the composer extracts a quality of poetry which is impressive in its suggestions of great things beyond.
Some of Sibelius's best music has been written to accompany dramatic performances. That for Adolph Paul's play, 'King Christian II,' has been widely played as an orchestral suite. The introduction is especially fine. The warm and sweetly melancholy nocturne, the 'Elegy' for strings, and the profoundly moving Dance of Death are all movements of rare beauty. The lovely Valse Triste, a mimic drama in itself, written for Järnefelt's play, Kuolema, has carried his reputation far and wide, as the C sharp minor prelude carried Rachmaninoff's, or the 'Melody in F' Rubinstein's. There are, further, two orchestral suites from the accompanying music to Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas and Mélisande,' and Procopé's 'Belshazzar's Feast.' For orchestra we may further mention the Karelia Overture, the Scènes historiques, the Dance-Intermezzo, 'Pan and Echo,' the melancholy waltzes to accompany Strindberg's 'Snowwhite,' the two canzonettas for small orchestras, the Romance in C major for string orchestra, the short symphonic poem, 'The Dryads,' and the Funeral march.
The violin concerto, one of the most difficult of the kind in existence, has already gained its place among the standard concert pieces for the instrument. It shows deep feeling and national color, especially in the rhythmically vigorous finale. The string quartet, Voces Intimæ, opus 56, is a masterly work in a reserved style. The first three movements are said to have as a sort of program certain chapters from Swedenborg. The piano music is generally on a lower plane. To a great extent it recalls Schumann and Tschaikowsky; in such works as the Characterstücke, opera 5, 24, 41, and 58, in the sonatina, opus 67, and in the rondinos, opus 68, we find little that can be called original. But we must remember that in these pieces Sibelius was writing music to appeal to the people, and has succeeded to a remarkable degree in raising the general standard of taste in his native land. For his most personal piano work we must look to his transcriptions of Finnish tunes, especially 'The Fratricide' and 'Evening Comes.'
In his songs for solo voice Sibelius has achieved remarkable things. The remarkable 'Autumn Evening' is a sort of free recitative, always verging on melody, accompanied by suggestive descriptive figures in the piano part. Here we see in germ one of his most important contributions to modern music—an emphasis on expressive monody. The ballad, Des Fahrmanns Braut, which has been arranged for orchestral accompaniment, is weaker musically, but shows the same genius for expressive melodic recitative. And not the least important and characteristic part of Sibelius's work has been in the form of male choruses. Of these we may mention 'The Origin of Fire' and 'The Imprisoned Queen,' both with orchestral accompaniment, and, above all, the magnificent 'Song of the Athenians,' which has come to have a national significance among the Finns. As we look over this remarkable list of works, from the great symphonic forms down to brief songs, and note the quantity of germinal originality they contain, their high poetry, their universal beauty and intense national expression, we must adjudge Sibelius to be a master with a creative vitality which cannot be matched by more than half a dozen composers writing to-day.
H. K. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] See Chapter IV.
[11] Walter Niemann: Die Musik Skandinaviens.
CHAPTER IV
THE RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS
The founders of the 'Neo-Russian' Nationalistic School: Balakireff; Borodine—Moussorgsky—Rimsky-Korsakoff, his life and works—César Cui and other nationalists, Napravnik, etc.