"The sombreness," says Mr. Frederick Niecks, "is nowhere relieved, although contrast to the dark brooding and the surging agitation of despair is obtained by the tender, longing, regretful recollection of Astarte, the destroyed beloved one. And when at last life ebbs away, we are reminded of Manfred's dying words to the Abbot:
"'Tis over—my dull eyes can fix thee not;
But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves, as it were, beneath me....
Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die.'
"From the first note to the last," says Mr. W. H. Hadow, "it is as magnificent as an Alpine storm—sombre, wild, impetuous, echoing from peak to peak with the shock of thunderbolts and the clamor of the driving wind."
SIBELIUS
(Jan Sibelius: born in Tavastehus, Finland, December 8, 1865; now living in Helsingfors)
"LEMMINKAINEN," SYMPHONIC POEM IN FOUR PARTS: Op. 22
"THE SWAN OF TUONELA"
"LEMMINKAINEN'S HOME-FARING"
Sibelius, sometime prior to February, 1906, informed Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, the author of the first authoritative study in English of the Finnish composer, that he was writing a symphonic poem in four parts under the general title "Lemminkainen," based on episodes in "The Kalevala." [134] Two of these parts have been produced—"The Swan of Tuonela" and "Lemminkainen's Home-Faring"; the others are said to be still (1907) incomplete. Of the two completed portions Mrs. Newmarch writes as follows: