Johan Selmer (born 1844) has taken a place as the most radical of the 'new romanticists' in Norway. His work is extensive and varied, and is most impressive in the larger forms. He has written a series of symphonic poems, several large choral works, many part songs and ballads, and the usual quota of Lieder. His chief influences were Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. He can hardly be called a nationalist in music, for his work shows little northern feeling except where he makes use of specific Norwegian tunes; indeed he seems equally willing to get his local color from Turkey or Italy. His work is thoroughly disappointing; modelling himself on the giants, he has been obliged to make himself a gigantic mask of paper. Neither his melodic inspiration, his structural power, nor his technical learning was equal to the task he set himself. His chief orchestral work, 'Prometheus,' opus 50, is ridiculously inadequate to its grandiose subject. His Finnländischer Festklang is the most ordinary sort of rhapsody on borrowed material. Of his other works we need only say that they reveal abundantly the effect of large ambitions on a little man. Along with Selmer we may mention three opera composers of Norway, none sufficiently distinguished to carry his name beyond the national border: Johannes Haarklou (born 1847), Cath. Elling (born 1858) and Ole Olsen (born 1850). The last, though yet 'unproduced' as a dramatic composer, deserves to be better known than he is. His symphonic and piano music is pleasing without being distinguished; but the operas Lajla and Hans Unversagt are charmingly colorful and melodic, revealing musical scholarship and fine emotional expression. Finally we may mention Johann Halvorsen (born 1864), a follower of Grieg and an able composer for violin and male chorus.
One of the most promising of the younger Norwegians was Sigurd Lie (1871-1904), whose early death cut off a career which bade fair to be internationally distinguished. Surely he would have been one of the most national of Norwegian composers. His list of works, brief because of ill health, includes a symphony in A minor, a symphonic march, an oriental suite for orchestra, a piano quintet, a goodly list of short piano pieces, and many songs and choral works. He used the Norwegian folk-song intensively, combining its spirit with that of the old ecclesiastical tone. He was a true poet of music; his moods were usually mystic, gray and religious, and his effects, even in simple piano pieces, were obtained with astonishing sureness. His harmony, though not radical, was personal and highly expressive. His songs, much sung in his native land, reveal a genius for precise and poignant expression.
One of the most popular of Norway's living composers for the piano is Halfdan Cleve (born 1879), writer of numerous works of which those in the large forms are most important. Cleve is cosmopolitan, enamored of large effects, and of dazzling virtuosity. His technique is varied and exceedingly sure, but he lacks the appealing loveliness which has brought reputation to the works of so many of his countrymen. More popular is Agathe Backer-Gröndahl (born 1847), industrious writer of piano pieces in the smaller forms. Outwardly a classicist, she has drunk of the lore of Grieg and has achieved charming and able works, distinguished by delicate feeling and care for detail. Her children's songs are altogether delightful. But when she attempts longer works her inspiration is apt to fail her.
Perhaps the most original and personal composer after Grieg and Sinding is Gerhard Schjelderup (born 1859), a tone poet of much technical ability and genuine national feeling. His songs and ballads are very fine, striking the heroic note with sincerity and conviction. In his simple songs and piano pieces, Schjelderup's innate feeling for the folk-tone makes him utterly successful. In his operas, 'Norwegian Wedding,' 'Beyond Sun and Moon,' 'A People in Distress,' and his incidental music, he lacks the dramatic and structural power for long sustained passages; but his genius for expressive simplicity has filled these works with beauties. Schjelderup's symphonies and chamber music have made a place for themselves in European concert halls equally by their freshness of feeling and by their excellence of technique.
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.