Happy Birthday, Jean Sibelius! Celebrating his Fifth Symphony...

Happy Birthday, Jean Sibelius!

(December 8, 1865 – September 20, 1957)

Symphony No. 5 – 1919 version

To listen to this masterpiece while reading the below note on the work, click the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjLsff6jtFA

Jean Sibelius

(Born in Tavestehus (H?meenlinna) Finland in 1865; died in J?rvenp??, Finland in 1957)

Symphony No. 5 in E flat, Opus 82

1. Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato, Presto

2. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto

3. Allegro molto

In the two decades that followed his early, Finnish Nationalist Karelia Suite (1893), Sibelius had acquired fame the world over, and was regarded by some as the "aristocrat of symphonists." Indeed, the main body of his life’s work was seven incomparable symphonies. In that genre, structurally, he believed a symphony should grow from within itself in organic evolution, the music dictating its own structure. And of the completely unique orchestral colors that Sibelius created, Ralph Vaughan Williams once said that Sibelius could make a C major chord sound completely original. Although each of his orchestral landscapes is astonishingly singular, they’re often regarded as deeply informed with a vision of Finland in its natural beauty, severity, and etherealness.

As the composer was approaching 50 in 1915, the Finnish government planned a grand birthday celebration for their cherished native son by commissioning a new Symphony – what became Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5. Although it was received well at its birthday premiere, the commission gave Sibelius little time to complete it for the event, and thus, he returned to it several times to make revisions. And Sibelius was a merciless reviser of his works – never more so than with his Fifth Symphony – but its final version appeared in 1919.

The first movement opens with natural and coloristic allusions: the horns sounding of a world awakening to a warming sunrise, and the woodwinds slowly filling the vast hills of Finland with birdsong. Following a loose sonata form, the movement presents several splendid themes. And Sibelius’s musical hallmarks make early appearances; e.g., the power of underlying forces manifesting in string tremolos, meandering thirds played by rich and reedy woodwinds, the angst of repeated dissonance, the crushing weight of the brass, and the indefatigable rolls of the timpani.

Without our noticing it, the first movement melts into the second – one of Sibelius’s major revisions from the original. Almost imperceptibly, the flame under the kettle has been turned up and the water starts to simmer. Yet even with that growing kinetic energy, it’s hard to prepare for what will happen in the final section. The closing Presto catches your heart in your chest with an overpowering joy in a dance-like explosion – the whole movement gradually speeds up in a feat of musical pacing seldom matched in the Symphonic repertoire.

Of the third movement (first planned as an Adagio), Sibelius had mapped out in his diary something rather surreal: "…earth, worms and heartache—fortissimos and muted strings…And the sounds are Godlike." But the final version, after Sibelius’s merciless editing, has morphed into something more tender and light, only hinting at revelries and mysteries, in order to balance the manic robustness of the second (or rather, the closing section of the first) movement.

One morning on his routine walk, in the midst of first writing his Fifth, Sibelius witnessed 16 swans flying overhead, a sight that struck him deeply. His diary recorded: "One of the greatest experiences! My God, what beauty! …Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo … Nature's Mysticism and Life's Angst! The Fifth Symphony's finale-theme: Legato in the trumpets!" And so, after a frenetic introduction, the finale soon introduces this "swan theme," a slow, languid, swinging melody in the brass. As this theme progresses it grows in strength and grandeur. But, like the earlier transition of the first movement into the second, Sibelius begins to prepare us for another extraordinary, and unforeseeable, moment. Brimming with that beautiful swan theme, the last section of the finale begins to journey from majesty to conflict, until ultimately, Sibelius finishes the Symphony with nine final bars that seems to defy anything he had just rejoiced in – a series of massive block chords, mighty and yet almost cruel, separated by long and shattering silences. Both exhilarating and confounding – “Nature’s Mysticism and Life’s Angst!” – those closing chords leave us thrumming in their aftermath, as well as from the entire Symphony’s colossal energy.

? Max Derrickson

(See more of my program notes at my website.)