This week’s theme is…Pin the Tail on the Donkey! Like many music lovers I boast an extensive and comprehensive record collection. For this week, I closed my eyes and selected 5 different albums. Here’s what I picked…
Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Day 5 – Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major by Jean Sibelius
When I was born in 1981, there was little controversy as to the reputations of composers like Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. Whatever challenges they faced respectively during their own lifetimes, and whatever aesthetic struggles and evaluations they may have encountered (see this post), their legacies had been amply and securely worked out during centuries which intervened between their deaths and my births. Most would agree (there are of course always exceptions, but in these cases they are rare) that history has judged those composers as meriting their transcendent reputations and legacies (for more about legacies, see this post). There are others which are relegated to lower “tiers”; perhaps Schubert (see this post) or Vivaldi (see this post) are examples of this – again, there has been ample time to work out this reputation and I don’t think these evaluations will change considerably in the future.
As you travel farther and farther through time, more and more approaching our present day, legacies become less certain, reputations less unanimous. The reasons for this are numerous. But you can really boil it down the fact that we are just too close to the trees to evaluate the forest. In order to make as objective an evaluation as possible, you really have to be far enough away that personal feelings and sympathies concerning the conditions in decisions made are not gripping our judgement. For example, no one is alive who knew J.S. Bach personally, so our evaluations are not affected by the vocal support of his friends nor the detraction of his enemies. Similarly, no one today has experience with the patronage system of his native Northern Germany (see this post), the sympathy of which could be used to explain away imperfections or decisions lacking in integrity. No, we are free of that, and his music speaks more or less objectively to us as a pure medium, largely detached from the styles and trends in which it operated. Of course you are never entirely free of this, but the time and culture in which Bach lived and worked is different enough from our own that our evaluations seem essentially objective, the music alone seeming to influence our evaluation. The more recent the subject of our evaluation, the more external influences operate upon that process. Have you ever had the experience of loving something in a certain time and place, which was probably filled with influences that helped you to love it, then returning to it in a context free of many of those influences only to find yourself wondering what all of the fuss was about? This is essentially what happens here.
The evaluation of a composer like Jean Sibelius is still being actively worked out in our lifetime, although the process was more turbulent in decades prior. A darling in his native Finland, his music, based on the landscapes and myths of its culture, Sibelius’ music proved an inconsistently graceful traveler, successful in certain nations but not others during his own lifetime. Still, his international success was solid enough for him to develop a sturdy reputation and gain champions abroad. Critics were also divided as to his evaluation, some fiercely defending his unique symphonic voice, with detractors countering just as fiercely that to call his distinctive musical language “good” was to redefine the very concept of goodness as it relates to the tradition of European art music. This process, which played out largely during the first half of the twentieth century largely settled down during the second half. It has not entirely gone away, but I think it is safe to say that a relatively clear consensus has emerged from all of that: Sibelius is uneven at best, not everything is a masterpiece, but those that are continue to offer unique and strikingly individual yet surprisingly effective solutions to traditional problems, informed by his rugged and masculine Finnish national voice, particularly with regard to symphonic procedure. Maybe that’s not the boldest statement, but I think it’s pretty well apt to the estimation of most critical musicians and listeners.
It is his symphonic works which have demonstrated the strongest level of endurance, with regard to both symphonic poems and symphonies, of which there are 7. The symphonies are notable in that Sibelius took up the challenge of a genre with a long and distinctive heritage and approached it differently every time he wrote a new one. For some composers, for example Anton Bruckner, Sibelius’ elder of about half a generation, the symphonic challenge was tackled in a more or less formulaic way. There is an archetype that seems to shape Bruckner’s symphonies and they all fit that basic shape (see this post). Other symphonists, like Mahler (see this post), like Sibelius, seem to reinvent the symphony anew with each successive project.
What this means is that no two symphonies by Sibelius will unfold the same way, and the listener will be delighted with each new symphony as the challenges of unity and dramatic form are solved anew each time. The result, with Sibelius at least, is by turns odd and stunning. Rather than traditional symphonic development as one might find in Beethoven or Brahms, it can seem that Sibelius is constructing landscapes which unfold, dense with various kinds of terrain. It is not unusual for a Sibelius symphony to be going along with one kind of texture and then turn on a dime, moving to a completely different and, in the moment at least, seemingly unrelated one. But his formal technique and overall vision were so good that we later realize nothing is accidental or arbitrary. Sibelius always ties his seemingly disparate ideas together. In addition to this curious virtue is the rugged and, somehow, stoic lyricism that pervades his symphonic voice. For many listeners this quality evokes the stark, barren and beautiful terrain of Finland; indeed it is difficult to imagine music such as this emanating from anywhere else. Sibelius managed to give his nationalistic voice traveling legs through his unconventional and brilliant sense of symphonic architecture.
Listen to the Fifth Symphony to get a sense of this. If you listen to only one movement, make it the first. But the whole symphony is best. The finale is incredibly ennobling when it comes at the end of the entire symphony. In the opening of the first movement we hear stirring horn calls, awakening the natural world. We soar through an immense and beautiful landscape, simultaneously foreboding and inviting. As the forces of the movement coalesce, and before we even realize it, Sibelius inaugurates a stunning climax, dominated by trumpets, in the middle of the movement; it is as if a mountain has come to awe-inspiring life. Sibelius moves toward climaxes organically, and the dramatic arrival becomes inevitable before we even realize it. I suspect it is a very common experience when listening to Sibelius to cycle between the mental states of drifting off and being completely sensorily overwhelmed. But in a very real sense, that is very much like our experience of the natural world – vast emptiness dotted with moments inspiring grandeur.
There is currently little controversy over Sibelius’ strengths and most appropriate legacy. It is nice in a sense for history to have filtered out the best of what he has to offer so that we may sit back and simply take it in, secure in the knowledge that we are hearing the best of what has survived. This process plays out for everyone, of course. Were I writing two or three decades ago this might be different, but I would wager that his collective evaluation is rather secure at this point. Which composers, and other artists for that matter, are currently going through that filtration process? We really can’t tell because we’re so close to the trees. It is the nature of life that we can never really see both the forest or the trees at once. But in 50 years we will encounter new trees, while looking back on our travels to behold the broad view of the forest which we have previously traversed.
—
Would you like Aaron of Smart and Soulful Music to provide customized program notes especially for your next performance? Super! Just click here to get started.
Want to listen to the entire playlist for this week and other weeks? Check out the Smart and Soulful YouTube Channel for weekly playlists!
Do you have a comment to add to the discussion? Please leave one below and share your voice!
Subscribe to Smart and Soulful on Facebook and Twitter so you never miss a post!
smartandsoulfulmusic 