Part of the Rest Is Noise Audio Guide
Sibelius's grave at Ainola. Photograph by Alex Ross.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius looms ever larger over the twentieth-century musical landscape, the Romantic surfaces of his works concealing a radical mind. The BIS label of Sweden, nearing the end of a mammoth project to document the complete Sibelius, has recorded the composer's seven symphonies with the Lahti Symphony and its erstwhile conductor Osmo Vänskä. Although there is stiff competition, no conductor has gone deeper into Sibelius's dusky world. Go here to listen to generous portions of the cycle. Another very fine cycle is Leif Segerstam's with the Helsinki Philharmonic, on the Ondine label. Herbert von Karajan's older recordings, with the Berlin Philharmonic, of the last four symphonies on DG make for a good — and cheap — starting point.
Sibelius's first major work was the Kullervo Symphony, a setting of passages from the Finnish folk-epic, the Kalevala. Here is the passage corresponding to the printed text on p. 162 / p. 176 of The Rest Is Noise:
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony and YL Male Voice Choir, BIS 1215.
Below is the glacial expository section of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony (pp. 164-65 / p. 179):
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, BIS 1286/88.
The Fifth Symphony (p. 166 / p. 181) begins with a nobly ascending motif consisting of a fourth, a major second, and fourth again:
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, BIS 1286/88.
As I note in the book, John Coltrane used the same configuration of intervals at the outset of his modern-jazz masterpiece A Love Supreme (moving much faster, and transposed a half-step up):
Here is the beginning of the finale of Sibelius's Fifth, up through the first statement of the glorious "swan hymn" (p. 167 / p. 182):
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, BIS 1286/88.
The blazing conclusion of the Seventh Symphony (p. 169 / p. 183-4):
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, BIS 1286/88.
Music as pure texture in the tone poem Tapiola (pp. 169-70 / pp. 184-85):
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, BIS 1900/02.
BIS has a page for Vänskä's recording of The Tempest, Sibelius's last major work (pp. 170-71 / pp. 185-86). The opening of the Overture, representing the magic storm around Prospero's island, is another remarkable instance of Sibelian abstraction:
Sibelius's tremendously eerie setting of "Full Fathom Five":
Prospero breaks his staff:
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, with Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano, BIS 581.
Not surprisingly, many Sibelius sites have proliferated in Finland, where the composer is considered a national hero, almost a founding father. The Finnish Club of Helsinki has an especially informative site, with an entire page devoted to the heavy-drinking composer's favorite stimulants, including his favorite punch. There are extensive pages devoted to Sibelius's home, Ainola. In an article in the Finnish Music Quarterly, Kari Kilpeläinen describes the fate the Eighth Symphony.
In writing this book I regretted very much not being able to spend more time on other twentieth-century composers of the "conservative" type. A personal favorite is Carl Nielsen, who let loose explosive energies within traditional forms. Here is the famous "timpani duel" from the finale of Nielsen's Symphony No. 4, subtitled "The Inextinguishable":
Thomas Jensen conducting the Danish Radio Symphony, Danacord 351-353.
There is a distinguished retinue of twentieth-century British symphonists, beginning with the Edwardian giant Edward Elgar and proceeding through Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax, Michael Tippett, William Alwyn, Edmund Rubbra, and Havergal Brian to latter-day practitioners such as Robert Simpson, Peter Maxwell Davies, and David Matthews. Vaughan Williams is particularly close to Sibelius in spirit; the final movement of his Sixth Symphony breathes the same otherworldly air as Sibelius's late music, and, as it happens, was inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest (in particular, Prospero's line "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep"):
Adrian Boult conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra, EMI 73924.
Among a host of post-Sibelian Scandinavian composers, some worth exploring are Eduard Tubin of Estonia, Karl-Birger Blomdahl and Ingvar Lidholm of Sweden, Aulis Sallinen and Einojuhani Rautavaara of Finland, and Geirr Tveitt and Harald Saeverud of Norway. I once hosted a twentieth-century radio show whose theme music was the second movement of Tubin's Sixth Symphony:
Neeme Järvi conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony; BIS 304.
In recent decades, the one-time avant-gardists of the Ears Open group in Finland have undergone a mellowing and broadening of their musical language, often making reference to Sibelius's once unfashionable legacy. Dedicated sites can be found for Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, and Magnus Lindberg; sound samples are available at all. Go here for an exclusive picture of Salonen and Lindberg dancing around in bunny costumes. Here is the volcanic beginning of Lindberg's Kraft (p. 177 / p. 192), a punkish avant-garde piece seemingly far removed from Sibelius's late-Romantic world, although it reveals a similar obsession with music as ever-evolving landscape:
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony, with the Toimii Ensemble; Ondine 1017-2.
