Jean Sibelius and his World ed. by Daniel M. Grimley (review)

This collection of essays, edited by Daniel M. Grimley, has its origins in the Bard Music Festival of summer 2011, an event dedicated to performing, talking about, and reappraising the music of Jean Sibelius. In his introduction, the editor comments on two reductive tendencies in Sibelius reception: one is to see in his music an idealized Nordic landscape, and the other is to interpret his compositional career as a single-minded trajectory from late-Romantic nationalism to an obsession with motivic unity (as exemplified in his late orchestral work Tapiola). The chapters that follow offer a corrective to these perceptions in revealing the diversity of the cultural milieu in which Sibelius moved, and the breadth of his musical activities and interests.

The book is divided into two parts, the second containing various source documents. There is an excerpt from a short novel by Adolf Paul, purportedly about Sibelius’s student life in Berlin; a lecture given by Sibelius at the University of Helsinki in 1896, in which he discusses the importance of folk music; and a few paragraphs from Erik Furuhjelm’s early biography of Sibelius (published 1917), lauding the composer as a sublime portrayer of nature. That is followed by Theodor Adorno’s stinging critique of Sibelius, written in 1938. The final documents represent an exchange of views, published in the Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadbladet in 1962, regarding the plans for a Sibelius monument in Helsinki.

Philip Ross Bullock’s essay, the longest in the collection, revisits the contentious matter of Russian influence on Sibelius. This influence has, he insists, been downplayed. The reasons for that, in Finland at least, were political, and should be understood in the context of that country’s status from 1809 to 1917 as a Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire, and its struggle for independence. Bullock, however, purposely complicates this simple picture by showing how Russia made efforts to win the loyalty of Finns, and sometimes actively contributed to the growth of Finnish national consciousness (Finland had formerly been under Swedish rule). Russia sponsored the Finnish Language Society, for example, and the figure of Czar Alexander II appears in a positive light in the sixth tableau of Sibelius’s Finland, Awake! Certainly, this is not to suggest that any of the same regard was felt for Nicholas II, who adopted regressive policies.

Sibelius became familiar with the arts in Russia through the interest shown by his wife’s family. The influence of Russian composers on the early Sibelius is unmistakable; yet, as Bullock notes, he chose to study in Berlin and Vienna rather than the closer St Petersburg Conservatory. The case for Russian models having inspired his later music is, however, pursued beyond the normal boundary of the Third Symphony, the work often interpreted as heralding a new classicism in Sibelius’s music. Much persuasive evidence is brought to bear, but I began to wonder if the Russian influence was now being overplayed. Despite Sibelius’s time in Vienna and his love of Viennese music, Schubert is mentioned only once, and quickly linked to Russian composers. Bruckner is not mentioned at all, despite the indebtedness that Kullervo shows, at times, to that composer’s Third Symphony.

Timo Virtanen contributes an essay in Sibelius sketch studies. Although Sibelius wanted his sketches to be destroyed after his death, it is fortunate for those studying his creative process that his wishes were not carried out. Around 2,000 manuscript units are held in the National Library of Finland, most of them related to post-1904 compositions. The sketches reveal a self-critical mind at work, and are full of comments, instructions, and deletions. Virtanen refers to the sketch materials for Cassazione in demonstrating Sibelius’s working methods. He argues that this piece came at a key stage in the development of Sibelius’s compositional plans, and acted as a kind of ‘schematic creative project’ (p. 67) for many other pieces dating...