Epic Mythological Sibelius Symphony

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius takes his first bow in this blog today.  Sibelius is one of those names that is extremely well-known, but mostly by a small handful of major works.  His music was immensely popular around the world when I was young, and still is so in Europe, but perhaps less so now in North America.  It was the experience of hearing a live performance of his beautiful Violin Concerto which set me on the track of writing about one of his relatively rare early works.

The rarity of this early work is odd in another way too, in that the earlier music of Sibelius, written in his younger years, is by far the most popular.  Finlandia, Valse Triste, the Violin Concerto, and the first two symphonies, all were products of the years before his 40th birthday in 1905.

This brings us to the early Kullervo, Opus 7, a 5-movement epic composition for mezzo-soprano and baritone soloists, male chorus, and orchestra which lasts 70-80 minutes in performance.  Based on a tale from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic poem, Kullervo was the first and grandest product from the overtly nationalistic phase of Sibelius' life and career.  It premiered in Helsinki in 1892 to wildly enthusiastic audience applause and considerable (although not total) critical acclaim.

Kullervo remained relatively unknown in later years for a simple reason.  After its first few outings, Sibelius withdrew it and forbade further performances.  Like many creative artists, he expressed dissatisfaction with his artistic creation, and withdrew it pending revisions.  Unlike many another composer or writer, the revisions never happened.

After only a few years, Sibelius had the self-awareness and self-discipline to realize that he had already become a very different kind of composer altogether from the one who had created this grand flowering of Finnish nationalism.  He also wanted to avoid falling into the trap of becoming too single-mindedly national in his approach.  In this, he resembled Edvard Grieg who complained that some of his most popular music for Peer Gynt "reeked of cow turds, ultra Norse-Norsehood, and be-to-thyself-enoughness."  Sibelius decided to leave Kullervo alone.

Single movements were performed in isolation on a couple of occasions, but never the entire work.  Kullervo languished in obscurity.  Much later in life, Sibelius re-orchestrated the final "lament" section of the long central movement, and with that done he gave permission for the score to be published -- but only after his death.

Kullervo didn't receive its world premiere recording until 1970.  That premiere recording from England, made with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Paavo Berglund, was my introduction to Kullervo -- and it seized and held my attention right from the opening bars.

Although Kullervo was originally described by the composer as a symphony, some experts argue that Kullervo is only a collection of symphonic poems.  I disagree.  There is a strong stylistic unity across the entire work.  The very opening theme, a rising triadic figure, casts its spell across subsequent sections, and together with other key motifs from the third movement recurs in altered form in the finale.  There's also a significant unity of orchestral and vocal sound, with woodwind tones and dark instrumental colours predominating, much singing in the low registers (especially from the male voice choir), and many passages underlain by ostinati or pedal points in the bass.  Finally, there is the undeniable fact that the entire symphony does tell a single story, albeit in detached pieces.

In any case, the very idea of "symphony" was so decisively altered during the nineteenth century, by such masters as Liszt and Mahler, that we can hardly deny the title of Symphony to such a sizable and well-integrated work.  If the only argument against calling Kullervo a symphony is the lack of sonata-form development, then we may as well dismiss with it the symphonies of Liszt, Berlioz, Franck, Chausson, and many other eminent composers of the Romantic era.

Since this is an early work, it's not altogether surprising to find echoes of other composers in certain places.  Sibelius greatly admired the music of Tchaikovsky and Bruckner (an unusual combination of interests), and while the Russian's example is more easily detected, there are some passages, in the first and last movements especially, where those pedal points, ostinato figures, sudden shifts of tone or style, and slow tempi make me feel that his admiration for Bruckner also influenced the process of composition.  Loudest of all, though, is the unmistakable voice of a composer of both ability and substance flexing his wings and taking to the air.

The first movement, an allegro moderato, is modestly entitled Introduction, but it's a large-scale conception, with multiple themes, and lasts for some fifteen minutes.  From the first exhilarating crunch of the bows into the strings on cellos and basses, the epic character of the music is unmistakable.  The first main theme on woodwinds, striving heroically upwards, carries on for some time, spinning out derivatives and variants of itself, until a decisive change of tone brings in another theme, of an almost dance-like character, ushered in by strange woodwind flourishes.  These kinds of abrupt contrasts continue to colour the movement.  The climax of the movement comes with a grandly-scaled chordal reiteration of the opening theme for full orchestra, after which the music dissolves into quiet fragments of the same theme.

The second movement, Kullervo's Youth, is a slow, dark Grave with a brooding ostinato figure that stretches through much of the movement.  Eventually the music rises to a climax with the ostinato thundered out by the full orchestra.  Then the disquieted mood of the opening returns, and the music dies away in the darkest depths.

The third movement, by far the longest, is called Kullervo and His Sister.  Here, the male choir and the two vocal soloists are called in for a dramatic scene.  The orchestral music for this scene has a restless energy and forward drive entirely appropriate, as the Finnish text from the Kalevala describes Kullervo driving furiously through the forest in winter on his sleigh.  This music may well represent the earliest extensive use of a 5/4 metre, many years before Gustav Holst in the United Kingdom made that unusual time one of his signature compositional mannerisms.

The story tells how Kullervo meets a young maiden, and after several attempts seizes her and seduces her.  Only then do they discover that she is in fact his long-lost sister.  The text spares us the climax of the story where she flings herself into the river to drown her shame and distress.

The male chorus relates this grim tale mainly in unison, with a near-strophic pattern as each section of the narrative begins with the same lines:  

Kullervo, Kalervon poika, sinisukka äijön lapsi…

"Kullervo, Kalervo's son, the child of the blue-stockinged man..."

The two soloists, of course, sing the brief dialogues between Kullervo and his unnamed sister.  The moment of the seduction is depicted by a loud, vehement orchestral passage over an energetic, driving ostinato.  Then comes the most heart-rending part of the movement.  The chorus falls silent and we hear the mezzo-soprano's lengthy narration, in which Kullervo's sister describes how she wandered from home and became lost in the woods.  There's a prize sonority from the piccolo and flute at the point where she describes climbing a high mountain and calling out for help, but hearing only mocking echoes back from the wind.  Kullervo's final anguished lament for his crime is punctuated by heavy staccato chords, and after the singer finishes this solo four more huge chords bring the movement abruptly to its close.

The fourth movement, Kullervo Goes to Battle, is an energetic, restless scherzo, with a disconcerting melodic habit of landing emphatically on the last chord of a phrase in the odd location of second beat in the bar.  The orchestration here greatly emphasizes the woodwinds, with the lower strings having a strong role later in the movement.  A contrasting central section brings in military fanfares, but played unusually on dark, snarling trombones rather than the more usual brilliance of trumpets.  Overall, the music strongly relies on folk-like repetition and variation of the themes.  The movement ends on a note of resounding but hollow triumph.

The finale, The Death of Kullervo, begins with ghostly sounds from the strings and a bleak, quiet, darkly-harmonized narration from the chorus, as Kullervo returns to the scene of the rape to find that neither grass nor flower will grow on that spot.  He draws his sword, and asks if it wishes to eat guilty flesh and drink blood that is to blame.  The sword then speaks to him, and agrees to take his life.  He plants the butt of the handle on the ground, and flings himself on the sword.  All of this is narrated by the chorus, to a slow, dark processional bass with recalls of motifs from earlier movements in the middle voices of the orchestra.  The choir's singing grows louder and the funereal march more anguished as the sword pronounces its will.

The march then continues in the orchestra, recalling musical material from both the first and third movements.  The combination of ostinato lines and massive brass chords, culminating in a gigantic silent pause is without question the most Brucknerian moment in the score.  A final choral outburst, summing up Kullervo's tragic end, is set to a massive recollection of the opening theme from the first movement, bringing the story full circle.

Kullervo has been particularly fortunate in recordings, with nearly two dozen fine versions having been made.  The first conductor to record the work, Paavo Berglund, laid down a second version years later.  So did Sir Colin Davis, whose fine RCA recording (his earlier version) is my personal favourite.  Due to the importance of accurate pronunciation in one of the world's trickier languages, most recordings use Finnish choirs, and Finnish or Swedish soloists.

I was lucky enough to be present for the second Toronto performances of Kullervo, back during the years when Finnish conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste was the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's music director.  That was an unforgettable concert.  After the main work, the conductor returned to the podium for an encore -- common with a soloist, extremely uncommon for the orchestra itself.  When the massive opening chords of Finlandia roared out, the entire audience burst into spontaneous applause.  Of course, we heard Finlandia performed with the optional choral lines added to the magnificent orchestration!  The choir on that occasion was the Polytech Chorus from Helsinki, and Saraste later recorded Kullervo with them -- but in Finland.

Epic in scale, powerful in story-telling, evocative in its brooding Nordic darkness, Kullervo remains a significant landmark in the development of the art of Sibelius.  In some ways it represents the road which he chose not to follow.  And yet, the stylistic hallmarks of the mature artist's music can also be found emerging throughout this score.  The Davis RCA recording, which I mentioned above, underlined this point by presenting Kullervo and other early works in harness with the final Symphony # 7.  There's no doubt for my ears that all of this music, early and late alike,  comes from the same masterly hand and mind.

German Romantic Symphonies # 3: The Birth of the New Symphony in 1878

On the face of it, the idea of a direct path leading from the music of Brahms to the music of Gustav Mahler seems laughable.  There could hardly be two composers more different, yet their life spans overlapped by a good margin, and Mahler did express admiration for the music of Brahms.

It's even more startling to find the link between them in the music of a composer who has been all but forgotten by subsequent generations: Hans Rott.  It's not that Rott's music was bad -- far from it.  The criminal was a cruel fate which induced mental illness and persecution mania.  During his final years, Rott destroyed most of his music, ripping it up and using it as toilet paper in the asylum where he was confined, saying that this was all it was worth.  He died of tuberculosis in the asylum in 1884 at the age of 25.

Although Brahms did not care for Rott's music, both Bruckner and Mahler acclaimed him.  Here's what Mahler had to say about his contemporary and friend:

What music has lost in him cannot be estimated. Such is the height to which his genius soars in his First Symphony, which he wrote as a 20-year-old youth, that it makes him -- without exaggeration -- the Founder of the New Symphony as I understand it.

Rott's Symphony in E Major clearly shows that he was already well on his way to becoming a force to be reckoned with.  In four movements, and lasting for nearly an hour, it does indeed represent a bridge linking Brahms with Bruckner and with Mahler.  Numerous moments in the Symphony anticipate Mahler's First, and it seems entirely possible that Mahler -- consciously or unconsciously -- incorporated this material in his own work as a tribute to his friend.  Equally, though, Rott's orchestration in this youthful symphony corresponds more to the orchestral sound of Brahms than the sound world of any other composer -- or so it seems to me.

It would be easy enough to dismiss Rott's symphony as derivative because there are so many reminiscences of Wagner and the main theme of the finale is so plainly modelled on the finale of Brahms' First Symphony.  Easy -- and misguided.  I doubt if there has ever been a 20-year old creative artist in any sphere of music, drama, dance, visual arts, etc., whose work has not had derivative aspects.  Rott's true achievement here lies in the way in which he reworks the traditional forms of "symphony" and arrives at completely different, yet entirely engaging, ways of manipulating musical materials in large structures.  It's no wonder that Bruckner and Mahler were impressed.  Bruckner never succeeded in breaking free of the chains of traditional sonata form, but Rott in this score ripped those chains into quivering fragments and went his own way.

The score of the work was reconstructed and edited by musicologist Paul Banks, working from a manuscript score of the last three movements and a set of parts for the first movement.  It was given its first-ever performance by the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra under Gerhard Samuel in 1989, 111 years after Rott completed it, and recorded shortly thereafter.  Since then it has been taken up and recorded by a dozen more conductors and orchestras.

The first and most obvious structural novelty is the fact that each movement is longer than its predecessor, and the finale is almost as long as the next two longest movements combined.  Rott has entirely reversed the formula followed by almost all classical and early Romantic composers, in which the sonata-form first movement is usually the longest.

Moreover, the first movement drastically shortens and simplifies the traditional sonata form, devoting itself to establishing the home key of E major and to announcing and elaborating a main theme of considerable length which in itself expresses three quite contrasting and versatile melodic statements.  This long and intricate melody becomes the motto theme of the symphony, which will be heard in two subsequent movements.

The slow movement opens in A major with a slow, sweeping lyrical theme which again unfolds at considerable length.  As the music darkens, this is worked up to a climax of two large anguished chords underlain by fateful-sounding dominant-and-tonic timpani strokes.  After this climax, the movement omits a classical return to its opening theme and substitutes a chorale intoned softly on the brass in E major.  In my ears, this immediately calls to mind the similar quiet trumpet theme which ushers in the coda in the finale of Mahler's Third.   This chorale theme is also destined to play a key role in the finale.

The scherzo is a rumbustious, rustic country dance, in line with some of Bruckner's scherzo movements in his earlier symphonies.  It amazes me that Rott is able to draw so many fascinating and diverse melodic shapes out of the basic formula of the first five notes of the scale, either as a scale or as intervals.  This feature contributes much to the folklike cut of the themes in the entire work, and particularly here.  The scherzo relaxes into a brief, quiet trio, and then the main theme returns.  But this is the moment when Rott's true genius really shines through.  As the movement sounds like it's working up to an enthusiastic final cadence, a long timpani roll sounds and the music launches out into unknown regions on a whole lengthy series of derivatives from the first movement.  Having blown the traditional A-B-A form into fragments, Rott then rejoices in his ability to keep spinning more and more variants out of his basic thematic material, constantly varying dynamics and orchestration to maintain interest.  This near-demonic moto perpetuo cascade of sound eventually winds up to a final climax and an abrupt but nonetheless timely cadence.

The long final movement opens with a slow, ponderous pizzicato bass line, followed by a reminiscence of the scherzo theme, and for a moment it sounds like we are facing the finale of Beethoven 9, Mark 2.  But Rott again goes his own way, and a series of figures based on a rising fourth slowly build up to a monumental climax with thunderous timpani and striking brass chords, all the more powerful for maintaining the basic slow tempo of the music.  In the end, it takes no less than nine minutes for Rott to reach the end of this long, slow meditation and launch decisively into the allegro section which so plainly reflects the finale of the Brahms First.  Even the texture is the same: a complete play-through of the theme on the lower range of the strings, followed by a repeat on the full orchestra.  It's at this point in time that we see the purpose of all those rising fourths, since that is the opening interval of the Brahms melody.  But Rott's theme, all by itself, lasts for a full minute.  In classical terms, this is just a few seconds shy of eternity.

After the entire theme has been played through twice, the orchestra launches into a spectacular series of vigorous free variations on fragments or parts of the theme.  Again the energy is maintained against the odds of a rather four-square rhythmic environment.  In a fashion that echoes Bruckner, the music rises again and again to what seem like climactic moments, then slips back into quiet before resuming its relentless buildup.

Then, totally unexpectedly, a large chord fades into a quiet snatch of melody in slower time, and we at last see the real point of Rott's structure here: not a slow introduction followed by a fast main movement, as one might guess at first, but a three-part structure in which two slow sections bookend the faster allegro in the centre.  The closest point of reference I can identify, and it comes many years later, is in the draft finale of Mahler's Tenth symphony.  I wonder if, by that time, Mahler still had Rott's intriguing musical ideas in his mind?

In this final, long slow section, the rising fourth theme takes on a different shape, and assumes a distinctly familiar air.  It took me several listen-throughs of the entire disc to realize that the finale's opening is actually a close cousin to the symphony's motto theme from the first movement, and here at last is the culmination when the motto itself slowly unfolds once again, and then builds up to the last and greatest climax of the entire work.  As this final grandiose vision fades away, gently rising and falling string arpeggios quietly frame pairs of horn chords in an obvious tribute to the final moments of Wagner's Die Walküre.  The Wagnerian reference is no less poetic and moving after the journey we've taken in this remarkable work which, although plainly an apprenticeship piece, nonetheless displays considerable mastery of the art of melody, of orchestration, and of building and developing large scale and truly symphonic structures and forms.

Rott's Symphony is a startling and noteworthy landmark in the development of the symphony.

German Romantic Symphonies # 2: Schumann's Not-Quite-A-Symphony

This blog post was triggered by the same Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra concert as the Gernsheim symphony in the first post of this series.

Robert Schumann wrote four symphonies in all, although it's easy to get confused about the order of their composition since the second one he wrote eventually got published as the Fourth.  Far too many interpreters of these works have stopped right there, and ignored another piece which is -- for my money -- a symphony in all but name.

Schumann in fact struggled with the appropriate title for this work.  He referred to it, at one point, as his "Second Symphony."  He also tried calling it a "Symphonette," a curious amalgam to replace the Italian Sinfonietta.  He referred to it as a "Suite."  But in the end, he settled on Overture, Scherzo, and Finale.  If there's any reason why this delightful piece remains so little heard, I would suspect it's really the fault of that absurdly wordy and clumsy title.  Certainly, there's no reason not to record it in harness with the numbered quartet, yet for years there were few recordings which did so (Wolfgang Sawallisch on EMI was one of the earliest, and remains a fine example). 

Especially given ample precedent from Haydn, Mozart, and others, I see no particular reason why a work should be denied the title of "symphony" because of being lighter in weight, colour, or texture, or because of having only three movements.

The Overture, Scherzo, and Finale is one of the products of Schumann's glorious year of the orchestra, 1841.  He began the year with his first symphony, the "Spring" Symphony, followed with this work and the Phantaisie in A Minor for piano and orchestra (which later became the opening movement of his immortal Piano Concerto), and then went on to produce the first version of the D Minor Symphony which was published years later, misleadingly labelled as the Fourth.

Readers who are familiar with the other three works he wrote in the same year may be a little surprised to hear just how different Schumann's sound world becomes in this piece.  If the Spring Symphony was written under the stimulus of hearing the Schubert Great C Major Symphony, this piece owes more than a little to the Mendelssohn of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Italian Symphony.  Schumann here uses the orchestra in a very Mendelssohnian way, with graceful light textures and relatively sparing use of just 2 horns, versus his more usual four, and with trombones appearing only in the finale.

The first movement opens with a brief introduction that presents two contrasting melodic ideas.  These two ideas recur during the main allegro which follows within moments.  Right from the opening bars, the kinship to Mendelssohn is apparent -- especially so when the main theme is presented by the winds, with the strings dancing attendance. 

The scherzo which follows dances along to a lively dotted rhythm in an unusual pattern that becomes obstinately memorable.  Again, the textures are light and airy, although this music has more of a rustic country-dance feeling than one gets from Mendelssohn's fairy scherzos.  The contrasting trio presents a brief singing melody from the winds, answered by the strings, which switches frequently between major and minor.  The recapitulation of the scherzo after the trio is marked by a strange interpolation of two extra rhythmic bars which disrupt the regular four-bar phrases.  The trio is then briefly recalled, followed by an altered reminiscence of the main melody of the first movement, before a quick little wind flourish ends the movement.

The finale has the most robust textures, partly because of the orchestration, but also because of the composer's use of fugal textures which necessarily involve more melodic lines being in play simultaneously.  Yet the music remains bright and energetic, right up to the closing pages where Schumann takes his vigorous main theme and works it into a grand apotheosis like a chorale, the horns and trombones very much to the fore.  It makes for a satisfying conclusion to a work which is, for me, one of the most breezy and engaging pieces its creator ever wrote.

German Romantic Symphonies # 1: Gernsheim Symphony # 2

Blame it all on Hans von Bülow.

The famous German conductor, pianist, journalist, and composer took up the phrase of "the Three Bs" originally coined by Peter Cornelius, and changed it from Bach-Beethoven-Berlioz to Bach-Beethoven-Brahms.

Added to the fulsome praise of such music critics as Eduard Hanslick, this was enough to elevate Johannes Brahms to the pinnacle of the "conservative" wing in Romantic musical circles.  His supposed primacy acted as a powerful stimulus to slowly but surely drive other German Romantic composers out of sight and out of mind.

The music of Friedrich Gernsheim suffered under a dual additional handicap.  His work was specifically (and unfavourably) compared to the music of Brahms.  Worst of all, since he was born of Jewish parentage, his music was actively suppressed and destroyed during the Nazi regime, under the brutally abrupt label of entartete Musik ("degenerate music").  In recent years, the balance has begun to be redressed, with a few recordings now available, including cycles of his four symphonies.

I haven't heard any of those recordings yet, but I did have the good fortune to hear Gernsheim's Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 46 at a concert of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra last week.  A sizable array of microphones hung above the stage at the Centre in the Square -- perhaps a recording will be forthcoming?  We can always hope!

The symphony impressed me as a work of considerable skill and interest -- much more so than some of the other long-lost orchestral music of the period which I have heard.  Although pre-concert talks made much of the resemblance of Gernsheim's music to that of Brahms, I found that any similarity was more superficial than actual.  Details to follow.

One aspect of Gernsheim's orchestration stood out for me: his habit of separating the wind/brass group from the strings, and having either one or the other playing alone.  To me, this was an immediate signal pointing the way to the similarly divergent handling of the orchestra by Mahler (although the resemblance stops right there).  Mahler may well have become familiar with Gernsheim's music as a young man.  But that's not the whole story.  There are numerous passages where selected winds and/or brasses are felicitously combined with portions of the string body.  Gernsheim's handling of the orchestra is both skillful and imaginative.

The most impressive aspect of the symphony is Gernsheim's skill in creating substantial melodies and then developing them along the lines of classical symphonic procedure.  Only the finale was a bit lacking in this respect.

The first movement opens with a sombre theme on horns, perhaps the most Brahmsian moment of the entire score.  This is taken up by the winds and quickly built up to the entrance of the main theme in an unusual 6/8, allegro tranquillo, a tempo direction which aptly describes the entire movement.  It contains great melodic riches and no shortage of fascinating cross-rhythmic games, yet says its say (like the entire work) in a very punctual way -- no longueurs here.  That choice of the 6/8 time signature, by the way, also refers us back to the similar time in the opening movement of the Brahms First although the character of this music is very different indeed.

The second movement is a brief but energetic tarantella, showcasing the agility and nimble fingers of both winds and strings to great effect.  A brief fugal interlude shows promise of becoming a trio, but it's a false alarm as the main tarantella theme quickly resumes its course and brings the movement swiftly to an end.

The slow movement, Notturno, has a definite Mediterranean air to it as well, a feeling of warm summer nights in Italy which actually sits well with the Germanic style of the work as a whole.  Here, too, the material is worked through with real skill in the instrumentation.  It should come as no surprise, given the punctuality of the symphony as a whole, but nonetheless I was almost startled to realize that we were building up to the entry of the finale, and that Gernsheim followed the precedent of Beethoven 5 and Schumann 4 by linking these movements together.

The finale opens with an obvious gesture of homage to the Brahms First, itself a similar homage to the Joy theme of Beethoven's Ninth.  The similarity goes so far as having the violins and violas play their theme on their lower strings, imitating even the sound of the Brahms.  Complimentary it may be, but this movement is also for me the weak link of the symphony as a whole.

The truth is that Gernsheim here becomes a victim of the "finale problem" which bedevilled all the Romantic composers of symphonies.  Faced with the titanic precedent of Beethoven, especially in his Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies, composers from Schubert and Schumann to Liszt and Bruckner struggled to find equally convincing ways to crown their symphonies with climactic final movements that opened the gates of heaven (Bruckner especially wished to do that!).  Gernsheim's aim here is to achieve that magnificence by varying his theme and attacking it with his favourite device of cross-rhythms, but it all sounds a little too academic to be truly convincing -- mainly because the theme itself has become merely stodgy.

However, the closing stretto redeems him and the work, the sudden shift in tempo and brightening of the sound picture bringing a quick but convincing buildup to a punctual, emphatic final chord.

This symphony is so filled with riches of melody, orchestration, and rhythmic ingenuity that it seems almost impossible for it to last only 30 minutes.

Gernsheim, on the evidence of this music, was a composer of real skill and imagination, and trod his own path.  Like the eminent Czech composer Dvorak, Gernsheim did not let his admiration for the music of Brahms drag him too far into mere imitation.  This second symphony is definitely the work of a man sure of his own way, and able to express himself in his own distinct style.  I look forward to hearing more of his music!