I agree Kurki, Dvorak is the greater Symphonist of the two. Tchaikovsky himself admitted that he did not think 'symphonically', but in the first movement of number 4 he comes close and in the 6th.

Yes indeed Tapkaara, Kodaly is known to have been fond of Sibelius's music. As regards Bartoks quote, I have looked in vain over the years for anything Bartok may have said about Sib. But all I have found is the afore mentioned quote.
Sibelius for his part greatly admired the Hungarian master. Santeri Levas, Sibelius's secretary from 1938 until 1957 tells us that Bartok was the one composer among the senior moderns that Sibelius esteemed. Levas remarked that to the best of his knowledge, Sibelius never met Bartok. But perhaps he did. The violinist Yehudi Menuhin spoke with Sibelius at Ainola and Sib told him that he had known Bartok in his younger days in Berlin, and that he was the greatest among composers of our day. Menuhin confessed later that he had never met any contemporary composer who had said that either about a colleague or about Bartok.--kullervopete.

'He takes the tiniest drop of sound and from it draws a veritable ocean'.

Finnish composer Oskar Merikanto on 'Lemminkainen's Return'-kp

'Wherever I am playing the Sibelius Concerto, I can see the landscapes of my homeland. Its a bit like carrying around a small box of soil from your garden'.

Finnish violinist Pekka Kousisto.--kp

Sibelius has an acutely developed sense of identification with nature and a preoccupation with myth that at one and the same time define his unique strength and his basic limitation. These preoccupations override his involvement in the human predicament, except in so far as it affects man’s relationship with nature.

Robert Layton

I think it may be a little harsh to use the terms "preoccupations" and "override", but there is a hint of truth in that quote.

Very interesting...

So, I guess that quote brings this question to mind:

Is there much HUMANITY is Sibelius's music, or is it all about mythical figures and nature?

Sibelius was obviously very interested in the above, but what about humanity...the human condition?

Composers like Beethoven and Mahler were really into that, but not so much Sibelius, I suppose.

Listening to a recent radio braodbast I caught the last portion of a quote of Sibelius. It was something like "most composers compose a musical cocktail but I prefer to compose ...." (- Sibelius)

Anyone have any idea about the actual quote?

...pure spring water.

This is, no doubt, when Sibelius was making reference to the flashy compositions of composers like Stravinsky. I paraphrase:

"most composer like to compose cocktails of various hues, I can only offer pure spring water."

This is one of my favorite Sibelius quotes.

Their is a myth that Sibelius spent his time communing alone with nature, his music utterly devoid of human contact, This is so far from the truth. Sibelius's music reveals a great human spirit, heroic and essentially optimistic, but at the same time not afraid to look into the darker recesses of the human soul. Fifty years after his death, Sibelius is more than ever a composer for the space age. For although he expresses the terror of natures terse indifference to man, in his greatest music Sibelius reveals that humanity and the cosmos are one.--kp

Hmmmm, very good point, Pete.

Now that I think about it, the 4th is a very human work, isn't it? I delves deep into the psyche of a man who fears death. What could be more human than that?

I think in Sibbe's portrayals of nature, his art is really about man's relationship to nature. Sibbe felt very close to nature, and he expresses this very well in his music. So, I suppose, there is humanity there, too.

kullervopete wrote:

... a myth that Sibelius spent his time communing alone with nature, his music utterly devoid of human contact...

Well I think there is some truth in this old story, in that he certainly did get inspiration for a lot of major and minor works while at Ainola, on his walks, or elsewhere in the Finnish countryside.
But I agree, it would be wrong to claim that this was the only source of inspiration. Indeed one of the great paradoxes about Sibelius's character was that he craved company and attention as much as he craved solitude and nature.

Has Tapkaara hints at, Sibelius seems to have been haunted by the thoughts of death from early on. It is ironic that perhaps with his very real psychic powers, Sibelius was convinced that he would outlive most of his contemporary's--and he did!--kp

'Sibelius's music is the result neither of pure calculation nor of unfetered instinct, but rather of a fusion of the two. Though constructed with infinite care, it conveys an impression of spontaneity which renders it resistant to textbook analysis'.

Andrew Barnett, Sibelius Scholar.

The above quote which I have taken from Andrew B's superb 2007 Biography says so much about the nature of Sibelius's extraordinary achievement.--kp

'For at least once in history a composer became one of the most important figures of a nation, as important as journalists and generals. To Americans who regard music as peripheral and extracurricular, this must seem incredible'.
Howard Hanson. Composer.
The above quote by one of America's greatest Symphonists brings home to us the extraordinary position of Sibelius in his native Finland. No parallel example involving a musician comes to mind. Even Paderewski who served Poland as both Prime Minister and President for a short time after WW1. never became quite the universally recognized human symbol of his country that Sibelius continues to be 50 years after his death.--kp
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kullervopete earns his second Mark of Excellence for this fine, fine post.

'He will be something special'

Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897

Prophetic words indeed from a great master.--kp

'In Tapiola, the dark, cancerous Schoenbergian self is reflected into nature. Tapiola proves that Sibelius's music can explore the absolute extremes of 20th Century angst. The miracle is that this music achieves a higher level of self knowledge and may be the basis for human regeneration as the ego begins to recognize that its perceptions and conceptions of nature are actually part of nature itself. It is this uniting of the self with nature that contains the seeds of true planetary healing. Tapiola heralds a new way of human thinking that incorporates and transcends the dessicated rationalism of abstract science.--Ken d.

I came across the above statement the other day when we had been discussing recordings of Tapiola. It seems to me one of the most lucid and thought provoking idea's regarding this masterpiece. Tapiola has been seen as an evocation of the primeval forest, of the dark forces of nature. A terrifying vision of elemental forces, interrogative of something deep in the recesses of a universal memory and essentially unpeopled. What Ken d suggests is that man himself is at the heart of Sibelius's vision in Tapiola and that amid the futility and desolation of inanimate nature, the human spirit will survive the ultimate decay and entropy of the cosmos.--kp

Very interesting quote.

Tapiola proves that "modern" can still be musical. Sibelius does not need to resort to silly klanging, banging, wheezing, sneezing or other deliberate (silly) special sound effects to evoke a feeling of dread or discomfort.

It's interesting that the person who made this quote compares Sibelius's modernism to that of our friend Arnold S. I think I see his point.

So-called "modernists" like Schonberg wrote music that really did not want to be a "oh, that sounds nice" experience. 12-tone music, overtly dissonant music best creates feelings of discomfort, frustration or, in my case, repulsion. It ends up not being so much a musical experience as it is one of "what the hell was that?" In other words, Iguess it's supposed to make you think and it's supposed to challenge your thoughts as to what music really is.

I rarely enjoy having to put this much thought into bad music. Music is either good or bad. It can be simple, or it can be a bit of a challenge. But when when the challenge presented to you is to make something out of nothing more than a piece of crap, where's the fun in that?

Anyway, I find it interesting our quote-meister here parallels Tapiola to Schonberg. I guess he is saying that the "heart of darkness" in Sibbe's masterpiece is an apt companion to the similarly "dark" works of Schonberg. I guess this is true; the feeling of eeriness or terror is certainly in every page of Sibbe's work.

But Sibelius remains a true musician in this work. He has still created a listenable piece of music. Schonberg could never have written a piece like this.

Tapkaara wrote:

But when when the challenge presented to you is to make something out of nothing more than a piece of crap, where's the fun in that?

Or, to put it somewhat differently maybe, when the music is in the challenge and the challenge not in the music?

Anyway, I very much like this quote. It shed new light on a work I thought I knew very well (and probably did, but now I know it better).

'In my mind, the ideal Sibelius concert should not resemble an interpretation, nor even a point of view. I would like it to be like ice breaking in the Spring, in a Northern river: intense, beautiful, frightening and unstoppable'.-- Conductor and Composer Essa-Pekka Salonen.

Salonen admits that he avoided Sibelius for years, as did many Finnish composers of his generation, searching for there own voice. Nowadays Sibelius's enormous shadow no longer seems so oppressive--kp

'I have often said that it is a pity that Sibelius was Finnish! His music has been deeply misunderstood. While his language was far from modern, his thinking as far as form and the treatment of materials is concerned, was ahead of its time. While Varese is credited with opening the way for new sonorities, Sibelius has himself pursued a profound reassessment of the formal and structural problems of composition. I do not think it is fair that he has been considered a conservative...His harmonies have a resonant, almost spectral quality. You find an attention to sonority in Sibelius's works which is actually not far removed from that which would appear long after in the work of Grisey or Murail...for me, the crucial aspect of his work remains his concept of continuity. In Tapiola, above all, the way genuine processes are created using very limited materials is pretty exceptional'.

Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg [b. 1958]

Linberg had studied in the early 1980's with Gerard Grisey and he has confirmed that his rediscovery of Sibelius was due in a large part to the spectralists school. Their view of such masterpieces as Tapiola and the Seventh Symphony helped Lindberg to see the radical aspects of Sibelius anew.--kp

'Many times in Sibelius's music, the exaltation of natural sublimity gives way to inchoate fear, which has less to do with the outer landscape than with the inner one: the forest of the mind'.-Alex Ross, music critic.

The above quote plumbs real depth. Sibelius is not just a Northern landscape artist, conjuring up picturesque visions of the natural world. In many works such as the fourth symphony and Tapiola, we too, share with Sibelius the terrifying experience of being trapped in a psychological black hole of the mind.--kp