The very opening of Sibelius's First Symphony with that lonely clarinet solo over a Timpani roll seems, like so much of the masters music to have always existed. Something of a surprise to learn that it seems to have been an after-thought.
Although present in the 1900 revision, it appears to have been absent from the original 1899 version.
It is unfortunate that not a great deal as survived of this first version. Presumably the clarinet themes powerful opening on the strings in the Finale was present in the 1899 score--I wonder--kullervopete.

This (I mean the 1899 version of the First) is a very interesting subject and I am looking forward to Timo Virtanen's critical edition to shed some more light on it.

It does indeed seem that the differences were substantial, but there is insufficient surviving material to be sure what the 1899 version was like. I can give some pointers, however, based on an intermediate score that has survived (Turku Sibelius Museum) - already with some revisions but by no means definitive yet:

1) Yes, the clarinet intro was EITHER added later OR a replacement for something else. There's apparently no way of knowing (the manuscript page seems to be stuck in separately so in 1899 there may have been some sort of introduction that is now lost);

2) The first movement included some weird percussion - castanets perhaps the weirdest;

3) The main theme of the slow movement was repeated (clarinets, violas) immediately after its first appearance;

4) The entire form of the scherzo MAY have been different, with a repeat of more or less the entire first scherzo section before the trio. The manuscript evidence is, however, very unclear and such a radical formal conception seems unlikely.

5) In the finale, the coda was shorter in 1899. A separate (earlier) manuscript fragment has a rather different scoring for the last appearance of the 'big tune' - this was presumably its form in 1899.

All in all it's a pity that we don't have enough material to reconstruct the 1899 version. But no doubt future research will continue to shed light.

Andrew B wrote:

2) The first movement included some weird percussion - castanets perhaps the weirdest

While castanets are certainly not the fist instrument that one thinks of when contemplating Sibelius and percussion, strangely enough, I can guess and imagine where they might have fit in...

[I will edit in the bar number tomorrow when I take a look at the score].

I'm thinking of the long ostinato quarter note passage, a very long crescendo punctuated by (irregular) accents... with castanets in the background, this otherwise icy-cold music would take on a sudden mediteranean flavour!

Facinating just how organic this opening movement is. The second subject [Flutes against tremolando strings and harp actually derives from the opening clarinet introduction [bars 17-20]
Lets hope that Timo Virtanen can shed some further light on the original version.--kullervopete.

Another thought on the potential absence of the Clarinet solo in the original version:

From the standpoint of the compositional process, although today we see the clarinet solo and its S-motif

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as the seminal root of the piece, I can actually see how Sibelius may have added it as an "afterthought" of sorts.

The first movement can stand alone and "work" without the introduction. It is the opening of the final movement where we find the "consequences" of this introduction, but perhaps the compositional process was inverted, where Sibelius may have first "found" the theme at the beginning of the last movement, and then only later decided to use it "again" as the opening of the whole piece.

i prefer not to imagine #1 w/o the clarinet/timp opening.

dj

I do not see the opening clarinet theme as a 'motto' for the symphony It is far removed from a work such as Tchaikovsky's Fourth. That great symphony opens with the 'Fate' fanfare and this too rears its head in the Finale.
For me, the opening clarinet solo in the Sibelius is much more like a premonition of the Fantasia Finale, its almost as a dream, of climbing some great mountain that can only vaguely be made out at this time--in short, a master stroke.--kullervopete.

For sure, however Sibelius changed or added to the work to make its current opening, he produced a fantastic beginning to the work. I would hope that no misguided conductor will try to play it without the introduction, in an attempt to recreate the 'lost original'.

Fair to assume that it was less effective in its original form, whatever that was? Yes, I suppose it probably is!


P.S. Kullervopete - congratulations on your 300 posts!

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Hehe, while kp's 300 is a fine achievement, long ago I set the next rank-breakpoint at 350, just to keep things a little off-center. The following one is at the nicely rounded 500.

[/off-topic]

It is of course interesting when we look at the Fifth Symphonies opening. In the final 1919 version we hear the wonderful Horn call from which everything else seems to grow. This too, appears to have been an after thought. The Horn call which seems so vital as the symphony unfolds does not appear at this point in the original version [1915] in which the woodwind motives are preceded by one mezzoforte chord. When Sibelius came to revise a number of his major works, he invarably removed great chunks of the music, but it seems that at least in the openings of Symphonies 1 and 5 he added a clarinet and Horn respectivly.--kullervopete.

kullervopete wrote:

... in the original version [1915] in which the woodwind motives are preceded by one mezzoforte chord.

kullervopete's point about the parallel between the differences between the original openings and final openings in the 1st or 5th symphonies is well made. I would just like to sidetrack here for a split second and talk about the aforementioned chord in the 5th symphony and its poingnancy.

The chord is an f minor seventh, a chord built upon the second degree of the E-flat major scale. Although I have not seen a score of the original version, when listening to Vanska's recording my ear tells me that it is voiced in the 1st inversion (edit: thanx Andrew B, see below), meaning Ab-C-Eb-F, from bottom to top. This voicing gives a special softness to the chord, a very unique sound that one would be very hardpressed to find in other Sibelius works.

You see, as I mention in

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thread, Sibelius was very fond of the half-diminished seventh, to the point where I personally consider it his (first of all) favourite (static) sonority and (secondly) his favourite harmonic (modulatory) device.

For the uninitiated, the half-diminished seventh can be easily built on the very same second degree of the scale as I mention above, by simply allowing a little foreigner to enter the picture. The h-d/2 built on F would be F-Ab-Cb-Eb, or voiced in 1st inversion Ab-Cb-Eb-F. In the 5th Symphony, this sound is out of the question, because the chosen harmony serves to underpin the opening wind motif, which is Eb-F-C... so the Cb in there would not only change the colour of the harmony but the motif as well. The point is that Sibelius did not exactly "choose" this harmony to "accompany" the motif, it was the other way around. The motif was set in his mind, and the motif dictates the harmony that accompanies it, rather, the motif is the harmony that accompanies it, another wonderful example of Sibelian unity.

The only reason I make such an issue of all of this is that the "normal" minor 7th sound is so very uncommon in Sibelius, that it is quite wonderful to hear here in the 5th Symphony, brought to the forefront by its germinal motif.

I can't check now as I'm travelling without scores but isn't the chord that opens the original 5th the same as that which opens Lemminkäinen and the Maidens?

Great call, Andrew B, I wish I could give you a QotM for that one but alas...

It's even in the same key, same instrumentation and same scoring of the voices, which made me realize its a first inversion chord, I've edited my post above accordingly.

Back to that castanet idea in the First Symphony: the place I was thinking of is rehearsal letter H in the first mvmt, over (or under?) the ostinato F#, leading into the development.

But now looking at the score, they would create an even more eerie mood were they placed some bars earlier, at the Tranquillo before letter G (closing theme of Exposition).

But this is all just fantasy, no one need worry that I'll try to "restore" this idea when I perform the piece (mid 2009!)

Is it just me, or are all the motifs in the first movement at least similar to that clarinet solo? The resemblances seem almost striking to me; while it isn't reproduced note-for-note until the strings in the later parts of the symphony, the themes and such of the first movement have a great deal alike with the clarinet solo.

I think it's the clarinet solo what binds the whole symphony together. Just think; were the solo not present, the listener would just suddenly be thrown into this weird pseudo-Tchaikovskian tone-world that changes every ten or so minutes. With that opening theme, though, everything just seems bound together because everything harks back to that mysterious opening: besides, when it's finally attained in the finale, it makes it more cyclical in its way.

The clarinet solo is what makes the symphony Sibelian, I guess...

I think that World Violist may well be right in that everything in the first movement derives from the opening clarinet theme.
In another thread we discussed the possible influence of Tchaikovsky on Sibelius's first symphony, but nobody as yet mentioned Borodin who forty years earlier in his Ed symphony employed a technique of gradually welding together tiny scraps of motives into an organic whole. Of course Sibelius once remarked that he did not build his themes from tiny scraps but I wonder if he had heard Borodins symphony at the time that he began work on his first?--kullervopete.

Good points both about the clarinet solo and about Borodin. I believe Sibelius claimed not to have heard the Borodin, but his statement has often been doubted - probably we'll never know for sure.