'I think that this Fifth Symphony more than anything else is actually a huge, fantastic continuum which starts in a point and ends in a point and what happens in between is all absolutely without any clear cut bar lines or transition points, everything overlaps and its all a very big arch from beginning to end.'
Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo
kp

I see what Oramo's trying to convey here and I do think the basic point is valid, indeed rather crucial (and to a large extent applies to much mature Sibelius). Whether it's the best metaphor is debatable. The arch is broken rather dramatically at the end of the Fifth’s first movement! Now, if he had said it about the Seventh Symphony…

Andrew B wrote:

I see what Oramo's trying to convey here and I do think the basic point is valid, indeed rather crucial (and to a large extent applies to much mature Sibelius). Whether it's the best metaphor is debatable. The arch is broken rather dramatically at the end of the Fifth’s first movement! Now, if he had said it about the Seventh Symphony…

Andrew can you amplify your reasoning as to the arch being broken at the end of the first movement?

Oramo also stated: 'With this Fifth Sibelius, I'm much more concerned about linking things together and shaping the arch so that its absolutely organic and never bringing out anything that dosn't need bringing out, I don't want to underline details in Sibelius's score, rather let the music speak for itself'.
kp

Yes, sure: the whole span of the first movement comes to a resounding conclusion (sic!) before the start of the slow movement. Many indeed regard the symphony as being in two parts, the original I+II (final I) being the first part, and the last two movements the second. I don't think there's any way that you can avoid the finality - the bar line, the transition point, call it what you will - of the end of the first movement (remember, Sibbe considered dispensing with the other two movements altogether, so he must have regarded it as an 'ending' per se). Does the whole work belong together and is Oramo's intention valid? In my view absolutely yes. But there isn't any overlap at the end of the first movement… and I have yet to meet a bunch of orchestral players who could launch into the wholly different mood of the slow movement after the huge exertion required by the first - neither technically nor emotionally).

Yeh I take your point, but surely the emotional and technical problems required when launching into the second movement of Sibelius 5 are no greater than the corresponding movements of, say Beethoven 5 or Tchaikovsky 4. or am I losing the point. kp

Indeed you are right; my point was that the two movements can't be overlapped in any way (sorry if I was unclear), and thus the symphony in its entirety cannot be performed without some sort of pause for breath. With Beethoven 5 (although not of course with Tchaikovsky 4) the first movement is at least much shorter and less physically exhausting than with Sib 5.

Andrew B's point is well made in that there is no overlap of the 1st two movements, but there is a sort of connection between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the second. It has to do with the phrasing.

When the "end run" of the 1st mvmt begins, with the trumpets leading the tune and the strings figurating energetically underneath, there are very, very regular 4-bar phrases; in fact, as this is conducted "in one", it can actually be conducted as if "in four", showing the four-bar groups. The rhythm is so very regular that the last bar comes as somewhat of a surprise, he finishes the movement of the 4th bar of the group, instead of on the 1st bar of the next group, which would give it a sort of classically formal finality.

If one is actually conducting this in four, then the movement finishes on an upbeat. This requires some sort of continuation, which is the downbeat of the next movement.

I will dare to perform this piece with my orchestra in April 2010, and am considering how to keep the momentum and energy of the performance going through that silence between the first two movements. There must be some sort of pause for audience and orchestra alike to catch their breath, but I want to try to emphasize that which I see as one of Sibelius' most ingenious continuity links in any of his works, a structural/phrasing device across the silence between movements. I am thinking of finding a way to keep my hands in the air between the movements, lowering them very slowly but not completely, and then giving the upbeat to the 2nd movement.

Just a thought, I'll tell you all about it in a year-and-a-half.

It certainly does finish on an up-beat IF you beat it in four-bar units - which is one reason why I've always seen that as a bit of a necessary evil… I know we are used to the symphony as it is, but just think how wrong it would sound if there were three more notes at the end!

In 1990 James Hepokoski analyzed the first movement of the Fifth Symphony as a sort of 'journey' into a psychological 'black hole' because of its 'circulated' symphonic structure. This ties in with Andrews contention that the arch is broken at the end of the movement.--kp

'There are many passages in Sibelius where tonal disruption and its subsequent resolution is employed with immensely powerful effect. In the Fifth Symphony, for instance, in the transition from the first movement proper to the scherzo development, the music seems suddenly to lose its way, as the strings take up a little chromatic descending and ascending scale motive [at figure J] and wander aimlessly about with it. A lugubre solo bassoon increases the sense of anxiety as it climbs higher up to E flat [its thin voice in this register, now marked patetico, is a brilliant choice of tone colour] at which point the strings stablilise themselves on the tonic chord. But no sooner have they done so, and a timpani roll underlined the E flat, when the brass enter pp crescendo with the dominant seventh of D: one of the most hair raising moments in all music. The strings confirm this new tonal conflict with their forceful entry on D, E flat, D, A, A flat; the music strains forward, slowly and painfully but in anticipation of something momentous, until its exultant leap into B major and the recovery of ground. [Although this key sounds like a completely new discovery, the shift from E flat to B has already been anticipated at the beginning of the movement, five bars after figure A. ] Similarly, in the coda of the finale, the quiet attainment of E flat major [Largamente assai, eight bars before figure P] after a long passage in G flat major and the tonic minor is immediately undermined by accumulating dissonance [and note how the trumpets spell out the little descending and ascending chromatic scale from the first movement] which reaches another electrifying climax three bars before R, with repeated Cs against a B/F tritone. When E flat major is triumphantly reaffirmed, it has the additional authority that has come from this trial of strengh, and now the musics forward momentum is so overwhelming that it takes all six hammer blows with the hugely dramatic silences in between [conductors should have the courage to give these their full duration] to bring it to a halt'.---David Matthews, British composer.

A succinct look at some elements of structure in Sibelius Fifth Symphony by a distinguished present day composer.--kp

kullervopete wrote:

... until its exultant leap into B major and the recovery of ground. [Although this key sounds like a completely new discovery, the shift from E flat to B has already been anticipated at the beginning of the movement, five bars after figure A. ]

Interestingly (well, maybe, for some...) I had quite an argument with my professor about the point of secondary keys in the 5th Symphony. I was arguing that Sibelius was truly breaking away from harmonic structures based on the Dominant and its various delayed arrivals, while my professor argued that this Symphony is still well within the bounds of the traditional tensions that arise in Dominant-based harmonic structures.

Specifically, my professor's point was that the apparent B Major is nothing more that the Neapolitan of the Dominant (actually C-flat Major, a half-step up from the Dominant B-flat), while my point is that the secondary keys in the Symphony are based on an Axial principle, where E-flat is the Axis and the secondary keys are a major third below and above (B major and G major), so that when we modulate to B major, we are actually in B major (which isn't necessarily the case in Beethoven and Brahms).

Nobody "won" the argument, and I don't suppose anybody ever will.

Kurkikohtaus wrote:

Nobody "won" the argument, and I don't suppose anybody ever will.

That's one of the marvellous things about Sibelius, especially late-period Sibelius. Once he got into his stride with the content determining the form - and I here use form to include the harmonic structure - he made it almost impossible for analysts to agree about quite what he had done or how he had done it. My solution is pragmatic and, I hope, conciliatory: find an analysis that works for you and stick with it - unless it's complete nonsense nobody will ever be able to disprove it. So in Sibelius’s case a musician's interpretation of a work is part of his analysis, and vice versa.

Very true indeed. Sibelius was frequently amazed at some of the technical proceedures apparently discovered by musicologists in his works 'When a work of art which is intuitively created is scientifically analysed it reveals amazing requirements. Yet the artist works entirely instinctively'-JS
kp

Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum!

'The Fifth Symphony was playing in my mind, when I watched the first moon walk of the astronauts on Tv, and later I heard that the BBC had used exactly this music as background music for the landing on the moon. And from my imaginary travels proceeded farther and farther away in time and place: to the birth and destruction of the planets, to the lustre of distant galaxies'.

Erik Tawastsjerna [Musicologist, 1978]--kp

'I began to understand the Fifth Symphony better after conducting its original version. I feel like crying at the end of that work, there is something purifying about it. It is not so much that I'm touched by the cosmic depths in that piece, but that I feel comforted and guided as a small human being'.--Osmo Vanska, Conductor [1998]

I too have shed a tear during the last movement of the original version, perhaps its only through great art that the true wonder of our tiny existance on this planet can be revealed.-kp

"How do you decide to take THAT out?"

Forum member Ainola upon hearing for the first time the dissonant trumpet interjection into the "Swan Theme" in the original version of the 3rd movement. This jarring thunderclap was removed by Sibelius in the final version.

In laymans terms regarding the final version, I've always felt that the great Swan theme on the horns is almost in danger of going out of tune, kind of struggling against the elements. 'It hurts, it hurts sweetly' to quote Sibelius. I was therefore not entirely surprised when I first heard the 1915 version and that trumpet interjection in the wrong key that stares Stravinsky in the face. Clearly when Sibelius revised this music he felt the need to smooth out this jarring tension considerably.--kp

'The finale is brief and uncomplicated but huge in its effect, the impression of size being created by a vast tonal swing from one side of the fundamental E flat [C major] to the other [G flat major]. The clashing coda is a locus classicus for diatonic dissonance, at once a commentary on the past and an augur for future sanity. The movement makes convincing the kind of thought attempted without proper basis in the finale of the Second symphony. The four chords and two unisons at the very end carry without effort the weight of the whole work'.--Harold Truscott, composer and critic.

This quote on the finale of number five is taken from volume 2 'The Symphony' [Pelican books]--kp

kullervopete wrote:

... a vast tonal swing from one side of the fundamental E flat [C major] to the other [G flat major].

Another example of the "axial" tonalities I believe Sibelius is employing in this work.

While the secondary keys in the 1st movement are a major 3rd above and below E-flat, the secondary keys in the 3rd movement are a minor third above and below E-flat.

'Sibelius's masterly transformation of a colossally slow tempo into a Beethovenishly fast one cannot be over-praised; it is a basic original achievement, and must be accounted one of the crucial discoveries in music. Some day it will be more generally understood and its influence felt'.-- Composer Robert Simpson

Simpson was writing in 1965 at the time of the Sibelius and Nielsen centenary's. and perhaps today, Sibelius's mastery of movement which he celebrated in the fifth is now more widely recognised. This skill can also be followed in the finale were Sibelius moves this time in the opposite direction, ie from fast to slow.--kp