Rightly or wrongly Sibelius's music has a reputation for being remote, austere and isolated. here are two views, one from Writer on music and cricket Sir Neville Cardus and the other from Sibelius himself.

'The world of Sibelius is so imbued with nature as to be unpeopled'--Neville Cardus.

'My work is intimately connected with life, in contrast to much other music of our time'.---Jean Sibelius.

Anyone care to discuss this irreconcilable dichotomy.--kp

Easy. Cardus was wrong.

OK, I'll expand a bit before you ask me to!

Anyone who writes on cricket deserves our fullest respect but I think Cardus is here providing what a modern politician would refer to as a soundbite – what's more, one that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Nature in Sibelius's major works is rarely viewed in isolation. Think of the Man vs Nature conflict in The Wood-Nymph or Höstkväll, or the 'solitary man' in Night Ride and Sunrise, all the nymphs of The Oceanides - one could go all the way from the Näcken song of 1888 to the wood-sprites of Tapiola. I don't think it's possible to see any of the symphonies or other abstract works as an overt nature portrait without imposing an unwarranted level of subjective interpretation upon it. I just don't accept that listeners need or want to be told what image is conjured up in an individual critic's mind when he hears a piece - it's about as interesting as yesterday's menu (we all have relatives who regale us after their holidays with precise details of what they ate each evening, I bet). Of course the music is evocative, but its very individuality guarantees that no two people will react in the same way, as with almost anything in life*. It's fine if the music inspires us create images for our own personal use, e.g. if the Sixth Symphony reminds someone of snow or whatever, but emphatically not if such images are designed for public consumption - Tovey's wretched fog-banks again, and even his polar bears.

*A point well made in the world of comic fiction by David Nobbs in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (theme tune discussed in posts passim). When Reggie – who is in some ways an anti-hero in a modern commercial environment, who allows himself to reach spontaneously and in contravention of social norms – attends a marketing session at which he and his colleagues test new deodorants, all of the other testers note down that the products smelt of roses, or lavender, or forests, or some such. Reggie writes on his form that each new deodorant smells of 'Bolivian unicyclist's jockstrap'.

Andrew B wrote:

Nature in Sibelius's major works is rarely viewed in isolation.

I can agree with much of that, but I would go even further. I believe that in a really profound sense Sibelius reveals man himself to be at the very centre of nature. Even in Tapiola when we witness the elements unleash a tempest that no living thing might survive, it is Sibelius the artist who conjures up this ultimate truth, a truth that is irreducible.

If we ask what it is in the music of Sibelius that communicates to us the sheer power of nature in its every variety of mood, then I would say that when we listen to a work such as the Fourth Symphony every human being is a prisoner in the isolation of his own mind. Whatever the individuals reaction, he feels that he is not alone--Sibelius has also been through this and is saying to us that we are not alone, I am with you.

Sibelius compared his symphonies to the 'still-born' examples of Stravinsky. I have described Sibelius as a composer for the space age. The unimaginable vastness of the cosmos would seem to relegate man to an insignificant speck of dust on the shores of eternity. But in the music of Sibelius, humanity becomes the ultimate expression of nature herself.--kp

Andrew B wrote:

Nature in Sibelius's major works is rarely viewed in isolation.

kullervopete wrote:

I believe that in a really profound sense Sibelius reveals man himself to be at the very centre of nature.

Some time ago, we explored how one would best introduce Sibelius to a new initiate, take a look at

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to refresh your memories.

I have recently had the pleasure to be able to introduce Sibelius to someone who had only heard Valse Triste and The Swan. I chose a few short pieces, namely Kurkikohtaus, Andante Festivo and also Luonnotar, as this "new listener" is a soprano. Then we had a few in depth listening sessions complete with explanations, references and scores. Last weekend we listened to En Saga, as I suggested in the "Sibelius for Beginners" thread, and this past weekend we listened to Tapiola. Quite a jump...

I was fascinated by her reaction, and it agrees with what Andrew B and kullervopete are saying... She said the music "Draws You In", that one finds oneself "intensely in the midst" of the world that the composer has created. I was afraid that pieces like En Saga and Tapiola might have the opposite effect, that they would seem too abstract or the narrative too didactical. But once again Sibelius shows us his power even over the un-initiated ear and mind: he draws us in, he puts the human experience at the center of his music.

P.S. Kurki has found the "other crane" from his avatar ...

The marvelous thing is that even seasoned Sibelians such as myself are still hearing works by JS for the very first time. Last week I made the acquaintance of three pieces. 'Vainon Virsi' [Vainamoinen's Song] for chorus and orchestra opus 110, 1926. 'Come away death' for baritone, harp and strings, orchestrated 1957! and that 'World song of girl guides'.

More than fifty years after Sibelius's death its marvellous to still experience that sense of discovery.--kp

It's always a thrilling moment. (But maybe rather less thrilling in the case of the World Song [aka Scout March] than the others…?)

Andrew B wrote:

It's always a thrilling moment. (But maybe rather less thrilling in the case of the World Song [aka Scout March] than the others…?)

Yes indeed, maybe a newly discovered masterpiece would be icing on the cake. But as the master remarked, even the smaller pieces represented his innermost self.--kp

Will someone find the lost manuscript of the 8th already?

I bet Andrew B has it locked up in his study and is waiting until 2057 to release it...

If I'm still around in 2057 by some miracle of cryogenics, that is…

I have copies of all the unidentified manuscripts in the National Library that might possibly have links to Sym 8 - but I think JS was extremely thorough in destroying the traces. There is nothing substantial that can be definitively linked to the symphony - a single scribbled motif is marked as intended for it, but beyond that we are in the land of clouds and cuckoos.

By looking at the surviving sketches from this period, as well as the works he completed at the time, I have reached the conclusion that the style of the Eighth was probably closer to the Op. 114 piano pieces than to any other surviving work by JS. But that still doesn't tell us all that much, and in any case I can't prove it.

Andrew, does scholarship show there was indeed a choral part to the 8th?

The (meagre) surviving hard evidence doesn't justify such a conclusion, no…

BUT that isn't to say that it wasn't the case. Dr Kari Kilpeläinen at the National Library of Finland (one of today's leading and most highly respected Sibelius authorities, in case anyone hasn't heard of him) has made a persuasive case for choral parts, though he freely admits that he cannot prove anything. All of the evidence is circumstantial - uncorroborated statements by visitors to Ainola, extrapolations based on a copyist's bill for the first movement, that sort of thing - certainly not the sort of thing that can be admitted in evidence by the court of Sibelian scholarship. There's a surviving sketch that has been putatively linked by some people to the Eighth Symphony that does indicate words - although that sketch raises so many other unrelated questions that one hesitates to claim very much for it at all.

It is certainly an appealing possibility but we're unlikely ever to discover for sure.