Darkest work? Think the story of Kullervo, and the end of 3rd movement and 5th movement. That`s dark!

In Memoriam is dark because of it`s purpose.

Absolute music is more difficult to think in this term for me.

In Memoriam is certainly dark...it's a funeral march!

Harri is right on when he mentions Kullervo. I'm surprised not more people brought up this work. Darkness and dread permeate this music. The story is down-right depressing. The 2nd movement drips with sadness, the 3rd movement's tragedy speaks for itself...and that 5th movement! It's one of the great death scenes in all of music.

Great observation, Harri.

I think In Memoriam was written for Eugen Schaumann.

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Schauman: well not too explicitly written for him, to the exclusion of all other inspiraion/purpose, but it seems a very reasonable conclusion that Schauman's death played a major part.

I agree with Andrew's points, I seem to recall that Sibelius once told his daughter Eva that 'In Memoriam was composed for Eugen Schauman. He had been a staunch Finnish patriot who had assassinated the Russian Governor General Nikolai Bobrikov in June 1904. He had then shot himself.--kullervopete.

PS Congrats on 350!

Sibelius. fi is allways a good source. I should have looked it before.

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Speaking of

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, I would absolutely LOVE to see a link to the Sibelius forum on their "Links" pages, which can be seen

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. Unfortunately, I cannot find any e-mail addresses to which a plea can be sent. If anyone knows how to contact somebody at the site, your help would be much appreciated.

(In the address there is an extra comma so it doesn`t work , so

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is correct.) Maybe should contact Suomalainen Klubi.

Andrew, please forgive me not having studied your book enough. All story of In Memoriam I found there! But it is a question of lanquage, English is still uncomfortable and slow for me.

Yesterday I went to library to get Tawaststjerna`s and Levas`s books again. There were also new books, Andrew`s , Tomi Mäkelä: Sibelius, me ja muut (S., we and others) and Veijo Murtomäki: Jean Sibelius ja isänmaa (J.S. and fatherland) with cd. That includes the first version of In memoriam. It is many years when I have played that piece, and I can`t remember how much different it is compared to this first version. But surprise, even I have got used to them during these years, guess how it starts?

Now I have listened both versions and have the score of the revised version. In revised version there is not the S-motif(+descanding fifth) in the beginning. But it IS, like hidden, right in the second bar in quick violin and viola parts. I don`t hear it in the original version.

That makes me think, and first time really seriously, that it his musical signature, not only a motif.

It is, in a way, his message to whom it is written, if one wants to think in this way.

Speaking of "dark", Lemminkainen in Tuonela springs to mind (millions of people must have heard a very similar sound in the 1960s film "Where eagles dare" without even being aware of Sibelius's existence!)
I find the orchestral accompaniment in the finale of the violin concerto wonderfully dark in the Lin/Philharmonia/Salonen recording - those cellos and basses really dig deeper than on any other recording I have ever heard!

hangos wrote:

Speaking of "dark", Lemminkainen in Tuonela springs to mind (millions of people must have heard a very similar sound in the 1960s film "Where eagles dare" without even being aware of Sibelius's existence!) I find the orchestral accompaniment in the finale of the violin concerto wonderfully dark in the Lin/Philharmonia/Salonen recording - those cellos and basses really dig deeper than on any other recording I have ever heard!

Sibelius loved low rumblings (strings, timpani). I once heard a commentator say in Sibelius there is often the sound of "wind in trees." I take this to be the pedals/low rumblings of much of his music. There is something rather eerie about the sound of wind in trees.

Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, the 4th Symphony, In memoriam... of course.

But the darkest works for me (and the more strange) are Ödlan and the last numbers of Jokamies.

I suspect we all read the word 'dark' differently, according to the state of our neuroses. A critical point, for me, is not how dark it gets at some point, but whether the artist leaves me in the darkness or offers me a way out. Often the act of engaging the imagination in a certain way, guided by the artist, seems to provide, not exactly a solution, but a resolution - a way of synthesising hope and misery that we can somehow accept.

So Elgar's cello concerto, for instance, I'd describe as elegiac rather than dark. We contemplate some deeply serious matters, and some profound sadness, even anguish - but the result isn't hopelessness. There seems to be a way forward.

In Sibelius there seem to me to be glimpses of darkness in virtually everything I know (which admittedly isn't extensive), but it's not necessarily to be equated with some aspect of misery. The darkness of storm, or night, or even of death, isn't necessarily without hope. So finally to answer Tapkaara's original question, I'd go for the fourth symphony as the darkest, in this latter sense. I find no resolution in it, no way out. I feel all the way through as if no development is allowed to fulfil itself; each hope is stifled as it surfaces.