Word: sibelius
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Composer Jean Sibelius is a hero to all Finns, most Englishmen and many Americans. His music is heavy enough to sound profound?something like the work of a rural and obstinate Brahms. It seemed revolutionary in the 1900s, daring in the teens, peculiar in the '20s, old-fashioned in the '30s. Since then it has suffered a kind of honorable obsolescence. Sibelius' last major work was published in 1926, when he was 61. Most of today's critics, finding they have nothing new to say about the music, simply muse about those tough, craggy Sibelius characteristics that remind people...
This week Jean Sibelius is 90, and the anniversary is being observed in many cities of the world. Manhattan's Symphony of the Air gave an all-Sibelius concert under the direction of a Sibelius son-in-law, Jussi Jalas; London's Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic both scheduled Sibelius evenings; even Tokyo's NHK (radio) Symphony is going all-Sibelius for one performance...
Deep lines show in Sibelius' weathered face, but they do not come from material cares. He was the son of an army surgeon, studied law to please his family, but soon turned to music. When he returned from his studies in Berlin and Vienna, he married the daughter of a general and a baroness, and at the age of 31 received a generous government pension which has kept them comfortable ever since...
Everyone who knows Sibelius agrees that he loves nature, and that is perhaps the clue to why he is so widely, almost automatically, accepted as one of the century's great composers. Whatever its shortcomings and dull stretches, his music does convey to cramped city audiences a sense of nature's bigness, of a peasant tenacity. Years ago Sibelius wrote in his diary: "A wonderful day, spring and life. The earth exhales a fragrance?mutes and fortissimi. An extraordinary light that reminds one of an August haze...
...dinner. Page and his wife (a former ballet dancer, author of a promising 1953 novel, The Bracelet) have two sons, 13 and 16. At college (Cornell '21), Page used to play "the long-necked banjo" to help pay his tuition. Now he has gone hifi, playing Mahler and Sibelius, while he gets in two or three more hours of medical reading or writing after dinner. Bedtime...