Word: sibelius
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After listening to the Philharmonic, elegant Mr. Thomson headed his review Age Without Honor. He shrugged at its Beethoven, compared its Elgar with "that massively frivolous patchwork in pastel shades of which one sees such quantities in any intellectual British suburban dwelling." Calling Sibelius "vulgar, self-indulgent and provincial," he stated that he had never met a Sibelius-lover among "educated professional musicians." In Critic Thomson's sum: "The music . . . was soggy, the playing dull and brutal. As a friend remarked who had never been to one of these concerts before, 'I understand now why the Philharmonic...
...While other composers are mixing musical cocktails for the public," Sibelius once said, "I offer them a drink of clear, cold water." This illustrious statement has probably journeyed into the language of every civilized people on the globe, and been grasped at by music lovers as a reason for liking Sibelius. Yet if one would arrive at a comprehensive appreciation of his music, it is impossible to take the remark seriously. True, in the symphonies and tone-poems, there are passages of a woodwind complexion, of a curious rough-hewn quality, which have been traditionally seized on as the hall...
Probably the common conception of Sibelius as half-man half-fjord is shaped also by the peculiar type of structure of his symphonies. A single movement in any eighteenth or nineteenth-century symphony followed a certain general pattern--the main theme was stated at the outset, in all its length and loveliness, then in succeeding measures was broken down and developed. Sibelius uses an exactly opposite approach. He takes fragments of theme, broken bits of melody, and toys with them for a while. He juggles them from instrument to instrument, combining them in a variety of ways. Gradually they...
With this scheme, moreover, Sibelius is able to pack climaxes of Wagnerian scope into a symphony a half an hour long. Bruckner had great conceptions, but his ideas meander baldly around and get lost in the involvements of the sonata form. Wagner, in order to work out his climaxes fully, had to extend them endlessly. But Sibelius's method is the essence of compactness, entailing none of the delays, enforced hesitations, and bridge-passage gaps of standard symphonic form, but allowing the composer to start on as low a level as he wishes, and move swiftly and cleanly...
Triste; Prelude to The Tempest (London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham conducting; Victor: 14 sides). Volume VI of the definitive Sibelius Society set, magnificently performed and recorded. These miscellaneous pieces, ranging from Op. 9 to Op. 109a, are nearly all bleak, bardic, Nordic, at times sound as relevant to contemporary Finland as an air-raid alarm...