![]() The war that was raging in Europe had seriously cut off Sibelius’s sources of income, and so, to defray his debts, during the following months he composed small piano and violin pieces as well as some Lieder and some incidental music for Hofmannsthal’s Everyman. The problem is that during the work I have begun another.” He distanced himself from the Fifth by working simultaneously on the Sixth Symphony, also begun in the summer of 1914. The real reason-as he confessed in his diary-was his fervent wish to “give the new symphony another-more human-form. In January, pleading illness, Sibelius cancelled two performances that he had promised to conduct the following month in Sweden. But some weeks later, after the waves of celebrations had calmed down, he re-examined the score and his doubts grew into certainty: The Symphony was not as he wanted it, yet. Sibelius worked feverishly during the summer months to complete the work, which was ready in time for the gala concert. Its first Performance was scheduled to take place December 8, 1915, to celebrate the composers fiftieth birthday. The maturation of the Fifth Symphony was an exceptionally lengthy process. Perhaps this is a good definition of composing. ![]() As if God the Father had thrown down pieces of mosaic out of the heaven’s floor and asked me to solve how the picture once looked. This important preoccupation, which fascinates me in a mysterious way. The idea of putting them together probably came to the composer much later that belonged to the third compositional stage, the ars combinatoria, which Sibelius described in his diary entry of April 10, 1915: “In the evening with the Symphony. It is extraordinary how these two basic impulses of contrasting musical characteristics are bound together as subject and countersubject. 129ff) and the “swinging” theme with large skips, the finale’s most pregnant idea (m. Around this time, Sibelius got the first two ideas for his Fifth Symphony-a motive in stepwise motion, which became the woodwind theme of the last movement (m. Themes underwent transformation, and what was originally intended to be a theme of the first movement might later be transferred to the finale or vice versa: “I intend to let the musical thoughts and their development in my spirit determine the form” (July 29, 1914). Then began the stage of “forging,” as the composer characterized the process of giving the original ideas a more and more clearly defined shape. The first one was the stage of “moods.” In 1891, when planning his first large-scale symphonic work, the Kullervo Symphony, he wrote to his bride: “For my symphony, I have the moods, but not a single musical expression for them, yet.” This kind of a predispositional state was soon followed by the birth of concrete musical ideas, albeit diffuse, undefined and without any predetermined formal context. His compositional process typically had three stages. His sketchbook and diary give a rare opportunity to follow the genesis of this work from July 1914 through the summer of 1916. You are neither here nor there,Ī hurry through which known and strange things passĪs big soft buffetings come at the car sidewaysĪnd catch the heart off guard and blow it open.Sibelius got the first ideas for his Fifth Symphony in the summer of 1914. Useless to think you'll park and capture it Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, With foam and glitter, and inland among stonesīy the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, Not only does it have the swans and the wild (even if Irish rather than Finnish) but the way he describes them seems to exactly capture the same feelings Sibelius conveys:Īnd some time make the time to drive out west ![]() In case a little media mash-up is welcome, I think this poem (one of my favourites) by Seamus Heaney is very well-fitted to this piece. Quite an introduction! Although I've been a little spoiled by the Spotify streaming age because I'm a bit too obsessed with hunting for recordings that have the most thunderous brass. Incidentally, starting a new year with Sibelius 5 is well-timed for me personally as it was on the programme of the first concert that I ever went to: Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms), with the late great Sir Colin Davis conducting a couple of Brahms wonders with the Sibelius as a finale. This is a great start to what looks like a very engaging blog! ![]()
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