The Classical #2: Jean Sibelius’ “En Saga” (Op. 9)

Welcome back to The Classical. This month, the featured artist is Jean Sibelius. And the featured composition is his tone poem, En Saga.

Johan Julius Christian Sibelius was born 1865 in Hämeenlinna in the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was then an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. His father died shortly thereafter, and his Swedish-speaking mother raised him and his siblings. Sibelius began playing piano at age seven, but switched to the violin at age sixteen. He dreamed of becoming a virtuoso and became an accomplished player. After finishing high school, he attended the Helsinki Music Institute for several years and continued his studies in Europe – first in Berlin, then in Vienna.  Around that time, Sibelius adopted the French form of his name and called himself Jean.

While on the continent, he understood that a performance career was unlikely, so he stopped playing the violin and started writing music. Reflecting his growing interest in his country’s history and politics, his first major composition, Kullervo, is a choral and orchestral piece inspired by the Kalevala, an early 19th-Century epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish folklore and mythology.

Sibelus returned to Finland and married the daughter of a regional governor and a Baltic aristocrat. The couple honeymooned in the province of Karelia, which was the setting of the Kalevala. The spirit of that place apparently led Sibelius to start his next major composition, En Saga.

A tone poem or symphonic poem is a piece of music that evokes outside sources – literature, art, nature. Typically, a tone poem seeks to urge listeners to daydream and imagine scenes or moods. Unlike Kullervo, En Saga, which means a fairy tale in Swedish, is not based on any specific story or programme. Sibelius later recalled:

“En Saga is psychologically one of my most profound works. I could almost say that the whole of my youth is contained within it. It is an expression of a state of mind. I had undergone a number of painful experiences at the time. In no other work have I revealed myself so completely. It is for this reason that I find all literary explanations quite alien.”

(I couldn’t uncover what those painful experiences may have been, though I did learn that he had his gall bladder removed while he was in Vienna.)

En Saga emerged from the ashes of Kullervo, which had been an ambitious failure. Sibelius conferred with his mentor, Finnish composer Robert Kajanus, about the difficulties of performing Kullervo.  Kajanus encouraged Sibelius to work on shorter, purely orchestral pieces. In 1891, he started working on an octet for strings, flute, and clarinet, which may have become En Saga. The piece was scored for an orchestra including strings, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, tuba, and percussion. It was completed in 1892 and debuted the following year in Helsinki with Sibelius himself conducting.

The debut received mixed reviews. One critic called Sibelius’ musical intuition “capricious.” And some of the musicians in Kanjanus’ orchestra even found En Saga as incomprehensible as Kullervo. But Finnish composer Oskar Merikanto, one of Sibelius’ contemporaries, heard things differently:

“[W]hat is new in this En Saga is so worthy that it completely elevates this work above all of Sibelius’s other orchestral works. The extensive fantasy; the masterful handling of the simple, main motifs in constantly new forms; the strength, which swells from the composer’s bosom to quite awesome, yet magnificent heights; the subtlety, which gently caresses the ear and perforce pushes its way into the heart; the richness of colour which comes from the excellent orchestration and imitation of its effects: such are qualities that are by no means of low value. When, in addition to and in the background of all this, appear such beautiful, wafting Finnish motifs tinged with sadness, as in this fantasy-like En saga, in our opinion it shows that Sibelius has taken a remarkable step forward in the noble task of his great soul.”

Sibelius, too, mentioned that En Saga was tied to Finland. He explained, “In that work we are on familiar ground. How could one thing of anything other than Finland while listening to it!” Still, as strongly as he felt about the piece, he was not opposed to revising it. A new, streamlined version of En Saga debuted in Berlin in 1902.

According to the Sibelius website, the later version “makes a stronger impression, compelled by its own inner logic.” Paul Serotsky, a contributor on MusicWeb International, echoes that sentiment in his programme notes on the piece. Serotsky adds that, in En Saga, “everything springs from one thematic cell which spawns one distinctive theme, then another, and another.”  There are five sections to the piece: a slow beginning and a slow ending that bracket what Serotsky calls a Italian-style fast-slow-fast overture. Serotsky’s musings on those sections are interesting:

1. An atmosphere of expectancy is immediately conjured by swirling (mist-ical?) “sound effects”, unusually for Sibelius not thematically integrated. The main melodic germ is born, protesting, out of agonised woodwind, growing painfully in black woodwind and pizzicato double-basses before blossoming on ‘cellos as the flowing first derivative [A].
2. As if decisively embarking on some quest, the tempo picks up (an accelerando devoid of the symphonic subtleties which would become his hallmark). A second derivative [B], with a prominent dotted rhythm, soon followed by a propulsive third derivative [C], dominate this part of the “quest”.
3. Our imaginary hero reins in his steed as he seems to lose the trail (my libretto sees this as an equestrian quest!). [B] dissolves into chamber-music textures. [C], plaintive on oboe beneath strange harmonic overtones, descends into a vale of sighs and sobs echoing the pain of the mother-theme.
4. The music abruptly takes off like the Lone Ranger: “With the speed of light, and a cloud of dust”, [A] plunges onwards in a cumulatively thundering tumult, suddenly halted . . .
5. [C], broken, expires. [A] wanders, in numb puzzlement, on lonely clarinet. Finally only [B]’s dotted rhythm remains, a dull, bass throbbing. What has our hero stumbled on? More to the point: how on earth does this grim pool of despond fit in with the Finnish nationalist feelings of the time?

Listen for yourself. (I’m still new to classical music, so I wasn’t sure which version to pick. I went with the Deutsche Grammophon version because I recognized the record label.)

At the turn of the 20th Century, as Finland struggled to break free from Russian rule, Sibelius composed another tone poem, Finlandia. A segment of that piece with added lyrics is now a sort of unofficial anthem.

Sibelius eventually gained a reputation as a symphonic composer – a sort of weirder (per Pulitzer Prize winning music critic Tim Page), Nordic alternative to Gustav Mahler, with whom he was acquainted. Sibelius wrote seven symphonies, completing the last one in 1924. His output ended at that time, though he lived for many more years. He died in 1957 as something of a national treasure. His home is now a museum, and his birthday is celebrated across the country as the Day of Finnish Music.

As usual, Wikipedia was a major source for this post.

More soon.

JF