Symphony No. 8 (Sibelius)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

Jean Sibelius, photographed in 1939. By then he had probably ceased all work on his Eighth Symphony, although he continued to maintain for many years that it was still a viable project.

Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 8 was his final major compositional project, occupying him intermittently from the mid-1920s until around 1938, though he never published it. During this time Sibelius was at the peak of his fame, a national figure in his native Finland and a composer of international stature. How much of the Eighth Symphony was completed is unknown; Sibelius repeatedly refused to release it for performance, though he continued to assert that he was working on it even after he had, according to later reports from his family, burned the score and associated material in 1945.

Much of Sibelius's reputation, during his lifetime and subsequently, derived from his work as a symphonist. His Seventh Symphony of 1924 has been widely recognised as a landmark in the development of symphonic form, and at the time there was no reason to suppose that the flow of innovative orchestral works would not continue. However, after the symphonic poem Tapiola, completed in 1926, his output was confined to relatively minor pieces and revisions to earlier works. The Eighth Symphony's premiere was promised to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on several occasions, but as each scheduled date approached Sibelius demurred, claiming that the work was not ready for performance. Similar promises made to the British conductor Basil Cameron and to the Finnish Georg Schnéevoigt likewise proved illusory.

After Sibelius's death in 1957, news of the Eighth Symphony's destruction was made public, and it was assumed that the work had disappeared forever. In the 1990s, when the composer's many notebooks and sketches were being catalogued, scholars first raised the possibility that some of the music for the lost symphony might have survived. Since then, several short manuscript sketches have been tentatively identified with the Eighth, three of which (comprising less than three minutes of music) were recorded by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in 2011. While a few musicologists have speculated that, if further fragments can be identified, it may be possible to reconstruct the entire work, others have suggested that this is unlikely given the ambiguity of the extant material. The propriety of publicly performing music that Sibelius himself had rejected has also been questioned.

Contents [hide] 

1 Background 2 Composition

o 2.1 Beginnings o 2.2 Progress and prevarication o 2.3 Limbo

3 Destruction 4 Discoveries 5 Speculation 6 References 7 External links

Background[edit]

Ainola, Sibelius's home from 1904 until his death

Jean Sibelius was born in 1865 in Finland, since 1809 an autonomous grand duchy within the Russian empire having earlier been under Swedish control for many centuries.[1] The country remained divided between a culturally dominant Swedish-speaking minority, to which the Sibelius family belonged, and a more nationalistically-minded Finnish-speaking, or "Fennoman" majority.[2] In about 1889 Sibelius met his future wife, Aino Järnefelt, who came from a staunch Fennoman family.[3] Sibelius's association with the Järnefelts helped to awaken and develop his own nationalism; in 1892, the year of his marriage to Aino, he completed his first overtly nationalistic work, the symphonic suite Kullervo.[4] Through the 1890s, as Russian control over the duchy grew increasingly oppressive, Sibelius produced a series of works reflecting Finnish resistance to foreign rule, culminating in the tone poem Finlandia.[5]

Sibelius's national stature was recognised in 1897 when he was awarded a state pension to enable him to spend more time composing.[6] In 1904 he and Aino settled in Ainola, a country residence he built on the shores of Lake Tuusula in Järvenpää, where they lived for the remainder of their lives.[7] Although life at Ainola was not always calm and carefree—Sibelius was often in debt and prone to bouts of heavy drinking—he managed over the following 20 years to produce a large output of orchestral works, chamber music, piano pieces and songs, as well as lighter music.[8] His popularity spread across Europe to the United States where, during a triumphant tour in 1914, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Yale University.[9] At home his status was such that his 50th birthday celebrations in 1915

were a national event, the centrepiece of which was the Helsinki premiere of his Fifth Symphony.[10]

By the mid-1920s Sibelius had acquired the status of a living national monument and was the principal cultural ambassador of his country, independent since 1917.[11] According to his biographer Guy Rickards, he invested "his most crucial inspiration" into the seven symphonies he composed between 1898 and 1924.[12] The Sibelius scholar James Hepokoski considers the compact, single-movement Seventh Symphony, which Sibelius completed in 1924, to be the composer's most remarkable symphonic achievement, "the consummate realization of his late-style rethinking of form".[10] It was followed in 1926 by Tapiola, a tone poem in which, says Rickards, Sibelius "pushed orchestral resources into quite new regions ...Tapiola was thirty or forty years ahead of its time".[13]

Composition[edit]

Beginnings[edit]

The first reference to the Eighth Symphony in Sibelius's diary is dated 12 September 1926: "working on the new one".[14] However, some of the initial ideas for the new symphony were almost certainly set down earlier, since it was Sibelius's compositional habit to set aside themes and motifs for use in later projects. Thus, one of the extant sketches for his Seventh Symphony, on which he was engaged in 1923–24, contains a ringed motif marked "VIII".[15] By the autumn of 1927 Sibelius was able to inform the New York Times music critic Olin Downes—one of his greatest admirers—that he had set down two movements on paper and had composed the rest in his head.[16]

Early in 1928 Sibelius made one of his regular visits to Berlin, to imbibe the city's musical life and to compose. He sent positive work-in-progress reports to Aino: the symphony, he said, will be "wonderful".[16] Back home in Ainola in September, he told his sister that he was "writing a new work, which will be sent to America. It will still need time. But it will turn out well."[17] In December 1928, however, when his Danish publisher Wilhelm Hansen asked him how the work was developing, Sibelius was less forthcoming; the symphony existed, he said, only in his head. Thereafter Sibelius's reports of the symphony's progress became equivocal, sometimes contradictory, and difficult to follow.[16]

Progress and prevarication[edit]

The conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who was promised the premiere of the Eighth Symphony many times

Probably at the instigation of Downes, Sibelius had promised the world premiere of his new symphony to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.[18] For several years, in a protracted correspondence with the conductor and Downes, Sibelius hesitated and prevaricated. In January 1930 he said the symphony was "not nearly ready and I cannot say when it will be ready", but in August that year he told Koussevitzky that a performance in the spring of 1931 was possible. Nothing resulted from this.[19] In the summer of 1931 Sibelius told Downes that not only was the Eighth Symphony almost ready for the printers, he also had several other new works pending.[20] Thus encouraged, in December 1931 Koussevitzky used the Boston Evening Transcript to announce the work for the orchestra's 1931–32 season. This brought a swift telegram from Sibelius, to the effect that the symphony would not, after all, be ready for that season.[19]

Koussevitzky then decided to perform all Sibelius's symphonies in the Boston Symphony's 1932–33 season, with the world premiere of the Eighth as the culmination. In June 1932 Sibelius wrote to Koussevitzky suggesting that the Eighth be scheduled for the end of October. A week later he retracted: "I am very disturbed about it. Please do not announce the performance."[19] Further promises, for December 1932 and January 1933, brought forth no scores. Koussevitzky was by now losing hope, yet he inquired once more, in the summer of 1933. Sibelius was evasive; he made no promise of delivery but would "return to the matter at a later date". So far as Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony were concerned, the matter ended there.[16] Sibelius had made agreements with other conductors; he had promised the European premiere to Basil Cameron and the Royal Philharmonic Society,[17] and the first Finnish performance to Georg Schnéevoigt, who had recently taken over direction of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.[21] These arrangements were, however, subject to the illusory Boston premiere, and thus were stillborn.[17] Later in the decade, Eugene Ormandy, a fervent admirer of Sibelius who directed the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1936, is thought to have lobbied strongly for the right to perform the premiere, should the symphony in due course emerge.[22]

During his procrastinations with Koussevitzky, Sibelius continued to work on the symphony. In 1931 he again spent time in Berlin, writing to Aino in May 1931 that "the symphony is advancing with rapid strides". Progress was interrupted by illness, but towards the end of the year Sibelius was confidently asserting that "I am writing my eighth symphony and I am full of youth. How can this be explained?"[23] In May 1933, as he continued to deny Koussevitzky,

Sibelius wrote in his diary that he was deeply immersed in composition: "It is as if I had come home ... I'm taking everything in another way, more deeply. A gypsy within me. Romantic."[23] Later that summer he informed a journalist that his new symphony was nearly complete: "It will be the reckoning of my whole existence – sixty-eight years. It will probably be my last. Eight symphonies and a hundred songs. It has to be enough."[17]

At some stage in that summer the formal copying of the symphony began. On 4 September 1933 Paul Voigt, Sibelius's long-time copyist, sent a bill for making a fair copy of the first movement—23 pages of music. Sibelius informed him—the note survives—that the complete manuscript would be about eight times as long as this excerpt, indicating that the symphony might be on a larger scale than any of its seven predecessors.[20] Aino Sibelius later recalled other visits to Voigt that autumn at which Sibelius, whose mood she described as gloomy and taciturn, delivered further piles of music manuscript to the copyist.[16]

Limbo[edit]

"My mother and I often speak of you, and she asked me again about the Eighth symphony. [She says] 'Tell Mr Sibelius that I am not concerned or anxious so much about his Eighth Symphony which I know he will complete in his own good time, as about his Ninth. He must crown his series of works in this form with a ninth symphony which will represent the summit and synthesis of his whole achievement' "

Olin Downes, writing to Sibelius in 1937[24]

Various reports appeared to confirm that the symphony's release was imminent. The Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja mentioned in 1934 that the work was virtually complete;[25] an article by the Swedish journalist Kurt Nordfors indicated that two movements were complete and the rest sketched out.[16] As pressure to produce the symphony increased, Sibelius became increasingly withdrawn and unwilling to discuss his progress. In December 1935, during an interview in connection with his 70th birthday celebrations, he indicated that he had discarded a whole year's work; this pointed to a full-scale revision of the Eighth.[26] However, when The Times  's correspondent asked for details of the work's progress Sibelius became irritated. He was furious when Downes continued to pester him for information, on one occasion shouting "Ich kann nicht!" ("I cannot!").[18][27]

A receipt found among Sibelius's papers refers to a "Symphonie" being bound by the firm of Weilin & Göös in August 1938. While it is not established that this transaction related to the Eighth, the Sibelius scholar Kari Kilpeläinen points out that none of the earlier symphony scores carry the unnumbered heading "Symphonie", and asks: "Could he have omitted the number to prevent news of the now completed Eighth from spreading? Or did he not give the work a number at all, because he was not satisfied with it?"[16] The composer's daughter Katarina spoke of the self-doubt that afflicted her father at this time, aggravated by the continuing expectations and fuss that surrounded the Eighth Symphony. "He wanted it to be better than the other symphonies. Finally it became a burden, even though so much of it had already been written down. In the end I don't know whether he would have accepted what he had written."[26]

Sibelius remained in Finland during the Winter War of 1939–40, despite offers of asylum in the United States. After the war ended in March 1940 he moved with his family to an apartment on Kammiokatu (later renamed Sibeliuksenkatu or 'Sibelius Street' in his honour) in the Töölö district of Helsinki, where they remained for a year. During that time they were

visited by the pianist Martti Paavola, who was able to examine the contents of Sibelius's safe. Paavola later reported to his pupil Einar Englund that among the music kept there was a symphony, "most likely the Eighth".[28]

Destruction[edit]Back in Ainola, Sibelius busied himself by making new arrangements of old songs. However, his mind returned frequently to the now apparently moribund symphony. In February 1943 he told his secretary that he hoped to complete a "great work" before he died, but blamed the war for his inability to make progress: "I cannot sleep at nights when I think about it."[28] In June he discussed the symphony with his future son-in-law Jussi Jalas and provided another reason for its non-completion: "For each of my symphonies I have developed a special technique. It can't be something superficial, it has to be something that has been lived though. In my new work I am struggling with precisely these issues." Sibelius also told Jalas that all rough sketches and drafts were to be burned after his death; he did not want anyone labelling these rejected scraps as "Sibelius letzten [sic] Gedanken" (Sibelius's last thoughts).[28]

At some time in the mid-1940s, probably in 1945, Sibelius and Aino together burned a large number of the composer's manuscripts on the stove in the dining room at Ainola. There is no record of what was burned; while most commentators assume that the Eighth Symphony was among the works destroyed, Kilpeläinen observes that there had been at least two manuscripts of the work—the original and Voigt's copy—as well as sketches and fragments of earlier versions. It is possible, says Kilpeläinen, that Sibelius may not have burned them all.[16] Aino, who found the process very painful, recalled later that the burning appeared to ease Sibelius's mind: "After this, my husband appeared calmer and his attitude was more optimistic. It was a happy time".[29] The most optimistic interpretation of his action, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer  's music critic David Patrick Stearns, is that he got rid of old drafts of the symphony to clear his mind for a fresh start.[22] In 1947, after visiting Ainola, the conductor Nils-Eric Fougstedt claimed to have seen a copy of the Eighth on the shelf, with separate choral parts. The musicologist Erkki Salmenhaara posits the idea of two burnings: that of 1945 which destroyed early material, and another after Sibelius finally recognised that he could never complete the work to his satisfaction.[16]

Although Sibelius informed his secretary that the symphony had been burned, the matter remained a secret confined to the composer's private circle. During the remaining years of his life, Sibelius from time to time hinted that the Eighth Symphony project was still alive. In August 1945 he wrote to Basil Cameron: "I have finished my eighth symphony several times, but I am still not satisfied with it. I will be delighted to hand it over to you when the time comes."[16] In fact, after the burning he had altogether abandoned creative composing; in 1951, when the Royal Philharmonic Society requested a work to mark the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sibelius declined.[30] As late as 1953 he told his secretary, Santeri Levas, that he was working on the symphony "in his mind"; only in 1954 did he admit, in a letter to the widow of his friend Adolf Paul, that it would never be completed.[31] Sibelius died on 20 September 1957; the next day his daughter Eva Paloheimo announced publicly that the Eighth Symphony did not exist. The burning of the manuscript became generally known later, when Aino revealed the fact to the composer's biographer Erik W. Tawaststjerna.[20]

"The silence of Sibelius is the din of his beatification. The Finnish state that raised Sibelius to the level of a national hero also played a large part in crippling his creativity. The nation not only found its hero, it

succeeded in silencing him. Silence was, in fact, the only logical response Sibelius could make to his deification by the Finnish state."

Mark McKenna, "Who Stopped the Music?" (November 2012)[18]

Critics and commentators have pondered the reasons why Sibelius finally abandoned the symphony. Throughout his life he was prone to depression[32] and often suffered crises of self-confidence. Alex Ross, in The New Yorker, quotes an entry from