Customer Reviews

20Th-Century Composers: Jean Sibelius

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Reading this book was above all a learning experience. First it is very sobering, for example, for its lucid account of the financial/material excesses and terrible debts of this great composer, as well as his strained but somehow unbrokable relationship with his wife, Aino, to whom he was married for over 60 years.

And yet it subtly brings to light the essentially "natural" genius that is Sibelius. Rickards does not talk so much about his music (which to the reader unfamiliar with it, would perhaps be a flaw), but writes 'around' them, showing the reader the overall environment which surrounds Sibelius and his works. The result is often like a sudden realization of something you already know. I was for example stirred by his account of Sibelius's struggle with the premiere of the Kullervo Symphony, of how the 32-year old composer employed the "sheer force of his will" to unify the multi-cultural group that was to perform it. Somehow you can hear this in the music. In fact, Rickards, as in his careful account of Sibelius's long struggle with the 5th Symphony, makes you want to hear the music again.

Rickards's selection of quotations with regards to Sibelius's compositional aesthetics really hit home. On the 'title'-page of Chapter 6, aptly titled "The Forging of Thor's Hammer" (a reference to the 5th Symphony's 'Swan Hymn'), the following quotation is printed:

"My symphonies were a terrible struggle. But now they are as they must be."

Sibelius's pursuit of organic unity, of "inner logic" is unobtrusively taught to the reader. There are powerful descriptions of Sibelius's kinship with nature. Sibelius recounted that at the moment he finished the final version of the 5th Symphony (which he revised four times in four years), twelve white swans settled on the lake (outside his house), and then circled the house three times before flying off - spine-tingling stuff. Again, my impression is that Rickards lets this demonstrate itself. In the same way, Sibelius's music demonstrates its material itself. Like the composer, the author of this book recognizes himself as a middleman. Sibelius considered himself the composer of a jigsaw puzzle that dropped from heaven. He only (re)constructed that which already existed. Likewise, Rickards is a faithful deliverer of Sibelius's life, not seeming to do more than the pieces demanded. Both are therefore the artist who allows the art to speak for itself.

Like this inner logic, I found myself connecting the things Rickards writes about. He makes a number of attempts to 'defend' Sibelius's rather strange habit of composing salon pieces next to symphonic masterpieces. One of these is the key quote regarding the 6th Symphony, that each symphony is a "phase in one's inner life." In this, the inevitability of change (as excruciatingly shown via the composer's intense self-criticism and rampant revision of his works) and the recognition of 'permanency' ("phase") is somehow explained.

It's so difficult to explain. Suffice to say, I've always known this quote. But after reading this book, I finally understood what it meant, and yet I am unable to explain it. Not surprisingly, this is the same with nature and Sibelius's music. Things you "understand" but cannot explain.

And so, it was with genuine pleasure and high spirits that I read the 2nd last sentence of the Epilogue:

"His music survived the vicissitudes of fashion across a century and has still been found to contain within it the seeds for the future..."

Something which I have always told my friends. It is something which I seem to know, to feel; in saying this, Rickards, whom I do not know, echoes my sentiments, and makes me feel that thing which I have always felt when conversing with my fellow Sibelius-supporters: natural, unspoken kinship of the type in which we don't often realize we share.

And isn't that none other than kinship with Mother Nature?

CHIA Han-Leon,
Singapore

Guy Rickards' biography of Jean Sibelius is probably the most throroughly written document on the great Finnish composer who lived from December 1865 to September 1957.
Greatly researched with detailed emphasis, Rickards not only offers an historic insight to Sibelius as a composer but also as a person. The author goes to great lengths to reveal the troubled spirit behind the man who created such monumental works as "Finlandia", "Kullervo" and seven well-crafted symphonies amongst many others. Not only that, Rickards provides an insight to the Finnish/Swedish culture that Sibelius was born into. This book is as much of a history of Finland in the late 19th and early 20th century as it is of Sibelius.
This is probably the most accurate and well-written biography on Jean Sibelius. It is presented in an up-close-and-personal fashion and provides the reader with an opportunity to 'meet' Sibelius so-to-speak. Readers will no doubt finish this book with a greater appreciation for Finland's greatest musical hero.
Excellent Book!!!

Rickards gives us a good all-around introduction to Sibelius. It's mostly biographical, with very little technical detail on the music itself. It's fairly brief (took me an afternoon and a couple of train rides to read) and describes Sibelius's life, interaction with other composers, and relationship to the music of the early 20th century.