|
Preface: Jean Sibelius's Tone Poem Nightride and Sunrise, Opus #55
attracted my attention while compiling
"On the Number 55" in music.
Beethoven's Third Symphony (Eroica)
in E flat, Opus #55, was a revolutionary breakthrough in symphonic music.
According to Plato (Timaeus 35b), God created the soul of the universe from the
Platonic Lambda series— 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27.
The sum of these series is 55. King Wen
and Duke Chou who wrote the I Ching (circa 1000 B.C.) mentioned that "55 is the
sum of the Heavenly and Earthly Numbers.
Dante seemed to know this secret when he wrote
his Commedia (1321). Beethoven may have related to this sacred number when
writing his Eroica as this was his favorite symphony. Did Sibelius tap into
this magic when writing his Nightride and Sunrise, Opus #55? I have consulted
ten books on Sibelius in the Stanford's Music Library. In addition to notes on Opus #55,
I've included Sibelius's views on creativity and spirituality as well as his initiation into
Freemasonry. Web links
to other Sibelius resources are included for those who wish to explore further the life
and works of this musical genius.
Jean Sibelius: Nightride and Sunrise: Notes from Books (Stanford Music Library)
Robert Layton, The Master Musicians: Sibelius, J.M. Dent, London, 1965
Night Ride and Sunrise falls roughly into the two sections suggested by its
title. The first is almost entirely dominated by a trochaic rhythm, which settles down in E flat,
thogh there are a number of gentle key shifts during its course. This insistent rhythm well
conveys the effect of an endless journey through a changing, shadowy landscape. Sibelius often
heightens the tension and mystery by reducing the dynamics to a mere whisper. He holds back the
most important thematic idea of the section for a considerable time: the tonality has moved to
C minor and over an ostinate figure the woodwind give out this motif: [music score]. The trochaic
rhythm gives way, almost imperceptibly when the music moves into G minor. Now the scoring is
reversed: the ostinate figure is heard on the woodwind while the violins announce the motif
sul G. The skill with which Sibelius changes from the trochaic ostinate to equal
semiquavers is no less evident in the transition to the second section of the work. This begins
with some very eloquent writing for strings alone. Afterwards, Sibelius evokes with music of
tremendous power and imaginative intensity, the magical changes wroought by the sunrise in these
northern latitudes. The simplicity of some of the thematic material serves only to underline the
feeling of content with nature. There is some magnificent writing for brass that adds to the
growing warmth of feeling— a warmth, incidentally, that is unusual in Sibelius's later
nature music. At the height of their glowing peroration the brass are suddenly interrupted by
some chords that in their remote and mysterious beauty provide the most poetic touch in the
whole work. Their cool pallor contrasts markedly to the rich E flat colouring of the context.
Night Ride and Sunrise has something of the tonal stability that marks off the later
symphonic poems from En Saga and the Four Legends. There are also many surprising
touches of orchestration, including some marvellously splenetic bassoon comments derived from
the opening orchestral outburst. Indeed Night Ride has many touches of real vision,
and it is a pity that it is so seldom heard. (pp. 106-107)
Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983). One of the leading British conductors of his day,
and a formidable champion of such composers as Elgar, Holst, and Vaughan Williams... He was
founder-conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1930-50). He made the first recording of
Night Ride and Sunrise and The Oceanides and recorded all the tone-poems with
the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1950s. He consistently included Sibelius works in
BBC programmes. (p. 226)
Guy Rickards, Jean Sibelius, Phaidon Press, London, 1997, p. 102
For the remainder of 1908 Sibelius worked on the orchestral tone-poem
Night Ride and Sunrise. At different times he suggested that this work originated
on first seeing the Colosseum in Rome (during his two-week desertion of his wife Aino in 1901),
or on seeing a marvellous sunrise during a trip by horse-drawn sleigh to Kervo [Finland].
The basic premise of this piece, implicit in its title, is the fusion of two rather different
types of music and motion into an indivisible whole. There is a clear transition midway
through marking the beginning of the dawn. Here the initial galloping rhythm subside, and
after it the music builds towards its blazing sunlit apotheosis. So artful is the composer's
execution of his design that this episode becomes the fulcrum upon which the whole composition
turns. How intentional this was is open to debate: in response to some penetrating observations
that he had made about the piece, Sibelius wrote to Carpelan:
You mention interconnections between themes and other such matters, all of which
are quite subconscious on my part. Only afterwards can one discern this or that
relationship but for the most part one is merely the vessel. That miraculous logic
(let us call it God) which governs a work of art, that is the the important thing.
Daniel M. Grimley (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius
Cambridge University Press, UK, 2004, pp. 107-112
Nightride and Sunrise was composed in November 1908, but the work did
not receive its premiere until January 23, 1909, when it was performed in a notoriously
bowdlerised version by Alexander Siloti in St. Petersbury. Sibelius commented to Rosa
Newmarch that 'the music is concerned... with the inner experience of an average man riding
solitary through the forest gloom; sometimes glad to be alone with Nature; occasionally
awe-stricken by the stillness or the strange sounds which break it; not filed with undue
foreboding, but thankful and rejoicing in the daybreak.' [Rosa Newmarch, Jean Sibelius—
a Short Story of a Long Friendship, Birchard, Boston, 1939, p. 68]
Landscape motivates the form of the tone poem. The work is divided into two
broad halves, articulated more by tempo and timbre that by conventional harmonic or thematic
means. Each half of the work is subdivided into two large-scale phrases or cycles, which
reconfigure material used in the previous section, so that the tone poem outlines a carefully
balanced symmetrical scheme:
'Nightride'
Prelude, bars 1-11
Strophe 1 (statement)
Ostinato, bars 12-230
'Ride monologue', bars 231-277
Strophe 2 (counterstatement & devlopment)
Ostinato, bars 278-359
'Ride monologue', bars 360-390
Transition, bars 390-403 |
'Sunrise'
Prelude, bars 404-419
Strophe 1 (statement)
Preparation, bars 420-426
Chorale, bars 427-461
Strophe 2 (counterstatement & apotheosis)
Preparation, bars 462-473
Chorale, bars 474-498
Coda, bars 499-517 |
Harmonically, the tone poem begins with a misfired tonic cadence that acts as an explosive
point of lift-off from which the music subsequently drives towards the affirmative E flat
major dadence of the closing bars. The basic structural harmonic progression thus resemble
that of Lemminkäinen's Return, op. 22/4. Each cycle in Nightride and Sunrise
represents a different stage in this harmonic journey... The harmonic function of the Sunrise
cycles is more static than that of the preceding Nightride music. The two formal halves of the
work therefore operate in different ways: whereas the energetic figuration of the Nightride
emphasises motion and instability, the chorale statements of the Sunrise are concerned with
cadential closure... Sibelius pares the tone peom down to archaic blocks of sound, just at
the moment where the listener might have expected a sudden flowering of the generative cycles
that have driven the work. The gesture is all the more breathtaking given the generic significance
of the work's title. The second half of the tone poem depicts a dawn sequence*, much
like the opening of Wagner's Das Rheingold, or the 'Morgendämmerung' interlude in
Götterdämmerung Act 2. In Nightride and Sunrise, however, daybreak is
followed swiftly by closure. Just for an instant, the listener loses all sense of musical time
and direction. at the single most important point of orientation in the work, the tone poem steps
outside its own sense of dynamic, generative present, into a static, abstracted musical past.
In a moment of intense stillness, the passage at the end of Nightride and Sunrise
represents the interpenetration of different temporal processes that runs through the whole piece.
[*Footnote: Two significant pieces of anecdotal evidence, quoted by Tawaststjerna,
Sibelius, Åren 1904-1914 (Helsinki: Söderström, 1991), p. 128, reinforces
this hearing. According to Karl Ekman, the music was inspired by the sight of dawn at the Colosseum
in Rome, where Sibelius had stayed in 1901. Sibelius also suggested to Levas that the music was
inspired by the sight of the northern lights during a night-time sleigh journey from Helsinki to
Kervo, when 'the whole sky was a boundless sea of colours that shifted and flowed in the most
remarkable display until it all ended in a growing clarity.' (p. 251)]
A diary entry dated 13 May 1910, reveals Sibelius's deeply ambiguous attitude to
notions of stylistic progress and the reception of his music:
Don't let all these 'novelties', triads without thirds and so on,
take you away from your work. Not everyone can be an innovating genius.
As a personality and 'eine Erscheinung aus den wäldern' [a spirit from
the woods] you will have your modest place. Here at home you are a
past number in the eyes of the general public! Just soldier on! Nous verrons!
[Tawaststjerna/Layton, Sibelius, Vol. II, pp. 139-140]
Matti Huttunen, Kari Kilpeläinen, & Veijo Murtomäki (Eds.)
Sibelius Forum II (Proceedings from the Third International
Jean Sibelius Conference), Helsinki, December 7-10, 2000,
Yozan Dirk Mosig, "The Archetypal Power of Sibelius", pp. 438-444
Herbert von Karajan, perhaps the most influential conductor of the 20th century,
stated in an interview (from the year 2000 television documentary "Jean Sibelius:
Musikgigant aus dem Norden"): "In my opinion, the music of Sibelius does not lend
itself to comparison or classification. It is like a meteorite that fell from the sky—
an object unparalleled by anything that came before or after it."
Asked about his creative process, Sibelius stated that
a symphony of mine is not written by the determination to write one.
There is no existent and ready mechanism for composing my music.
Each symphony is a totally different problem. My work in the past is
of no guidance whatsoever. Everything must begin anew. I must create
a new method in order to creat the new music. It is not a question
merely of composing, the very tools must first be made... True, one
must have a mechanism in the sense of a sound technical equipment,
but that technique must have been so long since acquired and
assimilated as to have been relegated to one's unconscious.
[L. Price, We Northmen, Little, Brown, & Co., Boston, 1936, pp. 359-360]
With penetrating insight, Sibelius said about creative power that "it is fourth-dimensional. I believe
that faculty has always existed in men, and that the ancients had it, but that it must be repeatedly
rediscovered... What every artist does (is to create) not what he is but what he might be, or what he
aspires to be." [Price, op. cit., p. 362]
When asked about the balance of ethics and aesthetics, he credited his intuition:
Both are very strong in me, but I do not know where one ends and the other begins.
Urgent though my ethical feeling is, it is quite instinctive. I know what I ought
and what I ought not, but I do not know how I know... In aesthetics, it seems to me
one comes closer to the spirit, for there you have no intermediary, no ritual, no
preaching. It is the spirit alone that speaks. [Price, op. cit., p. 364]
As Sibelius wrote in 1910, "a symphony is not just a composition in the ordinary sense of the word;
it is moe of an inner confession at a given stage of one's life."
[E. Tawaststjerna, Sibelius 1904-1914, Vol II (translated by R. Layton),
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986, p. 159]
Hermine Weigel Williams,
Sibelius and His Masonic Music
Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 1998, pp. 211-212
During the period which has become known as "the silence of Järvenpää",
Sibelius tried to live a very solitary life. For too long he had been subjected to what seemed
to be endless intrusions into his privacy by tourists and news-hungry correspondents. Even those
who were privileged to visit him between 1927 and 1957, Olin Downes and George Sjöblom among
them, could not resist trying to penetrate that "silence"... It is therefore all the more interesting
to note that during 25 of the so-called 30 years of "silence", Sibelius was occupied with composing,
orchestrating, arranging, revising, and editing all or parts of
opus 113 [Masonic Ritual Music,
for male voices, piano and harmonium (1948)]. Obviously he considered this work to be more than
just a grouping of musical miniatures, more than just a musical aid to Masonic rituals. Opus 113
had become for him an expression of his belief in the universality of the Divine, a belief given
credence in the beauty and wonder of nature. Though he was not a fervent or frequent participant
in the workings of the Craft, his initiation into
Freemasonry [August 18, 1922 at age 56] had
awakened in him an awareness of one's inescapable pilgrimage towards the "Light". That may be the
reason why he initially chose to title his 1927 musical gift to Suomi Lodge No. 1, "Musique réligieuse".
***************************************
Selected Books on Jean Sibelius from Stanford Music Library
(Note: page numbers refer to Tone Poem: Nightride and Sunrise)
• Jean-Luc Caron, Jean Sibelius, L'Age d'Homme, Lausanne, Suisse. 1997
pp. 158-160 (in French). ML410.S54.C3.1997Musc
• Glenda Dawn Goss (Ed.), The Sibelius Companion,
Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1996, p. 360, ML410.S54.S53.1996Musc
• Glenda Dawn Goss, Jean Sibelius: The Hämeenlinna Letters
(Scenes from a Musical Life 1874-1895), Schildts, Helsinki, 1997
ML410.S54.A4.1997Musc [Sibelius Letters to family members from age 9-21]
• Daniel M. Grimley (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius
Cambridge University Press, UK, 2004, pp. 105, 107-112, 114, 231, 233
ML410.S54.C36.2004Musc
• Matti Huttunen, Kari Kilpeläinen, & Veijo Murtomäki (Eds.)
Sibelius Forum II (Proceedings from the Third International
Jean Sibelius Conference), Helsinki, December 7-10, 2000,
Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, 2003, ML410.S54.I58.2000Musc
• Timothy L. Jackson & Veijo Murtomäki (Eds.), Sibelius Studies
Cambridge University Press, UK, 2001, pp. 20, 24. ML410.S54.S54.2001Musc
• Robert Layton, The Master Musicians: Sibelius, J.M. Dent, London, 1965
pp. 42-44, 58, 73, 76, 102, 104, 106-7, 117, 152, 154, 226.
ML410.S54.L35.1992Musc
• Guy Rickards, Jean Sibelius, Phaidon Press, London, 1997
pp. 102, 106, 109, 118, 201. ML410.S54.R53.1997Musc
• Marc Vignal, Jean Sibelius, Fayard, France, 2004, pp. 469, 1123
(in French) ML410.S54.J4.2004Musc
• Hermine Weigel Williams, Sibelius and His Masonic Music
Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 1998, ML410.S54.W55.1998Musc
Web Links to Jean Sibelius
.jpg)
Postage Stamps:
Jean Sibelius's 70th
birthday was celebrated
as a national holiday
all over Finland in 1935.
A commemorative stamp
was issued on Sibelius's
80th birthday (12-8-1945).
Scott #249, 5 markka,
dark slate green.
Cover from Helsinki, Finland
to Stockholm, Sweden
postmarked Dec. 17, 1945.
Cover from Helsinki to Maine, USA,
postmarked December 11, 1957.
| 
Scott #353, 30 markka, black
issued Dec. 8, 1957 in memory
of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) |
•
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957): Pictorial Chronology
(Birth: Dec. 8, 1865 to Death: Sept. 20, 1957)
•
Sibelius (By the Finnish Club of Helsinki)
(The Music, The Man, Family, Ainola, In His Own Words, Sources, Links)
•
Jean Sibelius (By Ritva Raesmaa, Finland)
(Sibelius index, His Home, Finlandia, Opus 113, Online Links)
•
Wikipedia: Jean Sibelius
(Family & personal life, Musical style, Selected works, Links)
•
Classical Music Archives: Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
(Live recordings and Midi Files)
•
Sibelius Museum (English & Finnish)
(Museum, Archive, Musicology)
•
Jean Sibelius Database
(in Finnish)
•
Jean Sibelius: Virtual Finlan
(Jean Sibelius Speaks, Ainola, Finlandia, Links)
•
Finlandia by Jean Sibelius
(Lyrics translated by Keith Bosley)
•
Classical Music Pages: Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
(Symphonies, Picture Gallery, List of Works, Bibliography)
•
Jean Sibelius Web Pages (By Robert L. Jones)
(About Sibelius, Recordings, Links, Reminiscence by Ormandy & Stokowski)
•
Classical Net: Sibelius
(Biographies, Scores, CD Reviews, CDs, DVDs, Sheet Music)
•
Sibelius Academy: Finnish Music & Music in Finland
(Catalogue of works, Music resources, Arts & Culture rescources)
•
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
(Stage Works, Orchestral Music, Chamber Music)
•
Jean Sibelius: Musique Réligieuse, Opus 113
(Freemasonry, Sounds in 'Silence', Brother Sibelius)
•
The 4th International Jean Sibelius Conference
(University of North Texas, January 16-20, 2005)
•
Jean Sibelius Piano Sheet Music
(Op. 12 Sonata in F, Op. 26 Finlandia, Op. 44 Valse triste, Op. 109 Tempest)
•
Classical MIDI Connection: Jean Sibelius
(Finlandia, Karelia Suite, Romance in Dm, Symphony #2, Valse Triste)
Web Links to Sibelius's Nightride and Sunrise
•
Sibelius: Nightride and Sunrise (1908)
(Wikipedia)
•
Gemini: Sibelius: Tone Poems, Songs (EMI Classics)
(Nightride & Sunrise, King Christian II, Karelia Suite, The Bard)
•
Sibelius Tone Poems— conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
Vol. 1 (The Legends) Vol. 2 (Nature and Patriotism)
(Omega Classics: London Philharmonic Orchestra, July 1956)
•
Sibelius Legends: Lemminkäinen Suite, Luonnotar, Nightride and Sunrise
(The PAAVO Project, Articles & Interviews, Reviews, Discography)
•
Inkpot #75: Classical Music Reviews: Sibelius
(Oceanides, Tempest, Nightride and Sunrise; Painting by Matthew Harvey)
•
BBC Classical Review— Sibelius: Tone Poems
(From the poignant harp chords that begin The Bard to the restless
Night Ride and Sunrise every gesture counts, and every sound is beautifully caught.)
•
Jean Sibelius: Tone Poems and Songs
(Pohjola's Daughter, Nightride and Oceanides, The Bard, Luonnotar)
|
(10-2-2006)