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Sibelius: the Early Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Layton
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Extract

When in 1947 Gerald Abraham's symposium on. Sibelius first appeared a good deal of Sibelius's early music was still inaccessible: even two of the four Legends were still unpublished and none of the early chamber music was available for inspection. Apart from an excellent study by Robert L. Jacobs which sets out to show how the evolutionary thematicism of Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari serves programmatic ends, there has been no summary generally available in English of the material that has emerged over the last decade or so. Simon Parmet's book was confined to the symphonies while Harold Johnson has cast himself so firmly in the rôle of the poor man's Richard Aldington that none of his comments on the music can escape suspicion. Rather a René Leibowitz whose Jean Sibelius, le plus mauvais compositeur du monde has the merit of an engaging title if nothing else, than Harold Johnson whose pretensions to objectivity are belied by his highly selective approach to his material.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 91 , 1964 , pp. 73 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Gerald Abraham: Sibelius: a symposium, London, 1947, 1952.Google Scholar

2 Robert L. Jacobs; Sibelius Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari (Music Review Vol. 24, 1963).Google Scholar

3 Simon Parmet, The Symphonies of Sibelius, London 1939.Google Scholar

4 Harold Johnson, Sibelius, London, 1960.Google Scholar

5 Liège, 1955.Google Scholar

6 Nils-Eric Ringbom, De Tvà versionema av Sibelius’ Tondikt, ‘En Saga’, Åbo, 1956.Google Scholar

7 John Rcsas, Otryckta Kammarmusikverk av Jean Sibelius, Åbo, 1961.Google Scholar

8 In a handwritten note added to a copy of his book in the possession of the Sibelius museum, Åbo.Google Scholar

9 This is to be the subject of a forthcoming paper in the Finnish Journal of Musicology by Erik Tawaststjerna.Google Scholar

10 Swedish place-names first; Finnish in brackets and subsequent reference always in Finnish.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 7–8Google Scholar

12 Quoted by Rosas, p. 80.Google Scholar

13 Op. cit., pp. 39–43.Google Scholar

14 Johnson argues that the Fourth Symphony began life as a String Quartet but since so far he has confined this theory to the obscurity of a Finnish daily newspaper Nya Pressen (7/6/58), and a Swedish-language one at that, and moreover as he had no access to sketches at this time, his argument though an interesting one is as far as I can judge purely speculative.Google Scholar

15 Op. cit., p. 15.Google Scholar

16 Op. cit., p. 58.Google Scholar

17 Yijö Suomalainen: Robert Kajanus, Helsinki, 1952.Google Scholar

18 See Ringbom: op. cit., De tvà versionerna av Sibelius' Tondikt “En Saga” Åvo, 1956.Google Scholar

19 I discount for the purposes of this argument an earlier symphony written in the forties by Axel Gabriel Ingelius and the exercises in this form by Pacius who was German by birth.Google Scholar