Symphony No. 4 (Sibelius)
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The Symphony No. 4 in A minor, opus 63, by Jean Sibelius, is one of seven symphonies that he composed. Written between 1910 and 1911, it was premiered in Helsinki on 3 April 1911 by the Philharmonia Society, with Sibelius conducting.
The work is comprised of four movements:
Of all the Sibelius symphonies, the fourth has the most variable duration, since different conductors make very different decisions of tempi in the first and third movements. The available recordings are between 31 and 39 minutes long.
For this work Sibelius reversed the traditional positions of the second and third movements, placing the slow movement as the third. He also begins the piece with a slow movement instead of the traditional fast opening movement.
The interval of the tritone dominates the melodic and harmonic material of the piece. It is stated immediately, in a dark phrase for cellos, double basses and bassoons, rising C-D-F# over a hard unison C. Most of the themes of the symphony involve the tritone; in the finale, the harmonic tension arises from a collision between the keys of A minor and E flat major, a tritone apart.
Many commentators have heard in the symphony evidence of struggle, or despair. Harold Truscott writes, "This work ... is full of a foreboding which is probably the unconscious result of ... the sensing of an atmosphere which was to explode in 1914 into a world war." [#endnote_1] Sibelius also had recently endured terrors in his personal life: in 1908, in Berlin, he had a cancerous tumour removed from his throat. Timothy Day writes that "the operation was successful, but he lived for many years in constant fear of the tumour recurring, and from 1908 to 1913 the shadow of death lay over his life." [#endnote_2] Other critics have heard bleakness in the work: one early Finnish critic dubbed the work the Barkbröd symphony, referring to the famine in the previous century during which starving Scandinavians had had to eat the bark of trees to survive.
In the year before beginning the symphony, he had met many of his contemporaries in central Europe, including Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and others; his encounter with their music provoked a crisis in his own compositional life. He said in a letter to his friend (and biographer) Rosa Newmarch about the symphony: "...It stands as a protest against present-day music. It has absolutely nothing of the circus about it." Later, when asked about the symphony, he quoted August Strindberg: "Det är synd om människorna" (Being human is misery).
Notes
- ↑ Harold Truscott, p. 98
- ↑ Timothy Day, p. 6
References and further reading
- James Hepokoski, Fabian Dahlström: "Jean Sibelius", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 3 April, 2006), [(subscription access)]
- Harold Truscott, "Jean Sibelius", in The Symphony, ed. Robert Simpson. Penguin Books Ltd., Middlesex, England, 1967. ISBN 0140207732
- Timothy Day, program notes to Sibelius, The Symphonies (Lorin Maazel, Wiener Philharmoniker) (London/Decca CD 430 778-2)
External links
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