Jean Sibelius (20th Century Composers) [Paperback]

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