4th Symphony (Sibelius)
The symphony No. 4 in A minor op. 63 was written by Jean Sibelius between 1910 and 1911. It was premiered on April 3, 1911 in Helsinki with the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the composer, as with the previous symphonies.
Sentence names
The work has four movements:
- Tempo molto moderato, quasi adagio
- Allegro molto vivace
- Il tempo largo
- Allegro
To the music
In this work, Sibelius has changed the previously customary distribution of movements in the second and third positions. The slow movement is now in third place. The first movement also starts slowly and not traditionally quickly. In this respect, Sibelius is based on older baroque orchestral works.
The tritone interval dominates the melodic and harmonic material, but in a completely different way than is the case with the third symphony . It starts right away with a dark phrase for cellos , double bass and bassoon , ascending from CDF♯-E to a hard unison C. Most of the themes in the symphony work with the tritone interval. In the finale, the harmonic tension works with a collision between A minor and E flat major. The bitonal clash between A and E flat in the repetition of the finale leads to tonal chaos in the coda, in which the rival notes C, A, E ♭ and F♯ strive for predominance in a series of abrasive dissonances with many individual coincidences of 3rd octave intervals. A carillon attempts pathetically to greet the current predominance of A major. But in the end it is the relentlessness of the C (the note on which the work began) that forces the movement and the symphony to end in a desolate A minor, devoid of any rhythm or melody.
effect
Many commentators have heard struggle and despair in this symphony. Harold Truscott writes: "This work is full of premonitions that are probably the unconscious result of a particular sensual sensitivity to the atmosphere of the time, which was to explode a little later into the First World War ."
Sibelius also had some serious personal problems to endure. A cancer tumor was removed from his neck in Berlin. Timothy Day writes that while the operation was successful, Sibelius lived for years in fear of the tumor coming back and from 1908 to 1913 the shadow of death lay on his life.
Other authors have wanted to see a certain desolation in the work. An early Finnish critic Elmer Diktonius even called the work the “Barkbröd” - or Borkenbrot Symphony, referring to the famine in the previous century when many Scandinavians were forced to eat bread made from bark flour in order not to starve.
In the year before the symphony was written, Sibelius had met several of his leading musical contemporaries in Europe, including Arnold Schönberg and Igor Stravinsky . His preoccupation with their music caused a creative crisis in his own work. In a letter to his girlfriend (and later biographer) Rosa Newmarch he said about this symphony: “It stands as a protest against contemporary music. It bears no resemblance to a circus. ”Later, when he was repeatedly asked about his symphony, he said briefly, citing a quote from August Strindberg :“ Det är synd omomanniskorna ”(To be a person is pathetic).
The first record was made by Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1932
Individual evidence
literature
- James Hepokoski, Fabian Dahlström: "Jean Sibelius", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 3, 2006), (subscription access)
- Harold Truscott, "Jean Sibelius," in The Symphony , ed. Robert Simpson. Penguin Books Ltd., Middlesex, England, 1967. ISBN 0-14-020773-2
- Timothy Day, program notes to Sibelius, The Symphonies (Lorin Maazel, Wiener Philharmoniker) (London / Decca CD 430 778-2)
- Lionel Pike. Beethoven, Sibelius and 'the Profound Logic' . London: The Athlone Press, 1978. ISBN 0-485-11178-0 .