That way lies tragedy.” Financial pressure had always been a key reason for Sibelius to compose and especially to compose some of the lighter, smaller pieces that have proved less interesting to audiences and performers over time. Sibelius once commented, “I do not advise anyone without private means to become a composer. Paradoxically, those thirty years of creative productivity were also amongst the most personally challenging and impoverished of his life. In all, his life’s work as a composer occupies not much more than thirty years - an amazing thing for someone who lived from 1865 until 1957, ninety-two years. He composed little after 1930 - unable to compose not because of physical circumstances but through either heightened self-criticism or weakened inspiration.
#Sibelius symphony 7 series#
6 and 7 date from the 1920s and are the last works in this series of concerts. Yet the composer had absorbed many lessons from his contemporaries in developing his own path for example, in the atmospheric tone poem, Tapiola, we can hear strong echoes of Debussy and Schoenberg in the style of orchestration, freely evolving shape and harmonic language. As Adorno put it in 1937, “The success of Sibelius is a symptom of the disorder of musical consciousness.” That attitude, of lofty and dogmatic critical opinion determining what is best for the public amongst new work, continues today. The lobbies had in common a detestation of Sibelius’ popularity and dismissal of the value of his tuneful music. The debate at that time centred on pro-Schoenberg and pro-Stravinsky lobbies. As before in his life, Sibelius was the subject of a quite virulent argument between his promoters, notably Olin Downes and his detractors, especially the theorist and critic Theodor Adorno. He was presented in the US as the reactionary force against the revolutions of Stravinsky and Schoenberg. At least one commentator has suggested that Sibelius’ wife did at some point in the 1930s observe him to burn the work.Ĭertainly, prestigious orchestras and conductors around the world, especially in the US where he had become a celebrated figure, keenly awaited the Eighth. He may indeed have composed an Eighth Symphony - various writers have claimed this to be the case. Sibelius seemed happy to fuel rumours that such a work would happen, yet the piece was never brought to fruition. Thirty years and six more symphonies later, many hoped for a Symphony No. Not much of Sibelius’ significant music predates the Symphony No. The seven symphonies of Jean Sibelius were all composed in the period from 1898 to 1926. Sibelius, like a number of other composers (notably Charles Ives), retired from composing a long time before he died. And what of the psychological horrors that such a silence might induce for the composer because, for a prolific composer the habit of writing music might continue long after the creative urge that originally drove it has died. Unless there is a steady flow of royalties from existing works most composers depend on new commissions.
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