(program)
Vanguard Recording // Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) // Tone Poems: Finlandia and Tapiola // Sir Adrian Boult conducting the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra of London.
Tone Poems
Tapiola
Finlandia
We may say that ordinary daily experiences take place in a world of actual time. The essential quality of music is its power to create another world of virtual time. “” john blacking, How Musical is Man?
Sibelius took time to find his distinctive voice. He began as a law student, simultaneously studying the violin and composition. It was while he was in Vienna in 1890-1 that he encountered two major sources of inspiration. After hearing a performance of Bruckner’s Third Symphony, he declared him to be the greatest living composer, and the epic grandeur of Sibelius’s own music owes much to his influence. Around this time Sibelius began studying the collection of Finnish traditional poetry, the Kalevala. “” robert philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
another great week in music---i’m still riding what’s left of the high from last sunday’s Bon Iver concert---a surreal experience, they don’t come to toronto often enough. some expected items on the set list: a performance of ‘Holocene’ in the sing-rap style of the latest album; an unexpected excavation of ‘Lump Sum’ (as if hearing it for the first time), and of course the contractually obligated dredging up of ‘Skinny Love’ via acoustic guitar scream-singing that transposed the anthem into a private, still burning, confessional (‘Now all your love is wasted? Then who the hell was I?) never gets old. but my favourite moment came via justin vernon’s staple stuttering stage banter, a sort of slogan he repeated here and there during the 22, A Million tour, more or less to the effect of: “This isn’t just entertainment, it’s a spiritual fucking thing”.
‘i,i’ - BonIver
Perhaps a contributory factor in Sibelius’s ‘burnout’ was that he suffered from the effects of excessive praise during his lifetime. There was a period during the 1920s and 1930s when a certain writer, notably Constant Lamber and Cecil Gray, regarded Sibelius as the great hope for the future, in contrast to the ‘official’ revolutionaries Schoenberg and Stravinksy. “” robert philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
I will say another word for the choicest ears: what I really want from music is that it be cheerful and profound, like an afternoon in October (friedrich nietzsche, Ecce Homo). it’s october and gratitude pours forth continuously. i’m still trying to find the meanings behind the stravisnky quote above, about the virtual time of the musical dimension. the Suya people of brazil, for example, a native tribe whose entire concept of time---their ‘yearly’ calendar---plays out in music, a musical calendar of sorts. i guess that’s as well what i’m doing here, ‘an antidote against current events’?---against the current of events? or perhaps a mere gimmick to stop the pouring of time through one’s hands like sand, that awful feeling in the last days of december when you look back on the year and can’t quite fix your eyes on something solid. though this is just as much a virtual calendar as it is a slower one. for the sake of the music that finds me in october, in retrospect it’s always as if half the year is taken up by this one month.
Finlandia opens with defiant snarls from the brass. These begin to form themselves into a more continuous melody, which becomes chorale-like as woodwind and then strings take over - though still with a defiant and sombre quality. The pace increases (Allegro moderato). The brass play aggressive fanfares, alternating with the strings playing the original snarls, now faster, and with the addition of energetic swirling figures. The bass instruments, with tuba, set up a yet faster tempo (Allegro) in what for a moment sounds like five-time. The brass fanfares punctuate a new theme, for the first time in a major key, which is full of optimistic energy. The brass fanfares are incorporated into it, now given a determined drive by the strings. “” robert philip on Finlandia, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
though much of sibelius’s work can hardly be described as cheerful it is, and often right from the opening bars, in league with the profound, the score pulsing from the composer’s bulbous forehead like a fist. i still remember the little dumbjokes i made years ago walking by the Jean Sibelius Park in my neighbourhood on a first date (“Sibelius? With a name like that you’re practically not allowed to write jingles of any kind”).
After a timpani stroke, the strings play a tiny theme that curls upwards ,and descends. Virtually every melodic shape in Tapiola is derived from this motif, either in its original form, or extended, compressed, upside down, or combinations of these. Sibelius used this technique throughout his career, but in Tapiola he takes it further than ever before. “” robert philip on Tapiola, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
i think her name was emily, her basement apartment at the corner of the park suffered a cockroach infestation and she talked of her plans to return to her hometown of Tiny Township. “We’re all just walking each other home” (ram dass). down the street from that park was the Kops Records that i purchased my first couple of records of sibelius, five years ago: his Symphony No.1, a tired fading green with a portrait of the aged composers on the cover, holding his great forehead in one hand.
After two statements of the opening motif, and a moment like pastoral improvisation from the woodwind, there is agitation (still based on the motif), a sudden climax, and then abrupt return to the opening motif. A long passage ensues, in which the motif is repeated sorrowfully, again and again. “” robert philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
the second record of that purchase is a compilation of tone poems inspired by finnish folktales, and is the record of choice for this week. the most renowned of the collection are ‘Finlandia’ and ‘Tapiola’, alongside such cerebral experiments like ‘Nightride and Sunrise’ (akin to a nocturnal ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’) and the light fanfare of ‘Oceanides’. both records were purchased for a dollar plus tax---and you should have seen my absolute shock when that record store could no longer afford the rent and promptly closed...
Suddenly the brass enter, with a crescendo to [fortissimo], at which they hammer out the shape of the incantation with savage force. This lasts only a moment, but its effect is profound. The music never regains the uneasy calm that preceded the outburst. “” robert philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
(song of the week: Deran Deran Alkheir - Bombino)
both of the times i’ve seen Bombino perform at Lee’s Palace have been on a weeknight and have gone home unable to fall asleep, just too much energy, rasa, ráme...whatever you wanna call it there’s something about when they really get going, omara ‘bombino’ moctar absolutely unleashed on his guitar, the galloping rhythm that pivots between the drummer and bassist and the whole locomotive reaches a velocity that isn’t meant for stopping. not the kind of state you want to be in when you climb into bed.
The Tuareg wear flowing robes so bright and rich with blue that over time the dye has seeped into their skin, literally blueing it. They are desert nomads who were famously unwilling to be converted to Islam: thus their name. “” maggie nelson, Bluets
‘Nameless’ by Norris Yim (@norrisyimart)
their style of music is referred to as Tichumaren (the same genre as the more popular bands like Tinariwen and Vieux Farka Toure). it’s the music of the tuareg people of north africa, a semi-nomadic population displaced by french colonization and desertification. there’s in Tichumaren the restlessness of rebellion and the marathonian fitness of it’s rhythm---interlocking texture of beats that pivot between layers---is backdropped by the sprawling desert landscape that is romanticized in the lyrics. perhaps what you’d find if you dropped a punk rock band from the late eighties in the saharan desert and came back for them after two decades.
It should be noted that the Tuareg do not call themselves Tuareg. Nor do they call themselves the blue people. They call themselves Imohag, which means “free men.” “” maggie nelson, Bluets