![]() Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. While working on the Fifth Symphony in 1915, Sibelius wrote in his diary, The final bars trail off with the brusk quality of a shy Scandinavian retort. Again, there are moments of darkness and brooding. As the variations unfold, the simple melody becomes increasingly embellished, while haunting suspended tones and creeping dissonances emerge in the winds. A woodwind chorale opens the door to quietly tiptoeing pizzicati. At moments, there are echoes of Beethoven, or the sunny elegance of a country dance. The second movement ( Andante mosso, quasi allegretto) is a set of variations on a simple, cyclic theme. Ominous shadows fall. In one passage ( 6:43), the tonal center evaporates temporarily, and the hushed strings suggest the distant howl of a Nordic gale while the lamenting solo bassoon wanders through a forlorn landscape. The brakes are cut loose, and the initial moderato finds thrilling release in a kind of accelerating Scherzo. Alex Ross describes it as “a cinematic ‘dissolve’ from one movement to another.” Propelled by shivering string tremolo, the first movement is filled with attempted climaxes which hit a brick wall. The Fifth Symphony’s first movement ( Tempo molto moderato Allegro moderato, ma poco a poco stretto) bends traditional symphonic form. Unfolding as a gradual, irrepressible accelerando, it is actually a fusion of two movements, spliced together. As if God the Father had thrown down pieces of a mosaic from the floor of heaven and asked me to work out the pattern. ![]() This important task which strangely enchants me. It is music which took a step back from the dissonant, modernist abyss of the Fourth Symphony, while simultaneously embracing new, formal innovations. While working on the first draft of the final movement in April of 1915, Sibelius wrote in his diary, Over the course of two revisions, Sibelius “wrestled with God” to arrive at the “profound logic” of the Symphony’s final version in 1919. The Finnish government commissioned Sibelius to write the Fifth Symphony in 1915 to commemorate the composer’s fiftieth birthday. In a way which mirrors the cyclic nature of Finnish folk music, the Fifth Symphony is filled with rotating cells which end up where they began. This is music influenced by the bleak, remote landscapes of northern latitudes, where perceptions of time may be altered by seasonal cycles which involve extended periods of darkness alternating with light. On a deeper level, it enters into a mysterious, eternal stasis. On one level, it gives us a sense of motion through continuous development. ![]() The Fifth Symphony evokes nature’s divine logic. It is born from various rivulets that seek each other, and in this way the river proceeds wide and powerful toward the sea. I should like to compare the symphony to a river. ![]() In his famous meeting with Gustav Mahler, Sibelius expressed admiration for the symphony’s “style and severity of form, as well as the profound logic creating an inner connection among all of the motives.” On another occasion, he said, Picked up by the woodwinds, the motif begins to fragment, spin, and develop with a sense of self-organizing inevitability. 5 in E-flat Major begins with the breadth and majesty of a vast, unfolding Nordic landscape. A mystical horn call rises and falls in an expansive arc, which opens the door to all that follows.
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