I. Tempo molto moderato quasi adagio
II. Allegro molto vivace
III. Il tempo largo
IV. Allegro
The fourth symphony is strangely different in character from those that
precede and follow it. Was Sibelius experimenting, endeavoring to strike
out a new path? Was he dissatisfied with the result? When it was
performed in New York as a new piece, Mr. Henderson, the most
sympathetic of those reviewing the symphony, thought that Sibelius had
“parted company with himself and joined the futurists.” One of the
critics went so far as to describe the work as “inconsequential as the
ravings of a drunken man.” This was an absurd opinion, for, whatever may
be said of the symphony, it is not “inconsequential”; it was planned
deliberately; one might say, from the lack of emotional quality, planned
in cold blood.
Perhaps there was an argument in his mind. Perhaps he had been hearing
_Parsifal_, for there are times in the symphony when one is reminded of
Amfortas with his complaining voice. Not that Sibelius was obliged to
borrow phrases; but the mood of the composer and that of the wounded
knight are at times alike. There is also the suggestion of similar
harmonic and orchestral, but not melodic expression.
The thematic material is for the most part cool, contemplative, often
fragmentary, or purposely incomplete. The melancholy that drips from the
pages is almost without relief. Nor does one find the symphony of
“baffling simplicity” as a London reviewer found it a few years ago. The
“simplicity” was carefully contrived. There is little real beauty, frank
or subtle—there is little that impresses by loftiness of thought, or
nobility of expression. There is prevailing sobriety. Sibelius might
say, “That is the way I felt when I wrote it. I could not write
otherwise any more than I could then feel differently.” Is it not a
significant fact that Sibelius soon left this path that he had found?
* * *
This symphony, dated 1911, was performed at Helsingfors in that year.
The score is dedicated to Eero Järnefelt.
The reviewer for the London _Times_ noted (February 28, 1921) that there
was moderate applause after a performance, and added: “After all, what
was there to make a fuss about? No accumulation of energy, no building
to a climax, no display of rhetoric; just a number of ideas, each dwelt
on as long as it showed capacity for growth, each left as soon as it had
generated another; there is just enough relevance to defeat the charge
of inconsequence, not enough arrangement to suggest a moment’s
tautology. The fineness of this symphony is of the ascetic type which
refuses the luxuries of sound and finds a miracle in the simplest
relations of notes. From these relations the tunes grow naturally as
folk tunes grow. From the intonation of two notes at the outset comes
the whole of the first movement; a perfect fifth is the source of the
most expansive melody which crowns the third movement. There is nothing
abstruse about it; people only fail to understand it because they cannot
believe that any man could be so simple and so real as Sibelius shows
himself to be.”
Mr. Fox Strangways wrote (February 21, 1932): “Sibelius has, what only
the best composers have, the flair for the phrase that will repay
investigation. His phrase on paper impresses no one; when you hear it,
spaced out, set in relief, debated upon, it grows life size. He seems to
go on for minutes together in an ordinary tone of voice, and then
suddenly an idea stings him, and he is afire, and the whole room hanging
on his lips.”
“The complete absence of sensuous appeal in this work,” writes Cecil
Gray, “coupled with the exacting demands it makes upon the intelligence
of audiences, will always prevent it from being popular. For the few,
however, it probably constitutes Sibelius’s greatest achievement; he has
certainly never written anything to surpass it.”