Sibelius: En Saga

A III 2144 taiteilija: Gallen-Kallela, Akseli nimi: Kullervon sotaanlähtö ajoitus: 1901 museo/om.: AT ; LV mitat: 89x128 cm pääluokka: maalaus kuvanro: 26281 mitat: 9x12 valokuvaaja: Jukka Romu 1994, KKA laite: Agfa T5000+/ColorExact1.5/photoshop6.01/ profiili: AdobeRGB1998 skannauspvm:4.2.2002/tea

Through­out my life, Sibelius has remained unchal­lenged as my favourite com­poser. As much as I might love Mozart, or Dvo­rak, or Vaugh­an Williams, and take delight in even their minor com­po­si­tions, none has the place in my heart, and sub­con­scious, that Sibelius has. The first work of the gran­ite Finn that I ever heard was En Saga, Op.9. It has usu­ally been con­sid­ered no more than a rous­ing show­piece, but I think it offers some depths to explore.

Sibelius’ approach to com­pos­ing was dis­pas­sion­ate and sci­en­tific. Though much of his work is intense­ly emo­tional, it sel­dom gives the impres­sion of being a spon­ta­neous out­pour­ing of his own imme­di­ate feel­ings. But En Saga, a work of his youth, appar­ently fits this cat­e­gory: “I could almost say that the whole of my youth is con­tained with­in it. It is an expres­sion of a state of mind. En saga is the expres­sion of a state of mind. I had under­gone a num­ber of painful expe­ri­ences at the time and in no oth­er work have I revealed myself so com­pletely. It is for this rea­son that I find all lit­er­ary expla­na­tions quite alien.” [1]. Despite attempts by review­ers to relate it to either the Finnish Kale­vala, or to the Scan­di­na­vian Edda, Sibelius seems to have meant the title in the sense of a per­sonal saga.

The work exists in three forms. The stan­dard ver­sion is the one that Sibelius revised in 1902. By this time, his mas­tery of orches­tra­tion was with­out peer, and the revi­sions he made are jus­ti­fi­able improve­ments. But I pos­sess, on a cd con­ducted by Osmo Vän­skä, a per­for­mance of the orig­i­nal 1892 ver­sion. The improve­ments of 1902 smoothed away some of the ungain­ly vigour of the younger man’s work, which has its own mer­its. Sibelius’ daugh­ter Aino cer­tainly thought so: “I like and have always liked the first ver­sion. Papa removed some vio­lent pas­sages from it. Now En Saga is more civ­i­lized, more pol­ished.” Thus, the work expe­ri­enced a jour­ney from the for­est to the town, gain­ing and los­ing some­thing along the way. A pas­toral mid­dle sec­tion was excised entire­ly, and it con­tains some rather advanced fea­tures, for the time, such as sev­enth inver­sions of ninths, pro­ceed­ing in par­al­lel motion.

En Saga is sup­posed to have orig­i­nally been con­ceived of as a cham­ber work, a septet, but the score of this was lost. In 2003, Dr. Gre­gory Bar­rett (Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity) pub­lished a recon­struc­tion of the En Saga Septet, but I haven’t heard it, or found a record­ing. It is rather hard to imag­ine, since the piece we are famil­iar with is like a minia­ture sym­phony, a fine exam­ple of how Sibelius could treat a large orches­tra like it was a sin­gle instru­ment, that he was play­ing with his own hands.

En Saga was not only my first expo­sure to the Music of Sibelius, but a piece that awak­ened me to the adven­ture of music. I was nev­er the same after I heard it. Grow­ing up among Cana­dian lakes and forests that are vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal to those of Fin­land, exposed to native speech and rhythms very sim­i­lar to those behind En Saga, the work could reach me in a way that none had before. To this day, those rhythms echo in my mind at the odd­est moments, and will always come to mind when I walk alone among shield rocks, birch and spruce.

Leave a Comment