{"id":886,"date":"2008-06-10T02:26:30","date_gmt":"2008-06-10T06:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=886"},"modified":"2018-08-13T23:58:09","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T03:58:09","slug":"sibelius-en-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=886","title":{"rendered":"Sibelius: En Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Through\u00adout my life, Sibelius has remained unchal\u00adlenged as my favourite com\u00adposer. As much as I might love Mozart, or Dvo\u00adrak, or Vaugh\u00adan Williams, and take delight in even their minor com\u00adpo\u00adsi\u00adtions, none has the place in my heart, and sub\u00adcon\u00adscious, that Sibelius has. The first work of the gran\u00adite Finn that I ever heard was En Saga<\/em>, Op.9. It has usu\u00adally been con\u00adsid\u00adered no more than a rous\u00ading show\u00adpiece, but I think it offers some depths to explore.<\/p>\n

Sibelius\u2019 approach to com\u00adpos\u00ading was dis\u00adpas\u00adsion\u00adate and sci\u00aden\u00adtific. Though much of his work is intense\u00adly emo\u00adtional, it sel\u00addom gives the impres\u00adsion of being a spon\u00adta\u00adneous out\u00adpour\u00ading of his own imme\u00addi\u00adate feel\u00adings. But En Saga<\/em>, a work of his youth, appar\u00adently fits this cat\u00ade\u00adgory: \u201cI could almost say that the whole of my youth is con\u00adtained with\u00adin it. It is an expres\u00adsion of a state of mind. En saga<\/em> is the expres\u00adsion of a state of mind. I had under\u00adgone a num\u00adber of painful expe\u00adri\u00adences at the time and in no oth\u00ader work have I revealed myself so com\u00adpletely. It is for this rea\u00adson that I find all lit\u00ader\u00adary expla\u00adna\u00adtions quite alien.\u201d [1]. Despite attempts by review\u00aders to relate it to either the Finnish Kale\u00advala<\/em>, or to the Scan\u00addi\u00adna\u00advian Edda<\/em>, Sibelius seems to have meant the title in the sense of a per\u00adsonal<\/em> saga.<\/p>\n

The work exists in three forms. The stan\u00addard ver\u00adsion is the one that Sibelius revised in 1902. By this time, his mas\u00adtery of orches\u00adtra\u00adtion was with\u00adout peer, and the revi\u00adsions he made are jus\u00adti\u00adfi\u00adable improve\u00adments. But I pos\u00adsess, on a cd con\u00adducted by Osmo V\u00e4n\u00adsk\u00e4, a per\u00adfor\u00admance of the orig\u00adi\u00adnal 1892 ver\u00adsion. The improve\u00adments of 1902 smoothed away some of the ungain\u00adly vigour of the younger man\u2019s work, which has its own mer\u00adits. Sibelius\u2019 daugh\u00adter Aino cer\u00adtainly thought so: \u201cI like and have always liked the first ver\u00adsion. Papa removed some vio\u00adlent pas\u00adsages from it. Now En Saga<\/em> is more civ\u00adi\u00adlized, more pol\u00adished.\u201d Thus, the work expe\u00adri\u00adenced a jour\u00adney from the for\u00adest to the town, gain\u00ading and los\u00ading some\u00adthing along the way. A pas\u00adtoral mid\u00addle sec\u00adtion was excised entire\u00adly, and it con\u00adtains some rather advanced fea\u00adtures, for the time, such as sev\u00adenth inver\u00adsions of ninths, pro\u00adceed\u00ading in par\u00adal\u00adlel motion.<\/p>\n

En Saga<\/em> is sup\u00adposed to have orig\u00adi\u00adnally been con\u00adceived of as a cham\u00adber work, a septet, but the score of this was lost. In 2003, Dr. Gre\u00adgory Bar\u00adrett (Indi\u00adana Uni\u00adver\u00adsity) pub\u00adlished a recon\u00adstruc\u00adtion of the En Saga Septet<\/em>, but I haven\u2019t heard it, or found a record\u00ading. It is rather hard to imag\u00adine, since the piece we are famil\u00adiar with is like a minia\u00adture sym\u00adphony, a fine exam\u00adple of how Sibelius could treat a large orches\u00adtra like it was a sin\u00adgle instru\u00adment, that he was play\u00ading with his own hands.<\/p>\n

En Saga<\/em> was not only my first expo\u00adsure to the Music of Sibelius, but a piece that awak\u00adened me to the adven\u00adture<\/em> of music. I was nev\u00ader the same after I heard it. Grow\u00ading up among Cana\u00addian lakes and forests that are vir\u00adtu\u00adally iden\u00adti\u00adcal to those of Fin\u00adland, exposed to native speech and rhythms very sim\u00adi\u00adlar to those behind En Saga<\/em>, the work could reach me in a way that none had before. To this day, those rhythms echo in my mind at the odd\u00adest moments, and will always come to mind when I walk alone among shield rocks, birch and spruce.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through\u00adout my life, Sibelius has remained unchal\u00adlenged as my favourite com\u00adposer. As much as I might love Mozart, or Dvo\u00adrak, or Vaugh\u00adan Williams, and take delight in even their minor com\u00adpo\u00adsi\u00adtions, none has the place in my heart, and subconscious, \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-cs-listening-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8500,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions\/8500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}