Nature Boy at 90
Composer Jean Sibelius is a hero to all Finns, most Englishmen and many Americans. His music is heavy enough to sound profound—something like the work of a rural and obstinate Brahms. It seemed revolutionary in the 1900s, daring in the teens, peculiar in the '20s, old-fashioned in the '30s. Since then it has suffered a kind of honorable obsolescence. Sibelius' last major work was published in 1926, when he was 61. Most of today's critics, finding they have nothing new to say about the music, simply muse about those tough, craggy Sibelius characteristics that remind people of Finland.
This week Jean Sibelius is 90, and the anniversary is being observed in many cities of the world. Manhattan's Symphony of the Air gave an all-Sibelius concert under the direction of a Sibelius son-in-law, Jussi Jalas; London's Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic both scheduled Sibelius evenings; even Tokyo's NHK (radio) Symphony is going all-Sibelius for one performance.
The composer himself takes all such honors calmly and gratefully, as he carries put the routine of the past half century in his big house, Ainola, in the woods 25 miles north of Helsinki. He stays in bed late to read the papers, which arrive as gifts from all over the world. On the rare occasions when he receives visitors in the afternoon, he joins them at coffee cakes, cognac and a cigar. During the day he reads heavily (mostly history), listens to concerts on his powerful radio, and works. Nobody knows just what his music is like these years, but fans like to play guessing games about whether he has finished an eighth and possibly started a ninth symphony.
Deep lines show in Sibelius' weathered face, but they do not come from material cares. He was the son of an army surgeon, studied law to please his family, but soon turned to music. When he returned from his studies in Berlin and Vienna, he married the daughter of a general and a baroness, and at the age of 31 received a generous government pension which has kept them comfortable ever since.
Everyone who knows Sibelius agrees that he loves nature, and that is perhaps the clue to why he is so widely, almost automatically, accepted as one of the century's great composers. Whatever its shortcomings and dull stretches, his music does convey to cramped city audiences a sense of nature's bigness, of a peasant tenacity. Years ago Sibelius wrote in his diary: "A wonderful day, spring and life. The earth exhales a fragrance—mutes and fortissimi. An extraordinary light that reminds one of an August haze."
Engineer's Son
When Edgard Varèse (rhymes with fez) was a boy in Paris, the piano in his family's apartment was kept locked. His father, an engineer, did not want him to become a composer. Though Varèse went on to study music at some of the world's best schools and eventually made a name for himelf as a fierce and formidable modernist composer, there are those who believe that his father's wish was fulfilled.