Sibelius 5 series#

Sibelius shows us, through his music, how you can be attached to something (someone?) you love while letting it go at the same time. Just as he, as a composer, would compose and then destroy passages or even entire works throughout his life, this Symphony takes up ideas that are fleeting, briefly materialise and smile at us, only to disappear again and dissolve.

Sibelius 5 series#

The piece is a series of ‘rotations’ in which every rotation discards and evolves previous material as the moment requires. What resonates most with me, I think, is the fact that in this piece he is trying to capture a sense of impermanence, a sense of constant change, and having to accept that. It took three versions of the piece before he was happy (enough) with the result, spread out over almost five years of inner and outer turmoil. While his 5th Symphony is often described as ‘triumphant’, ‘heroic’ even, Sibelius himself talked of ‘quiet joy’ and ‘elegance’ in this piece and was facing crisis after crisis in his compositional, personal and national life while writing it. If you were to take out the timpani rolls from a Sibelius score the notes would still make sense but the piece would become empty-the presence of the timpani is the incessant rustling of the leaves in a Finnish forest, even when there is no wind: you don’t notice it when it’s there, but if it were to disappear, everything would be lifeless. It certainly has to do with his overwhelmingly large structures that tower above us mortals like cathedrals, although maybe in his case they are cathedrals of ancient wood, or hewn from rocks that have been there always, combined with all this buzzing, humming and the oscillating below the surface, like all of natural life is in every single bar.

With Sibelius’ music, there is always something resonating that I can’t often put words to but moves me very deeply.