Eugene Ormandy
The great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), in reminiscing to Santeri Levas, his personal secretary of his late years (1938-1957), related a strange incident that occurred after he had finished his 5th Symphony. Twelve white swans, after settling on a lake near his home, Ainola, rose up and circled the house three times before flying away. Sibelius came to regard the actions of the swans as auspicious, for his 5th Symphony remains his most performed and most enduringly popular work.
The English composer and conductor, Granville Bantock (1868-1946) claimed: "In the music of the 5th Symphony we are brought face to face with the wild and savage scenery of his native land, the rolling mists and fogs that hover over the rocks, open lakes and firclad forests; while in the continuous rumble of the threatening storms and the war's alarms we are made to feel how the iron has entered the soul of the hard land where winter holds its relentless grip for seven or eight months of the year."
Ainola was the home of Sibelius from 1904 until his death there in 1957 at the age of 91. The house was named after Aino, his wife, but Aino is also the name of the lyrical maiden figure in Finland's national epic narrative poem, the Kalevala, which so often served as a source of inspiration for the great composer.
Eero Jarnefelt, the painter and brother-in-law of Sibelius, found the site for Ainola. The composer fell in love with the location and commissioned his friend the architect Lars Sonck to build a new home for himself, his wife and their three young daughters. Lars Sonck also designed the Kallio church in Helsinki, the cathedral in Tampere, and Kultaranta, the summer residence of the President of Finland.
Jean Sibelius was very sensitive to sound and demanded absolute silence when he worked. He allowed no noisy modern conveniences in the house. Even water was carried in from the wells in the garden. Although the house was wired for electric light in 1918, electric heat and running water were not installed until three years after the composer's death in 1960. Until then 11 different wood stoves heated the house.
Mrs. Aino Sibelius continued to live at Ainola until her death in 1969 at the age of 98. The grave of both Mr. & Mrs. Sibelius is in the garden at Ainola, near the sauna, which was designed by Aino in 1905. The cupboards in the dining room were also designed by her, as was the staircase (the upper story of the house was not completed until 1911).
Visitors to Ainola should also notice in the dining room, right over the door, the composer's favorite painting, the unframed "Funeral Procession." Sibelius dubbed the painting "D major." He heard colors in music and the predominant yellow in the painting was equivalent to D major in his mind. The big laurel wreath, also in the dining room, was a gift from the Finnish people to Sibelius on his 85th birthday.
Worth noting too is the library, which now contains over 3,000 books, but was originally the nursery. On the left from the door is the composer's "cigar-smoking-corner." On the mantelpiece is a plaster head of the youngest daughter, Heidi. It was she and her husband, an architect, who designed the interior of the library as a gift to Sibelius on his 70th birthday in 1935. The style is Finnish Functionalism of the 1930s.
Sibelius was born in Hameenlinna, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Helsinki, when Finland was under the yoke of Tsarist Russia. He grew patriotically fervid in the resistance against Russia's attempts to Russianize the Finns. It has been said that what Wagner did for the ancient German legends, Sibelius did for Finland's. However he never borrowed directly from folklore sources, as did other nationalistically minded composers. Sibelius created a musical literature in which the forests and lakes and peoples of Finland act out the legends and life of their beloved country.
The Finnish piece par excellence is the tone poem, Finlandia, written in 1899, when Finland's struggle for independence from Russia was at its height. In Finlandia Sibelius concentrated on translating into musical terms the very essence of his country. The vigor and aggressive spirit of the music leave no doubts about the composer's patriotism. The windswept melodies, the often bleak atmosphere, the cold harmonies and the restrained force of his music all paint a tonal picture of Finland far beyond the ability of any travel writer.
"I love the mysterious sounds of the fields and forests, water and mountains," Sibelius once said. "It pleases me greatly to be called an artist of nature, for nature has truly been the book of books for me."
Writers have compared his music to "scudding clouds in a windswept sky, with screaming gulls rudely tossed from their course." Others have claimed that his brooding rhythms contain "The pathos of brief, bland summers, or light that falls for a moment, gentle and mellow, and then dies away."
The Hungarian-American conductor, Eugene Ormandy, one of the greatest promoters of the works of Sibelius, said his 4th, 5th and 7th Symphonies were "... all of them free, wild, beautiful things, more like elemental forms of nature than consciously shaped works of art."
According to traditional Finnish mythology, the Nordic woodlands are inhabited by gods and goddesses ruled over by Tapio, the "King of the Forest." His dwelling place, hidden in the depths of the forest, is called "Tapiola." This legend inspired Sibelius' last major work. Tapiola was commissioned by the New York Symphony Society and received its world premiere in 1925. At the request of his publisher, Sibelius wrote a verse, which was printed at the head of the score as a program:
There stretch the dark forests of the north,
Primeval - mysterious in wild dreams;
In them dwells the great god of the forests,
And woodland spirits glide through the twilight.
Ainola is 38 kilometers (23 miles) from Helsinki and easily reached by car, bus or train.
Bruce Burnett, has won four Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Gold awards for travel journalism. Read more of Bruce Burnett's writing on his websites:
1. [http://www.globalramble.com/]
2. http://www.bruceburnett.ca/
3. http://www.herbalcuisine.com/
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