4 Songs

Kaiutar Op.72 No.4 (1915)

Längtane heter min arvedel Op.86 No.2 (1916)

I systrar, I bröder, I älskande par! Op.86 No.6 (1917)

Var det en dröm? Op.37, No.4 (1902)

Sibelius’s first language, like that of many Finns of his generation, was Swedish. Although he started learning Finnish when he went to school at the age of eight and although the rhythms of the Kalevala echo unmistakably through much of his instrumental music, as a song composer he was far happier with Swedish poetry than with Finnish. Indeed, he wrote only five songs in Finnish and not far short of ninety in Swedish. If Swedish translated easily into melodic terms for him, however, Finnish stimulated a refreshingly different kind of sound. The early, folk-song-style Illale, which is particularly popular in Finland, is perhaps the most familiar example. Working on Kaiutar 17 years later seems to have been a liberating experience for the composer in that, while not ignoring the Kalevala allusions in the opening lines, the through-composed setting develops into a remarkably spontaneous, impressionistic and yet dramatic treatment of Larin-Kyösti’s verse.

Given a song like Kaiutar, with its exceptionally imaginative piano part, it seems a pity that Sibelius didn’t have more time for Finnish verse, even if it had meant less time for such examples of the Swedish romans as the elegiac Längtan heter min arvedel, which is so economical in its piano writing that the arpeggios representing the “klaganda strängaspel” in the last stanza seem positively adventurous. I systrar, I bröder, I älskande par! from the same set is more eventful, the vocal line dancing in rustic waltz time while the spinning wheel rattles round a frankly noisy piano ostinato.

“Here you have my most beautiful song,” said Sibelius when he presented the manuscript to his favourite soprano Ida Ekman in 1902. Certainly, although he had more than twenty years of composing life still to go, he wrote no song more thrilling than Var det en dröm? the impulsive inspiration of which is so judiciously by a change of harmony before the impassioned return of the opening material at the end.

Kaiutar Op.72 No.4 (1915)

Längtane heter min arvedel Op.86 No.2 (1916)

I systrar, I bröder, I älskande par! Op.86 No.6 (1917)

Under strandens granar Op.13 No.1 (1892)

Var det en dröm? Op.37 No.4 (1902)

Sibelius’s first language, like that of many Finns of his generation, was Swedish. Although he started learning Finnish when he went to school at the age of eight and although the rhythms of the Kalevala echo unmistakably through much of his instrumental music, as a song composer he was far happier with Swedish poetry than with Finnish. Indeed, he wrote only five songs in Finnish and not far short of ninety in Swedish – many of them settings of poems by a Swede-Finn of an earlier generation, Johan Ludvig Runeberg. If Swedish translated easily into melodic terms for him, however, Finnish stimulated a refreshingly different kind of sound. The early, folk-song-style Illale, which is particularly popular in Finland, is perhaps the most familiar example. Working on Kaiutar 17 years later seems to have been a liberating experience for the composer in that, while not ignoring the Kalevala echoes in the opening lines, the through-composed setting develops into a remarkably spontaneous, impressionistic and yet dramatic treatment of Larin-Kyösti’s verse.

Given a song like Kaiutar, with its exceptionally imaginative piano part, it seems a pity that Sibelius didn’t have more time for Finnish verse, even if it had meant less time for such an example of the Swedish romans as the elegiac Längtan heter min arvedel, which is so economical in its piano writing that the arpeggios representing the “klaganda strängaspel” in the last stanza seem positively adventurous. I systrar, I bröder, I älskande par! from the same set is more eventful, the vocal line dancing in rustic waltz time while the spinning wheel rattles round a frankly noisy piano ostinato. Sibelius’s use of piano ostinato in the ballad Under strandens granar, one of his earliest as well as one of his most successful Runeberg settings, is peculiarly effective – both in the atmospheric tremolandos themselves and in the vivid contrast between them and dramatically tolling chords or, as the boy apparently reappears in the lake, surging melody.

“Here you have my most beautiful song,” said Sibelius when he presented the manuscript to his favourite soprano Ida Ekman in 1902. Certainly, although he had more than twenty years of composing life still to go, he wrote no song more thrilling than Var det en dröm? the impulsive inspiration of which is so judiciously offset by a change of harmony before the impassioned return of the opening material at the end.