Sibelius correspondence to Armas Järnefelt discovered

Most important musical revelations in composer's performance-notes on Pohjola's Daughter

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By Vesa Sirén
     
      So they've finally surfaced!
      A year ago, I enquired from the rights-holders of the estate of Armas Järnefelt (1869-1958) as to what might have happened to the personal letters from Jean Sibelius to his brother-in-law, who was himself a conductor (in Helsinki and with the Royal Opera in Stockholm) and composer of some repute.
      We knew of more than a hundred of Armas Järnefelt's letters to Jean Sibelius and his wife Aino Sibelius, but only a handful of Sibelius's replies had been unearthed.
      But then in late August I got a reply: there's a pile of them here! An attempt had been made to put Armas Järnefelt's personal effects in some sort of order, and 16 letters from Sibelius were among the discoveries.
     
The correspondence covers a long period from the early years of the 20th century into the two men's old age, and Sibelius’s congratulations on his brother-in-law’s 80th birthday in 1949.
      A couple of the letters have been referred to in earlier Sibelius studies, but the others are completely new finds.
     
The reason for the lengthy delay in their coming to light is quite straightforward. Armas Järnefelt's family had previously arranged his effects, and a good deal of important material has already been donated to archives for scholars to work on.
      However, as luck would have it, these letters were filed in Järnefelt's daughter's home archives in the wrong place, under Z. Hence they were discovered only now, as the material was sifted through once again.
      The most significant find is of a letter in which Sibelius gives his brother-in-law detailed instructions for a performance of the symphonic fantasia Pohjola’s Daughter.
     
The undated missive must be from some time between 1906 (when the work was completed) and 1916, because in a letter from 1916 Armas Järnefelt refers to the incident with some relish and asks for a repeat of the assistance with a performance of the Fifth Symphony.
      The notes for Pohjola’s Daughter run to four tightly-written pages, and Sibelius goes through the score in great detail.
      The composer spares not a word for the programmatic side of the piece, in which the aged Kalevala sage and hero Väinämöinen vainly attempts to woo the beautiful Maid of Pohjola. She turns him down, but in a horribly teasing manner, setting the old boy a series of impossible exploits to perform. Despite his not inconsiderable skills in magic, he comes up short and is obliged to head home alone.
      Sibelius ignores all this, preferring to concentrate on the musical meat of the work, passed as it were from from one professional to another.
     
One assumes a catch like this would interest researchers working on a critical edition of Sibelius's works?
      "Absolutely. This is a massive find. To the best of my knowledge there are no other detailed instructions like these in previously documented letters", enthuses Timo Virtanen, who is working on a critical edition of Pohjola’s Daughter.
      Virtanen assures me that he will take each and every one of Sibelius’s comments into consideration in his commentary in the edition of the work.
      Another who is enthusiastic about what has been uncovered is Risto Väisänen, who is working at the Sibelius Academy on the early performance traditions of Sibelius’s music.
      "In those days the tempi were a good deal more flexible than they are now, and Sibelius clearly approved wholeheartedly of this. He also hints at playing techniques and instructions that one can often hear on the earliest recordings, but since then a change in style and a more objective approach has to a great extent planed these things down", says Väisänen.
     
So what else do we learn from the letters? Unfortunately none of them date from the pair’s boisterous student days, when Armas was regarded by fellow students at the Helsinki Conservatory as "the brain", and Jean (or Janne) as "the genius".
      There are also no letters from the rather more uneasy period when Armas - in a toast - expressed the hope that Janne would "develop in a few years" to be worthy of Armas’s sister Aino, with whom Sibelius had secretly become engaged.
      Equally, we still await the discovery of mail from the angry times when Sibelius - who had developed a massive inferiority complex about not being "to the manner born" - snapped at Armas: "Noble? That’s ALL you are. You are nothing but the son of nobility." The Järnefelt family was about as high in the Finnish social pecking-order as you could get at that time, and Sibelius definitely married above himself when he wedded Aino.
     
The correspondence we get in the 16 letters is by contrast extremely cordial and polite.
      Armas always enjoyed conducting Sibelius’s music. After he moved to Stockholm and the Royal Opera, he also became the court conductor to the Swedish royal family, leading the orchestra in all the major state concerts, including royal funerals.
      As a composer, Järnefelt was completely overshadowed (like so many of his generation) by Sibelius from the beginning of the 20th century onwards. He described in some detail the paralysis engendered by hearing Sibelius’s music, and how it prompted him to give up composing as it was a futile exercise. Janne generously poured balsam on any wounds that might have been there by always remembering to praise his brother-in-law’s writing. He never forgot to thank him, either, for performances of his own music, whether in Stockholm or in Finland.
     
There are a few confidential touches. Armas had hoped Sibelius would be able to come and conduct in Stockholm in early 1916, but Sibelius ducks the invitation with a tragic tone:
      "I have been ill since the beginning of the year - my ears! You can begin to understand how awful it has been when I say I have been practically deaf. And I believe my right ear will never fully recover. But let this be between you and me. Just say something about illness or indisposed."
      The fears about going deaf of course proved unfounded, and Sibelius conducted regularly for at least another decade.
     
Though they were obviously close, Sibelius did not divulge quite everything to his brother-in-law. Certain matters were best left unsaid.
      On November 8th 1924, the composer writes to inform Armas he is coming to Stockholm to conduct some of his works, including the first performance of Fantasia Sinfonica I, the work that later became better known as the Seventh Symphony.
      "Aino will not be coming with me. She’s been poorly all autumn."
      This was not strictly true. In fact Aino had put her foot down and said she would not be accompanying her husband to Stockholm, because she could not stand to see Sibelius conducting his music while drunk, as had allegedly taken place in Gothenburg in 1923!
     
From September 1927, there is one of the very few letters in which Sibelius has scribbled down some notation. Armas had wished to conduct the tone-poem Tapiola, and Sibelius writes out the principal theme in his letter. He also gives some performance notes, and points out that the duration of the piece should be 17 to 18 minutes.
      Such comments on the length of a work can be very revealing: in one example from January 1916, Sibelius comments that the tone-poem The Oceanides (Aallotaret, 1914) should last for 14 minutes. This would mean a tempo that was hugely slower, by a minute or two, than one finds on modern recordings!
     
Sibelius’s ageing process manifests itself in the letters in many ways. In August 1939, the 74-year-old composer’s handwriting is very shaky indeed, but he considers it a matter of honour that he should write his congratulations on his friend’s 70th birthday by hand. Armas is relieved of the burden of trying to interpret the scribblings, as a type-written version is attached in the same envelope.
      It is perhaps a little surprising that ten years later, when congratulating Järnefelt on reaching 80, Sibelius’s script is a good deal more legible. The letter is also the seal on a lifelong friendship. Sibelius asserts that his brother-in-law is "at the very summit of his art", and expresses the hope that the world will understand what Armas Järnefelt "has been and is to the music of the North."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.9.2004


Links:
  Virtual Finland: Jean Sibelius, by Robert Layton
  Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
  Finnish Music Information Centre: Armas Järnefelt

VESA SIREN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi