Swans

Jean Sibelius: Symphonies No. 5 and 7; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Simon Rattle, conducting

Do you like swans? I guess I do. I don’t see them very often. Finnish composer Jean Sibelius LOVED swans. Mr. Sibelius owned a house that he called “Ainola”, after his wife, Aino. The house sits on a lake in a forest about an hour’s drive outside of Helsinki. Many musicians and tourists visit this house as the Finnish government has preserved the house just as Mr. and Mrs. Sibelius left it. In one of the larger rooms hangs a painting of a flight of swans. In his diary of April 21, 1915, Mr. Sibelius noted that he had seen sixteen swans in flight and that it was “one of the greatest impressions of my life!”

The people of Finland so loved their favorite musical son in the year 1915 that they made his fiftieth birthday a national holiday. In honor of the occasion, and to thank the Finnish people, he composed his Symphony No. 5.

A number of musical innovations on the part of Mr. Sibelius hallmark this particular work and hardcore classical music buffs who acquaint themselves with the likes of forms, structures, key and motifs find change, newness and modernization in the strategy and technique of the Finnish composer in his symphony composition processes. Eh, let them have them. I want to share with you the third movement.

It opens with a flurry. Wings? I like to think so. It certainly heralds a foreshadowing of something portentous. And then, up from the grass, into the awesome cloud-clad blue, launches a majestic, liberating, life-affirming theme – a swan theme – fanfared by a flock of French horns. A sweeping call of triumph, in the form of a chorale, that shifts from section to section within the orchestral brass, is held aloft by a sense of elation, feat and conquest in the strings. For the rest of the movement, I can imagine the view from the perspective of the swans; from here on out, the theme and variations on the flurry we heard in the beginning of the movement provides soundtrack for the Finnish countryside as seen from the viewpoint of these resplendent creatures.

As if to affirm a bird association with this beautiful music, the selection between the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies of Sibelius is called “Scene with Cranes”. Lovely, lovely stuff.

I found these recordings at Tower Records in Picadilly Circus in London. I had read about them in a CD periodical and rejoiced when I found them. I recalled at the time that all of the swans in England belong to the Queen. Who owns the cranes?

Credits: To birds. We covet your capacity to escape the confines of the earth - to soar.