PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
2. SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE
2.1 ON THE OBSERVATIONS
2.1.1 HARMONIC STRUCTURES
Ralph W. Wood has found Sibelius’s harmonic methods “deceptive”.40
Notwithstanding the harmonic idiom and structure, which in those days
38 Sibelius wrote to Georg Boldemann on the 20th October 1943: “At the beginning of my creative
career I firmly decided not to publish under my name anything else but music” [J. A.] (Tawaststjerna VF:355, VS:338, IIIE:328–329 missing).
39 Tolonen 1976:79–92, Wilson 1949:47; this article is only one page in length.
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(1947) already sounded “thoroughly conservative” in Wood’s opinion (excluding the Fourth Symphony), Wood found “extremely startling” procedures that would be codified only in centuries to come. In connection with Tapiola op. 112 he mentions “pedal-points, passing-notes, extremely close intervals in the bottom register” and a “canonic passage in which both ‘voices’, a major third apart, are themselves doubled in major thirds”.
Some investigators have found chordal structures which do not sound “thoroughly conservative”: Kai Maasalo points out a passage at the end of The Bard op. 64, in bars 97–100 (p. 18:2–5) wherein there is a climax that lasts four bars, with which the trumpets and trombones join in forte- fortissimo, comprising the “chord” E flat–B flat–A flat–D flat.41
Fig. 2.1.1–1 a–e. A “chord” pointed out by Maasalo.
This chord (Fig. 2.1.1–1a) sounds like a chord made up of fourths (Fig. 2.1.1– 1b),42 a phenomenon quite unusual in the romantic repertoire. The
arrangement of this “fourth-chord” (Fig. 2.1.1–1a) is similar to an eleventh- chord rooted on E flat (Fig. 2.1.1–1c).
It is possible to interpret Fig. 2.1.1–1a as a suspension: the third of a minor seventh-chord is held in suspension at the fourth (Fig. 2.1.1–1d). Indeed in bar 101 (p. 18:6) the A flat is followed by G flat in the second violins, while the bass changes (and the whole harmony with it). However, the D flat that continues to sound in the flutes (against the next chord A flat– C flat–E flat–G flat of the strings) differs from the traditional practice of suspensions (Fig. 2.1.1–1e).
In the Overture to The Tempest op. 109 no. 1 and Ariel’s Song op. 109 no.2/VIII Maasalo has found “altered inverted ninth chords” (Fig. 2.1.1– 2a).43 In connection with the Overture Maasalo speaks about “inversions of
41 Maasalo 1964:171.
42 Ringbom 1956:32 (Ex. 15) and 1956:34 found quartal constructions based on a dominant ninth
chord in the first version of En saga (1892): pp. 46–49, 50.
43 Maasalo 1964:201–202. Murtomäki (2001:128) already found inversions of ninth chords in the
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rare altered seven-six chords” (Fig. 2.1.1–2b),44 but both these types can be
viewed as basically similar harmonic combinations based on the whole-tone scale.
Fig. 2.1.1–2 a–b. “Altered inverted ninth chords” found by Maasalo.
Erik Tawaststjerna found a complicated harmonic phenomenon (Fig. 2.1.1– 3a) in the fourth movement (p. 47 onwards, or from bar 145) of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, which he regards as “an eleventh chord on the fifth degree over a pedal point on the tonic” (Fig. 2.1.1–3b).45
chord is followed by the 1st inversion of the D flat-rooted ninth chord and the 3rd inversion of the F
sharp-rooted ninth chord.
44 Maasalo 1964:199.
45 Tawaststjerna IIIF:261, 387 note 60. These remarks are eliminated in IIIS:251–252, 375 (notes)
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Fig. 2.1.1–3 a–b. A dominant eleventh chord combined with tonic pedal point found by Tawaststjerna.
Erik Tawaststjerna has found a “major-minor chord with its simultaneous tones B flat and B natural” (Fig. 2.1.1–4) from the Humoresque V op. 89 no. 3 (1917).46
Fig. 2.1.1–4. A “major-minor chord” found by Tawaststjerna.
Leo Normet says that Sibelius not only used tritone-related chords alternately,47 but also simultaneously: “The simultaneous F sharp major and
46 Tawaststjerna IVF:257, IVS:243, IIIE:113–114 missing. Wood 1975:197 includes the same
phenomnenon as his Ex. 47, but in the running text Wood only notes that ”… very soon we find ourselves in the midst of experiment again, and presently arrive at Ex. 47” (Wood 1975:50).
47 Attention to alternating harmonies have earlier been paid by G. Abraham 1975:16 and later by
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C major chords [in the Fourth Symphony] will produce a ninth chord with a minor ninth in which there are both a perfect and flattened fifth”. Here Normet has applied enharmonic equivalency (Fig. 2.1.1–5a).48 If the G flat is
read as an F sharp, this simultaneous combination of tritone-related triads can be collected into an eleventh chord with an augmented eleventh and a minor ninth (Fig. 2.1.1–5b).
Fig. 2.1.1–5 a–b. Simultaneous F# and C major chords as ingredients of a minor ninth chord with a natural and a flat according to Normet.
Normet relates this phenomenon – “a typical procedure of his time” – to Scriabin’s “combinations originated from ninth chords” and Stravinsky’s procedure in the Petrushka theme. Normet also reminds us that Stravinsky’s ballet and Sibelius’s symphony both appeared in 1911.49
Olin Downes presents a more general remark concerning the overall harmonic structure of the Fourth Symphony.50 He also maintains that the
harmonic direction in this symphony is new. Downes recalls that the bass has formed the foundation of the texture in the period up to and including the Wagnerian era. But he points out that in the Fourth Symphony another kind of harmonic principle also exists: “In some pages of the Sibelius symphony the harmony flows freely as if on air. One could really say that sometimes the basses seem to hang under the chordal mass which floats above them.”
Finnish composer Erik Furuhjelm proposed a theoretical model for explaining Sibelius’s harmonic language.51 He describes the Pastorale of
Pelléas et Mélisande Suite op. 46 no. 5 (1905), which in his opinion is “perhaps the most interesting of all” the movements in this suite.
48 Normet 1970:29, note 4 (all Normet’s articles were originally written in Estonian; I have
translated the text from Finnish translations in SMusVk).
49 Normet 1970:42, 45. Piston 1978:499 mentions that Ravel had already used the so-called
”Petrushka chord” in Jeux d'eau (1901).
50 Olin Downes 1945:100–101 (This book, a collection of Downes’s critiques and other articles by a
Finnish editor and translator, exists in the Finnish language only; I have not been able to trace the original, undated English article).
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The “floating tonality” of this composition originates from “peculiar blends” of A flat major and F minor, which together with “melodic motives” in [F] Aeolian mode give Pastorale its “captivating character”.52
According to Furuhjelm, the composition is wholly built on harmonies consisting of the notes A flat–C–E flat (Fig. 2.1.1–6a) and A flat–C–F (Fig. 2.1.1–6b). Sometimes the harmony is heard as A flat–C–E flat–F (Fig. 2.1.1– 6c) which is due to the repetition of E flat in the arpeggiated double organ point A flat–E flat.
Fig. 2.1.1–6 a–c. The dominating harmonies of Sibelius’s op. 46 no. 5 according to Furuhjelm.
“In fact it is precisely this harmony which dominates throughout, even though it need not be explained in that way”.53 This quotation is interesting;
it seems that Furuhjelm himself hesitates to accept his own paradigm, perhaps precisely because it differs fundamentally from earlier harmonic theories.
Furuhjelm’s idea (which he proposed during the very same year that Sibelius finished the work in question) disappeared into oblivion and stayed there,54 but in my opinion it represents a true key to the harmonic thinking of
Sibelian Satz.
52 The term “floating tonality”, “sväfvande tonaliteten” (Swedish) is used by Furuhjelm himself
(ibid.:149). The German term used by Schoenberg: “schwebende Tonalität” – fluctuating tonality – (Schönberg 1966:460–461) resembles Furuhjelm’s term, but Schoenberg meant a succession where one key changes to another (e.g. C major to E minor in Beethoven’s op. 59 no. 2/IV, which Schoenberg presents as a classic example). Furuhjelm’s idea, on the contrary, is simultaneity, corresponding to the modern concept of ambiguity.
53 Furuhjelm 1905:149.
54 Murtomäki 1993:199–201 has expressed an idea: that of thematic material derived from
structures based on superimposed thirds forming a seventh chord, sometimes even a ninth chord, which belongs to the same “family” of columnal harmonic models as Furuhjelm’s, if (to paraphrase Furuhjelm) the ‘harmony dominating throughout’ is understood as an inverted chord (or as an octave- displaced column) F–A flat–C–E flat.
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2.1.2 MUSICAL SPACE: VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL AND THREE-