Kullervo
Sibelius' Kullervo is a giant, craggy mountain. Sibelius never scales its heights again, nor does he care to. From here on out, he will content himself by chipping off clusters of diamonds and tree resin.
Sibelius' Kullervo is a giant, craggy mountain. Sibelius never scales its heights again, nor does he care to. From here on out, he will content himself by chipping off clusters of diamonds and tree resin.
posted by PWS at 10:58 PM
2 Comments:
Tapiola.
I should say that by "scaling heights" I don't mean composing a piece as aesthetically great-it's more of a size thing, and the way he uses large swaths of rotating material in rigid block form-in the symphonies and later major works he is more austere and economical and exacting (hence the diamond cutting metaphor, aptly used by Stravinsky when describing Webern). Tapiola and the Seventh seem to be a new turning point in his development-more expansive, but paradoxically, also more austere and economical and, well, 'strange', which to me is a catch-all term for the best Sibelius.
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