Composition

Although the creative origins of En saga remain somewhat uncertain, it appears as though the material that would become En saga may have begun as, and thus evolved from, a septet or octet for flute, clarinet, and string ensemble that the composer had begun in 1890–91, during which time he was a student in Vienna under Robert Fuchs and Karl Goldmark. (This chamber piece, however, has never been found.) Following the success of the choral symphony Kullervo in 1891, Robert Kajanus, founder and chief conductor of the Helsinki Orchestral Association, requested from Sibelius a purely orchestral piece, albeit one "in a more popular style" that would not make "too great demands on [the general public's] powers of concentration and comprehension"; in the 1930s, Sibelius told his biographer, Karl Ekman, that the result of this invitation was the orchestral tone poem En saga.^[8]

Sibelius composed En saga per Robert Kajanus's request; the piece premiered on 16 February 1893, with Sibelius conducting.

Later in life, however, Sibelius dismissed Kajanus's influence, telling a second biographer, Eric Ringbom, in the 1950s that En saga actually had not been the result of Kajanus's offer: "... Nothing came of it. Instead I completed the orchestral work I had already started and to which I gave the name En saga ... I did not comply with his request ... to write 'a short Da capo piece'".^[9] That Sibelius's statements to Ekman and to Ringbom are inconsistent is, perhaps, a sign either that Sibelius wished to downplay the influence of his on-again-off-again friend/rival decades after the latter's death (Kajanus had died in 1933) or that he was eager to dispel any notion that En saga was of less seriousness than his other compositions.^[10]

The autograph manuscript of the original 1892 version of En saga does not survive, although a manuscript and complete set of orchestral parts are preserved in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra collection. The copyist for these documents remains unknown; although surviving invoices indicate that two copyists Sibelius typically employed, August Österberg and Ernst Röllig, each copied the score, in July 1895 and December 1898, respectively, neither the surviving manuscript nor the orchestral parts are in the hand of either man. Most likely the documents were produced in 1901 by an unidentified copyist for the conductor Georg Schnéevoigt, who conducted the original version of the tone poem during his concert tour of Riga.^[11]

Performances

Italian composer, Ferruccio Busoni (c. 1911), a friend of Sibelius's who provided him with the opportunity to conduct the revised version of En saga in Berlin in 1902

The original version of the tone poem premiered on 16 February 1893 at Solemnity Hall of the University of Helsinki with Sibelius conducting the Helsinki Orchestral Association; the concert program also included Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite II and Robert Schumann's Manfred, as well as songs by various composers, all of which Kajanus conducted.^[15][16] As noted above, both Kajanus and Schnéevoigt included En saga on various subsequent concert tours.

German breakthrough

Although Sibelius had overhauled En saga expressly for the Busoni concert, the premiere of the revised version of the tone poem fell not to Berlin but to Helsinki on 2 November 1902, with Kajanus conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Society; the program also included Svendsen's Second Symphony and Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1. While Finnish critics praised En saga, there was a palpable sense the Helsinki concert was merely a dress rehearsal for the big Berlin unveiling.^[17] The Berlin concert was indeed an important event for Sibelius: not only would it mark just the second time he had conducted abroad,^{[lower-alpha 4]} but it would also give him the opportunity to present personally his art to a discerning Central European audience. Finnish critics sought to buoy Sibelius by writing that, in their opinion, En saga was worthy of performance abroad, while the Finnish newspapers promoted the forthcoming concert heavily.^[17] A few days later, the stakes became even clearer: the Berlin critics savaged the first of Busoni's concerts on 8 November, the program of which included selections from Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, the Overture to Camille Saint-Saëns's opera Les Barbares, and Christian Sinding's Rondo Infinito.^[12]

This was the environment into which Sibelius stepped as second on Busoni's 15 November program, which also included Frederick Delius's orchestral nocturne Paris, Théophile Ysaÿe's Piano Concerto, and Ödön Mihalovich's ballad The Death of Pan^[12] ("my fellow competitors", as Sibelius referred to them in a 12–13 November letter to his wife, Aino).^[19] Sibelius was under constant stress: during the journey to Germany, he labored over the orchestral parts, many of which contained copy errors; upon arrival, he fumed over being second on the program and was annoyed that the promised rehearsals had both been scheduled for 13 November.^[19] Nevertheless, the rehearsals went well and the players reacted favorably to the tone poem: as Sibelius told Aino, "It is so beautiful... Busoni even embraced me".^[19]

Beethoven Hall (c. 1902) of the old Philharmonie (the building was destroyed in 1944 during the war), where at the Busoni concerts occurred

The Berlin critics' reaction to the second concert, however, was hostile. Otto Lessmann of Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung described the performance as "painful", noting acerbically, "If steps forward in art should be illustrated in such works, the muse would viel her head";^[20] while, Rudolph Buck opined in Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, "After the complete fiasco of the second concert, the announcement that these orchestral concerts would be continued in the autumn of 1903 sounded little short of blasphemous".^[21] Nonetheless, it appears as though Sibelius emerged more or less unscathed; indeed, the consensus opinion was that En saga was "the only valuable work" on the program.^[22][23] The positive reviews in the wake of the concert clearly lifted Sibelius's spirits. Following the concert, a confident Sibelius recounted for his wife the quality of both his art and his conducting:

It went very well. My En saga was the best novelty, I think. I was very calm and conducted well... The main thing is that I can conduct a world-class orchestra. And well! ... I am so calm and sure about my art now. I have been acknowledged as an accomplished 'artist'... We could break through anywhere. And brilliantly.

— Jean Sibelius, in a series of letters to his wife, Aino Sibelius, dated 16–17 November 1902^[24]

As Tawaststjerna notes, thanks to En saga, at last the "ice had been broken for Sibelius in Germany", a success for which he had long hoped. Sibelius celebrated as Busoni's guest at a "lavish" dinner party.^[23]

Arrangement for septet

The creative origins of En saga remain somewhat uncertain, although Sibelius's statements to Ekman and Furuhjelm indicate the piece may have evolved from sketches for a septet or octet the composer had begun in 1890–91. To date, however, researchers have been unable to recover the pre-En saga chamber piece, either as a completed manuscript or unfinished sketches (again, if such a composition ever existed). Gregory Barrett, professor of clarinet at the Northern Illinois University School of Music, has nonetheless sought to reclaim this (purported) "lost chamber masterpiece", arranging in 2003 the original 1892 orchestral tone poem for flute, clarinet, two violins, viola, cello, and string bass.^{[lower-alpha 5]}

Contemporary accounts that describe the Barrett septet as a "reconstruction" are inaccurate; because Sibelius's 1890–91 sketches do not survive, there is no way to know how similar Sibelius's own chamber piece was to the first orchestral version of En saga and, by extension, to Barrett's chamber arrangement.^{[lower-alpha 6][lower-alpha 7]} It is for this reason that the Barrett septet is not included on the 13-volume BIS Complete Sibelius Edition, a 2007–11 project billed as having recorded every note Sibelius ever penned.

On 14 June 2003, six musicians from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra joined Barrett (on clarinet) to premiere the septet at the Brahmssaal (Brahms Hall) of the Musikverein in Vienna, the city where Sibelius claimed to have composed his own (lost) pre-En saga septet/octet; the Austrian-Finnish Friendship Society sponsored the performance, while the Finnish Embassy hosted a reception after the concert. The Barrett septet was first recorded in May 2008 at the Sigyn Hall in Turku, Finland, by the Turku Ensemble and released on 12 July 2011 by Pilfink Records. Many reviews note the conspicuous absence of the tone poem's brass and percussion, although one of the performers, flautist Ilari Lehtinen, has argued the septet compensates by making "the intimate aspects of the work sound more personal and more heart-rending". Writing for Fanfare, Steven Ritter has praised the septet as "remarkable", noting that although "acute listeners will miss the brass and all the pomp and beauty of orchestral majesty that we associate with Sibelius", Barrett's arrangement "has much to offer and loses little atmosphere". Carl Bauman, writing for the American Record Guide, on the other hand, has argued the musical material "doesn’t fare nearly as well here as it does in its orchestration".

Notes

References

Sources

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• Couling, Della (2005). Ferruccio Busoni: A Musical Ishmael. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.
• Dahlström, Fabian [in Swedish] (2003). Jean Sibelius: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke [Jean Sibelius: A Thematic Bibliographic Index of His Works] (in German). Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. ISBN 3-7651-0333-0.
• Ekman, Karl [in Finnish] (1938) [1935]. Jean Sibelius: His Life and Personality. Translated by Birse, Edward. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. OCLC 896231.
• Goss, Glenda Dawn (2009). Sibelius: A Composer's Life and the Awakening of Finland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-00547-8.
• Gray, Cecil (1931). Sibelius. London: Oxford University Press.
• Grimley, Daniel (2004). "The Tone Poems: Genre, Landscape and Structural Perspective". In Grimley, Daniel (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius. Cambridge Companions to Music. London: Cambridge University Press.
• Hurwitz, David (2007). Sibelius: The Orchestral Works, an Owner's Manual. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Amadeus Press.
• Johnson, Harold (1959). Jean Sibelius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Layton, Robert (1965). Sibelius: The Masters Musicians Series. New York: Schirmer Books.
• Rickards, Guy (1997). Jean Sibelius. London: Phaidon.
• Ringbom, Nils-Eric (1954). Jean Sibelius: A Master and His Work. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Tawaststjerna, Erik (1976). Sibelius: Volume 1, 1865–1905. Translated by Robert Layton. London: Faber and Faber.
• —— (1986). Sibelius: Volume 2, 1904–1914. Translated by Robert Layton. London: Faber and Faber.
• —— (1997). Sibelius: Volume 3, 1914–1957. Translated by Robert Layton. London: Faber and Faber.
• Wicklund, Tuija (2014). Jean Sibelius's En saga and Its Two Versions: Genesis, Reception, Edition, and Form (PDF). Studia Musica (Thesis). Vol. 57. University of the Arts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy.