THE MISSING SYMPHONY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1054, 6 November 1959, Page 14

THE MISSING SYMPHONY

THE SYMPHONIES OF SIBELIUS, by Simon Parmet, translated by Kingsley A. Hatt; Casstll, English price 21/-. . SIBELIUS was a legend in his lifetime. It is over forty years since the first biography appeared. He died at the agé of nearly 92 in 1957. He wrote some appallingly banal works, as well as some of the most austerely grand music this generation has heard. He published practically nothing after 1926. Did he ever write, of finish, the eighth symphony? If so, where is it? The composer himself wrote, as far back as 1945; "My eighth symphony has been completed many times over, but I am ‘still not satisfied." Why did his. brother-in-law, the composer and conductor Armas Jarnefelt, say two days after Sibelius’s death that the symphony was finished and was to have posthumous publication, and then next day say "The eighth symphony does not exist"? This is the question with which Simon Parmet concludes his analysis of the: symphonic writings of Jean Sibelius. Parmet is a compatriot of the ‘ | Finnish composer, and he tells us thet

his book grew out of Sibelius’s request that Parmet undertake a corrected, definitive edition of the Symphonies. Discussions with the composer led to analyses, interpretation of tempi and expression marks, consideration of form and orchestration, and above all an appreciation of that intangible thing, the composer’s intention. The material so collected needed only to be written down to form a most intimate and authoritative essay on the subject. Though Sibelius asked Parmet to proceed with the book, he did not always assist the project. An inveterate aversion to the dissection of living music, and a hatred of appearing "naked among my fellow human beings," made Sibelius an elusive helper. But Parmet has produced a book which will take its place as the authoritative work on the Sibelius symphonies. He gives a chapter to a: symphony, prefacing each analysis with an essay on.some aspect of the composer’s work as illustrated by the symphony under discussion: his nationalism, his reaction to new techniques, his forging of a form to express his increasing terseness of utterance. The book is copiously illustrated with music extracts. Parmet has a penchant for setting out his material in two or three lines; the original, a comparable theme, a "germ thought"; or a line from a symphony, with a "reconstruction" under it, ie. Parmet’s intepretation of how it feels to him. Mostly these are illuminating, but there are times when one feels like doing what he ‘tells us Sibelius did when Parmet stressed a point too strongly-change the subject. My review copy suffered from having one unprinted sheet, resulting in eight

blank pages.

G.

D.