Sibelius was born to a Swedish-speaking family in a small town in south central Finland and only began to speak some Finnish from the age of eight. He entered a Finnish-language school at eleven, but not until he was a young man did he feel completely at home in the language. Musical studies began with the violin, and soon he aimed at a career as a professional virtuoso. In 1885 he began to pursue composition with Martin Wegelius in Helsinki. Further studies in Berlin introduced him to the newest music, including Strauss’s Don Juan at its premiere. He was usually in debt, apparently unable to avoid financial extravagance in the German capital, and already drinking heavily, a habit that remained with him. After his return to Finland in 1891 he composed the choral symphony Kullervo, which was so successful at its premiere in April 1892 that he was immediately established as a leading figure in Finnish music, a position that was never seriously challenged thereafter.

The following seven years saw the composition of a series of scores for dramatic production, a failed operatic attempt, and—most important—a group of purely orchestral scores, En saga and the four symphonic poems about Lemminkäinen, a character from the Finnish national epic Kalevala.

These culminated in his first symphony, composed evidently in part as a musical response to Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, which had been performed in Helsinki already in 1894 and again in 1897. By the autumn of 1898, Sibelius was totally absorbed in the work at a time of great political tension in Finland and of personal concern as well. A diary entry of September 9 reflects his mood: “How willingly I would have sacrificed some of the financial support I have received if I only had some sympathy and understanding of my art—if someone loved my work....” These feelings may be reflected in the autumnal colors of much of the score, and especially in its lonely opening, a solitary clarinet bravely singing its lament over the chill background thunder of a long roll on the timpani.

Though Sibelius complained of misunderstanding, his art was still rooted in the nineteenth century both harmonically and thematically. The First offered few problems to listereners, and once it achieved performance, it was generally accorded favor with audiences both in Finland and elsewhere.

Because of Sibelius’s demonstrated interest in the Kalevala, not to mention the passionately dramatic character of much of the music in the symphony, some critics claimed to find a literary program in the music, every theme functioning like a Wagnerian leitmotiv for a character or event. But Sibelius emphatically denied that there was any connection whatever; his symphony (by implication) is a purely abstract musical structure, however characterful its content.

The clarinet solo that opens the symphony dies away on a sustained G, the preceding melodic phrase hinting that the piece will be in G minor. But just as the clarinet settles on its last note, the second violins begin a tremulous sextuplet figure consisting of the notes G and B, which thus hint at G major. We are in fact listening to the home key coalesce out of the very ether, the tonic of E minor appearing clearly only after the first violins begin their muscular statement.

A contrasting idea built on a pair of hovering alternating notes in a characteristic rhythm leads seamlessly to a fortissimo restatement for full orchestra of the main E minor theme. A bright tremolo in the strings, joined by the harp, brings in the woodwinds with a dancelike transitional idea derived possibly from the opening clarinet line. An extraordinarily long pedal point—a note held in the bass without changing—underlies the second theme material, which appears in expressive dialogues between the woodwind instruments over a hushed rumbling in the strings.

The exposition ends with a unison pizzicato in the strings, twice repeated. The musical argument of the development further intertwines the musical ideas already heard, but with a tendency to grow progressively more chromatic. A momentary lyric interlude (with two solo violins in dialogue) turns into more dramatic stuff with the climax of downward-moving chromatic scales in the woodwinds against upward-rushing chromatic figures (at twice the speed) in the lower strings. Suddenly, against all this activity, the upper strings sing the melody from early in the movement that preceded the fortissimo statement of the first theme. Sibelius works this around to G major (where we first heard it) and plunges us into the heart of the recapitulation, omitting the first main theme statement, since the fortissimo repetition is about to return full force. The recapitulation is a condensed intensification of the beginning, ending in darkly muttering strings.

The slow movement is often cited as the part of the symphony most strikingly influenced by Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique. It is a kind of poignant rondo, its C minor melody alternating with other ideas based on the same rhythms and phrase structure, sometimes inverted from a falling to a rising theme. Except for a few woodwind interludes, the colors are predominantly dark. The sadness sometimes explodes in an outburst which eventually dies away in the return of the main theme.

The rambunctious third movement has some of the earthiness of Bruckner’s symphonic scherzos, the headlong rhythmic drive of the pizzicato strings at the opening reinforced by the vigor of the timpani and the most important thematic motive in the strings, which has a modal, folklike character. The Trio is a shade slower and altogether more lyrical, even pastoral in feeling, evoking dreams of the countryside driven out by the sudden return of the scherzo.

At the beginning of the finale, the strings give out in unison an expansive, passionate version of the hesitating clarinet melody heard at the very opening of the symphony, now harmonized by the brasses. A certain degree of questioning in the woodwinds, eventually answered by the strings, leads into the dramatically charged Allegro theme that runs through the bulk of the movement, except for the striking moments of contrast provided by the wonderful singing theme on the violins’ G string, bringing a chorale-like dignity into the heart of the activity. The symphony closes with an echo of the pizzicato chords that ended the first movement. —© Steven Ledbetter