Music By Jean Sibelius Based On The Kalevala - The National Epic Of Finland
The Kalevala is a fascinating literary work based on the legends of the Finnish people and was put into written form in the early 19th century by a Finn by the name of Elias Lonrot , who collected the ancient stories of Finnish heroes and sorcerors which had been passed down from generation to generation for ages among the Finnish people .
The Finns are one of the various peoples speaking languages of the Finno-Ugrian or Uralic language language family spread throughout Scandinavia , Northern Russia and western Siberia . Their close relatives the Estonians live directly to the south of Finland on the Baltic coast , and the Lapplanders or Sami people of Lappland in the far north of Scandinavia also speak a language related to Finnish . The Hungarian language , brought to Europe by a Finno-Ugrian people from western Siberia who settled in what is now Hungary in the late 9th century , is much more distantly related to these languages .
The Kalevala has been translated into many different languages , including English , and deals with the Finnish legends of creation and the various Finnish heroes and their mighty exploits as well as sorcery and intrigue among them . Jean Sibelius was inspired by his knowledge and love of this great national epic to write a number of works based on these legends . They include purely orchestral works and works for chorus and orchestra . All are extremely colorful and evocative .
I've been listening to a superb 8-CD set containing many of Sibelius' most important works , including the symphonies , conducted by the distinguished Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund with the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Bournemouth symphony of England , with Chruses from Finland and Estonia and leading Finnish singers , part of the many new CDs at my local library .
Among them are the Kullervo symphony for chorus , orchestra and vocal soloists , based on one of the stories from the Kalevala . The first syllable rhymes with pull and that first syllable is accented , like all words in Finnish .
Kullervo is a reckless and headstrong young man and something of a womanizer . He seduces a young woman who unfortunately turns out to be his long-lost sister whom he had never met before , and he had not known her identity . She commits suicide , and Kullervo goes off to war to try to forget the traumatic experience and dies in battle . It's a stirring and elemental work filled with that unique forboding nordic atmoshpere of Sibelius' music .
The work lasts about 70 minutes and is in five movements ; the first and fourth are purely orchestral . Despite the successful premiere in 1892 when the composer was only 27 , he withdrew the work and it was not perfomed again until the 1970s , when it finally became part of the repertoire . The recording in this EMI set is the first made of the Kullervo symphony , and there have been several subsequent ones since that time by other conductors such as Sir Coloin Davis and Neeme Jarvi .
Other characters in the Kalevala are the vigorous and heroic old man Vainemoinen and the Nordic Don Juan Lemminkainen , both of whom inspired Sibelius . The Lemminkainen legends are a suite of four colorful orchestral works recounting the adventures of this character . The most famous part is the "Swan of Tuonela " , which depicts the Finnish hades , or Tuonela , where an English horn solo depicts a lonely swan floating along the waters of the Finnish underworld ; it's absolutely haunting .
In Finnish mythology , Luonnotar is the daughter of the heavens who gave birth to the sky and the earth after living for centuries in the void . In her loneliness she prays to the supreme God Ukko to help her during her endless and pointless existence . Eventually a duck which had been searching in vain for a place to lay its eggs settles on her , and when the eggs hatch and after the nest falls into the waters , the shells become the sky, the stars and the moon .
Luonnotar is written for soprano and orchestra and retells this legend with some of the strangest and most haunting music you'll ever hear . Tapiola , the last important work Sibelius wrote in the 1920s , after which he retired from composition for the next 30 years until his death in 1957 at the age of almost 92 , is a powerful and distrubing portrait of the vast and impenetrable Finnish forests . This weird and terrifying orchestral work will send shivers down your spine .
Tapio is the God of the forests in Finnish mythology . There are no easily recognizable melodies and the work is dark and eerie , reaching a thunderous climax as a huge storm breaks out in the primeval forest and from then the music gradually fades out into silence . Few composers have expolited the many colors of the symphony orchestra with the skill of Sibelius ; the Kalevala inspired him to make the most of what an orchestra can do . You won't soon forget the works based on this great epic .