Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato – Presto
Andante mosso quasi allegretto
Allegro molto
Sibelius's Fifth Symphony famously went through three separate versions, and three separate premières, before it reached the form in which we now know it. The symphony occupied Sibelius from his first thoughts in 1912 until the final version of 1919, which emerged only after Sibelius had expended great energy wrestling with his material.
The outbreak of war in August 1914 immediately deprived Sibelius of most of the income from his own music. Russia had not signed the Berne Convention on Copyright and since Sibelius was a Russian citizen his German publisher Breitkopf and Härtel could send him no royalties, which provoked another financial crisis. In this desperate situation Sibelius's ideas for the new symphony were put aside for various small scale works, written in a deliberate attempt to earn some money. But the symphony remained at the back of his mind "In deep mire again, but I already begin to see dimly the mountain I shall certainly ascend … God opens His door and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony".
On 21 April 1915 the sight of sixteen swans in flight fired the composer's imagination, he noted in his diary:
“Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. Once of my greatest experiences! Lord God, that beauty. They circled over me for along time. Disappearing into the solar haze like a gleaning silver ribbon. Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes but without tremolo. The swan call closer to the trumpet … Nature mysticism and life's Angst! The Fifth Symphony's finale-theme. Legato in the trumpets … That this should have happened to me who have so long been an outsider.”
Clearly Sibelius had thought of the great swinging theme which dominates the finale. He sifted through his ideas and organised those which form the symphony (most of the remaining sketches went towards the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies)
It's as if God the Father had thrown down the tiles of a mosaic from heaven's floor and asked me to determine what kind of picture it was. Maybe a good definition of composing. Maybe not. How would I know?
The stimulus to complete the score came from celebrations planned for the composer's fiftieth birthday, where the new symphony was intended as the final work in a concert on 8 December 1915. Sibelius barely completed the score by the beginning of December.
The symphony as heard in that concert was in four separate movements, rather than the three known today, with different orchestration and a different layout. Sibelius quickly became dissatisfied with the whole work, feeling that he had rushed the completion to meet the concert deadline. (This original version was recently permitted a single recording and anyone interested can investigate just how much the 1915 and 1919 version are separate works).
Sibelius reworked the symphony under the pressure of another birthday concert the following year. Hardly any material from this intermediate version survives but in it Sibelius linked the original first and second movements. Sibelius lost confidence in this version as well, but was unwilling to commit the effort needed to rework the symphony again.
After the Russian Revolutions of 1917, Finland achieved formal independence in December 1917, though the country was soon plunged into civil war. Sibelius' home was searched and briefly occupied, forcing him to seek sanctuary in Helsinki. Under these circumstances work on the symphony was intermittent. Eventually Sibelius settled on keeping the three movement layout and from February 1919 worked in earnest completing the work in April. Sibelius later claimed that at the point where he laid down his pen, a flight of twelve white swans settled on the lake and then circled his home before flying away. He directed the première of the final, only, version of the symphony on 24 November 1919 in Helsinki to triumphant acclaim.
The form Sibelius finally achieved is breathtakingly simple; an opening movement which begins slowly and becomes gradually faster, an intermezzo and a finale which begins quickly and gradually becomes slower.
The first movement opens with two contrasted ideas, a rising horn call and a faster motif for flute. The flute idea is passed to oboe, clarinet, oboe and back to flute, and the strings take up a rocking theme based on repeated pairs of long-short notes. Trumpets echo the flute and the violins fall into a characteristic Sibelian accompaniment, scurrying quavers, on the edge of silence, which give propulsion to the slower music in the woodwind. This is built to two widely spaced climaxes and at the point where the bassoon enters with fragments of the flute motif, Sibelius begins the process of transforming the second recapitulation into material from the original scherzo. Long trills increase the tension and the violins’ rising melody leads gradually into a long acceleration based on their earlier rocking theme. As the fast section bursts forth fragments on the horns refer back to the opening and are built to a climax which fades and is rebuilt as thundering quavers carry the music surging to a close.
The slow movement is deceptively simple, a pizzicato theme in the violins, echoed by flutes over horns and trumpets, is the basis for a series of variations, strings switching between pizzicato and arco as the tension gradually increases and fades until a central trio section, a progression in basses and low brass which underlies the second climax later emerges transformed as the main theme of the finale. Gradually the music unwinds until it simply evaporates.
The Finale opens with a scurrying figure for violins answered by flute and horns. The answering phrase is gradually built into the great swinging theme on horns, the "Swan Hymn beyond compare", underpinned by basses. The ensuing flute theme is supported by violin tremolos and the music slows almost to stillness, trumpets recall the Swan Hymn and a pattern of off-beat notes in the basses begin to propel the music to its final heroic statement and the whole orchestra plays six abrupt widely separated final chords.
