# How is Sibelius avant-garde?



## wilson868 (Aug 16, 2015)

So it is the 150th anniversary of Sibelius' birth. Many people (in particular Morton Feldman) said that Sibelius is ahead of his time, in e.g. the musical form and his symphonic idiom as supposed to Mahler. I don't think I really understand these discourses, and so could someone elaborate what these mean?

PS In fact I have the same question for Nielsen, but that should go for another thread.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

The ways in which Nielsen was avant-garde are more obvious to me than those of Sibelius. But I have been listening to Sibelius's 7th symphony quite a lot recently, and I am finally beginning to truly love this work. Sibelius seems to immediately start developing his themes which are sometimes hard to even recognize as such. This partly gives the music its very organic and seemless feel. But I still feel it to be very carefully and deliberately constructed. The puzzling aspect about whether to consider it avant garde or not, is that I can't think of any 'direct successors' to the boundaries that Sibelius pushed in that regard. That doesn't mean there aren't any. 

Nielsen on the other hand, feels much more formally conventional to me, excepting the 5th symphony, but tonally much more avant garde. If you listen to that Clarinet Concerto, you'll wonder why he isn't commonly lauded amongst composers like Bartok and Hindemith as a great 20th century innovator.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Sibelius was the start of early minimalism with his late works. His late symphonies for example.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

(adding to clavi's post) ...and that's not even the end of the matter. Listen how Sibelius smoothly changes rhythms and tempi like nobody's business (looking forward to Carter), from slow oscillations to fast patterns and the other way around (like Ligeti). His mature scores don't really look like anything else on the repertoire. and then there's the self-destructive music that is the 4th symphony


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## Adam Weber (Apr 9, 2015)

clavichorder said:


> The puzzling aspect about whether to consider it avant garde or not, is that I can't think of any 'direct successors' to the boundaries that Sibelius pushed in that regard. That doesn't mean there aren't any.


Per Nørgård.








clavichorder said:


> Nielsen on the other hand, feels much more formally conventional to me, excepting the 5th symphony, but tonally much more avant garde. If you listen to that Clarinet Concerto, you'll wonder why he isn't commonly lauded amongst composers like Bartok and Hindemith as a great 20th century innovator.


I agree completely.


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## Benny (Feb 4, 2013)

Sibelius is avant-garde because he predicted the reaction to modern music...:lol:


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I can comment only as one listener. Sibelius was first-in-the-door with the taiga/tundra mood-scape. He probably couldn't have created it without _some_ modification of process. If that guess is correct, and if 'cutting edge' and avant garde are related, well there you go.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I think using the term avant-garde in reference to Sibelius does a disservice to him, not because there is anything wrong with avant-garde composing, but because it inevitably sounds like an attempt to stuff him into an historical framework or conscript him into a cultural movement, whereas one of the things I find most wonderful about his music is the degree to which it resists such attempts. The fact that he doesn't have clear successors is another plus in my book. He was one of a kind and the more composers in this category, those unwilling to passively fly into the pigeon holes we prepare for them, the better.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Benny said:


> Sibelius is avant-garde because he predicted the reaction to modern music...:lol:


What, by considering Schoenberg and Berg great composers long before the musical establishment took them seriously?

Anyway, I don't care whether Sibelius is avant-garde or not. He was an excellent composer with a unique voice who wrote music of great beauty and power.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sibelius wasn't avant garde. He was original. 

An avant garde ("vanguard") is a collective movement which touts innovation but in practice has boundaries and rules which define you as "in" or "out" at a particular time. In his time, Sibelius was very much out. "Provincial beyond description," said Virgil Thomson. "The worst composer in the world," said Rene Leibowitz. I don't think Boulez ever singled him out as "useless," but since almost everyone else was useless to Pierre we can assume that Sibelius was too.

I hope Sibelius realized what an honor it was not to be avant garde.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Did Morton Feldman (or those other unnamed people) ever use the words "avant garde"? Or did they just say he was ahead of his time?


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

What is "avant garde," if I may ask those who use the term? Some have indirectly defined it, but otherwise, we are working around this term that, I believe, no one can accurately define -- assuming a concrete definition actually exists!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Avey said:


> What is "avant garde," if I may ask those who use the term? Some have indirectly defined it, but otherwise, we are working around this term that, I believe, no one can accurately define -- assuming a concrete definition actually exists!


The term avant-garde wasn't really applied to music until post-WWII, and then there has been some debate as to whether or not it can meaningfully describe earlier movements.

In the narrower sense, the musical avant-garde includes the Darmstadt serialists and post-serialists, the American experimental scene, and harder to categorize music such as musique concrete. It would not include Roger Sessions, Stravinsky, Milton Babbitt, or others who stuck to more traditional modes of expression and methods of composition. Music from before WWII would not be meaningfully encompassed by this term, and thus Sibelius would be excluded.

In the larger sense of "music that innovates in ways that are not common at the time," we can certainly include music like Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, Mussorgsky, Strauss, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and many others in addition to the composers in the first category. In that sense, I don't see a reason why we couldn't include Sibelius as well.

Either way, the term is value-neutral to me.

The Morton Feldman quote didn't actually say "avant-garde," and actually was closer to "The composers you think are radical might actually be conservative, and the composers you think are conservative might actually be radical."


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Ukko said:


> I can comment only as one listener. Sibelius was first-in-the-door with the taiga/tundra mood-scape. He probably couldn't have created it without _some_ modification of process. If that guess is correct, and if 'cutting edge' and avant garde are related, well there you go.


I think Tchaikovsky has a better "first in the door" claim.






Or Raff....


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2015)

wilson868 said:


> So it is the 150th anniversary of Sibelius' birth. Many people (in particular Morton Feldman) said that Sibelius is ahead of his time, in e.g. the musical form and his symphonic idiom as supposed to Mahler. I don't think I really understand these discourses, and so could someone elaborate what these mean?
> 
> PS In fact I have the same question for Nielsen, but that should go for another thread.


As you see, some respondents have queried the use of the term avant-garde, rather than offering insights into what it is about his music that is innovative or original, which is what I assume you are asking. You might elaborate on what Morton Feldman said that prompted your question.



Ukko said:


> I can comment only as one listener. Sibelius was first-in-the-door with the taiga/tundra mood-scape. He probably couldn't have created it without _some_ modification of process.


You may be right - I wonder whether he played with overall shape (a one-movement symphony, for example) more than 'process'? As for the idea of 'taiga/tundra' moodscape, I'm not so sure. Is that you (and those who pick their conductor of Sibelius on that basis) projecting?



Richannes Wrahms said:


> (adding to clavi's post) ...and that's not even the end of the matter. Listen how Sibelius smoothly changes rhythms and tempi like nobody's business (looking forward to Carter), from slow oscillations to fast patterns and the other way around (like Ligeti). His mature scores don't really look like anything else on the repertoire.


Can you give an example of this that sets him apart from his predecessors? Or rather, can anyone else point to other composers who've already done this? I can think of the last movement of the 5th Symphony - but is it original?



ArtMusic said:


> Sibelius was the start of early minimalism with his late works. His late symphonies for example.


I can't see it myself.


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## timh (Nov 14, 2014)

Sibelius Importance in the 21st century
http://www.sibelius.fi/english/musiikki/js_saveltajana_02.html


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## wilson868 (Aug 16, 2015)

Could you talk a little bit more how Norgard is influenced by Sibelius? On the form, melody, counterpoint or orchestration?


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## wilson868 (Aug 16, 2015)

Adam Weber said:


> Per Nørgård.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 Could you talk a little bit more how Norgard is influenced by Sibelius? On the form, melody, counterpoint or orchestration? Or naturalism?


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## wilson868 (Aug 16, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> As you see, some respondents have queried the use of the term avant-garde, rather than offering insights into what it is about his music that is innovative or original, which is what I assume you are asking. You might elaborate on what Morton Feldman said that prompted your question.
> 
> You may be right - I wonder whether he played with overall shape (a one-movement symphony, for example) more than 'process'? As for the idea of 'taiga/tundra' moodscape, I'm not so sure. Is that you (and those who pick their conductor of Sibelius on that basis) projecting?
> 
> ...


Oops I think you are right that I am using the wrong word. I think I was paraphrasing the Wikipedia article of Jean Sibelius:

In 1984, American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman gave a lecture in Darmstadt, Germany, wherein he stated that "the people you think are radicals might really be conservatives - the people you think are conservatives might really be radical," whereupon he began to hum Sibelius' Fifth Symphony.[55]

The avant-garde term might just be an eye-catcher... what I would like to bring up is a way to appreciate how Sibelius' music is ahead of his time, and deserves his status as a respected composer like any other.


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