The Confidence of the Newlywed

Let us set aside for a moment the common image of Sibelius, the bald and brooding Finn living the recluse’s villa life north of the city (“In Helsinki the song died within me,” said the old Jean), where the house, Villa Ainola, built by the hands of the Great Composer, was heated by log fires, the birds sang in their sanctuary, and Sibelius had calm and quiet to labor long over his windswept symphonies of stark and chilly Finnish landscapes. Instead, he who composed the Karelia Suite did it, first, fast; second, while living at the frenetic Finnish freedom-fighting center of Helsinki; and third, instead of depicting the gradual dynamic swells of nature, he captured the step-lightly man-about-town confidence of a wavy-haired new groom at twenty-seven, for that was Sibelius at the time, describing himself as sensual and jealous by nature. His bride was the former Aino Jarnefelt, artfully-inclined, possessing a certain stoicism in her manner. Sibelius once reminded her of the “colossal reserves of iron and strength that you possess!” Those nearest to Aino, including her five daughters, praised her for her honesty and simplicity of character – “equally open and true, equally loving and responsive,” said her loving husband. “It is your simplicity that I value most. It is this same simplicity that is the most important thing in art too!” And so we find at the start of the Karelia Suite, written in the afterglow of the couple’s honeymoon in the province of Karelia, a clear and simple march, horn-driven, which swells to a climax and then fades away. The horns rest in the gentle and reflective second movement written for strings and woodwinds. The final march steps lightly with confidence, fulfilling a commission from the Viipuri Student Association for incidental music to a series of historical tableaux at a pageant in November, 1893.