Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 6, Op. 104
Jean Sibelius was born in Tavestehus, Finland in 1865 and died in Järvenpää in 1957. He completed this symphony in 1923 and led the first performance with the Helsinki City Orchestra the same year. The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, harp, and strings. Duration is approximately 27 minutes.

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You often see this work listed as the Symphony No. 6 in D minor, but Sibelius never called it that either in his autograph score or in its published versions. That phrase “in D minor” has profound musical implications, and the absence of it does, too.
The major key/minor key harmonic language is one of the underpinnings of Western orchestral music, one famously transcended in the twentieth century. This language not only defined the scales and harmonies composers used for hundreds of years, it defined the very sound of music itself. But before about 1500 or so, most musicians thought in terms of modes rather than keys. Modes were a way of organizing the assorted raw materials of music; though their definitions have changed almost continuously over the centuries, modern musicians still use the names assigned to them in classical antiquity.
If you sit at a piano and play all the white keys between one C and the next, you have played the Ionian mode; today we call that the C major scale. Likewise if you play the white keys between A and A you have played the Aeolian mode; today it is known as one of the several permutations of the A minor scale. Now, if you play the white keys between D and D you have played the Dorian mode; you have also entered the harmonic world that rules much of Sibelius’ Sixth Symphony.
That harmonic world has an air of mystery to it; perhaps it is better expressed as a lack of certainty. This corresponds nicely with Sibelius’ usual symphonic method: he does not give us fleshed-out “themes” that are later varied and developed. Instead, he gives us fragments, bits of musical materials that are combined in different ways, colliding with one another and evolving continuously. Sibelius likened those fragments to the tiles of a mosaic: we don’t see the final picture until all the tiles are fitted together properly.
The opening of this symphony is arresting: its high, descending violins are a window to a clear, cold sky. The winds bring more elemental fragments, but nowhere do we find a place of repose, a place we can call “home.” At every turn there is something new, sometimes ravishingly beautiful but never the final word. The music regenerates itself until the end, where Sibelius simply leaves us hanging.
The winds that open the second movement remind us of the first, but only for a time. This music takes place at a low temperature and out of time—it is a very long interval before we realize that this is not a slow movement. (It turns out that the symphony has none.) Eventually the music coalesces into something quite lively, but as soon as this idea seems to gain traction Sibelius simply stops.
The scherzo is a rondo with galloping rhythms and swirling strings—and it is music unlike anything we have ever heard, even from Sibelius himself.
The Finale again begins with bright tones, answered by warmer strings. The time is again ambiguous, but not in the same way as the second movement. Here we’re sometimes unsure of what century we’re in, as nearly medieval themes coexist with the modern. The symphony’s wildest music is yet to come, full of passion and drama. There are returns to themes from the first movement as well as an outpouring of fresh ones, all combining in a logic that seems both predetermined and free at the same time.
When we reach the end we realize we’ve just had a remarkable musical experience, one without precedent and one that remains unduplicated. It is an experience that is all too rare.

-Mark Rohr