Nature Boy at 90

Composer Jean Sibelius is a hero to all Finns, most Englishmen and many Americans. His music is heavy enough to sound profound--something like the work of a rural and obstinate Brahms. It seemed revolutionary in the 1900s, daring in the teens, peculiar in the '20s, old-fashioned in the '30s. Since then it has suffered a kind of honorable obsolescence. Sibelius' last major work was published in 1926, when he was 61. Most of today's critics, finding they have nothing new to say about the music, simply muse about those tough, craggy Sibelius characteristics that remind people of Finland.

This week Jean Sibelius is 90, and the anniversary is being observed in many cities of the world. Manhattan's Symphony of the Air gave an all-Sibelius concert under the direction of a Sibelius son-in-law, Jussi Jalas; London's Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic both scheduled Sibelius evenings; even Tokyo's NHK (radio) Symphony is going all-Sibelius for one performance.

The composer himself takes all such honors calmly and gratefully, as he carries put the routine of the past half century in his big house, Ainola, in the woods 25 miles north of Helsinki. He stays in bed late to read the papers, which arrive as gifts from all over the world. On the rare occasions when he receives visitors in the afternoon, he joins them at coffee cakes, cognac and a cigar. During the day he reads heavily (mostly history), listens to concerts on his powerful radio, and works. Nobody knows just what his music is like these years, but fans like to play guessing games about whether he has finished an eighth and possibly started a ninth symphony.

Deep lines show in Sibelius' weathered face, but they do not come from material cares. He was the son of an army surgeon, studied law to please his family, but soon turned to music. When he returned from his studies in Berlin and Vienna, he married the daughter of a general and a baroness, and at the age of 31 received a generous government pension which has kept them comfortable ever since.

Everyone who knows Sibelius agrees that he loves nature, and that is perhaps the clue to why he is so widely, almost automatically, accepted as one of the century's great composers. Whatever its shortcomings and dull stretches, his music does convey to cramped city audiences a sense of nature's bigness, of a peasant tenacity. Years ago Sibelius wrote in his diary: "A wonderful day, spring and life. The earth exhales a fragrance--mutes and fortissimi. An extraordinary light that reminds one of an August haze."

Engineer's Son

When Edgard Varese (rhymes with fez) was a boy in Paris, the piano in his family's apartment was kept locked. His father, an engineer, did not want him to become a composer. Though Varese went on to study music at some of the world's best schools and eventually made a name for himelf as a fierce and formidable modernist composer, there are those who believe that his father's wish was fulfilled.

Contemporary musical composition, like other modern art forms, has shown two contradictory trends: it has sought to 1) come closer to reality than it ever has before; and 2) destroy reality or transmute it beyond recognition. In this sense, Composer Varese is a typical 20th century artist. He goes about with a tape recorder, picking up very real sounds that may range from a factory whistle to an organ note to a kissing sound captured right at home. Then, by using electronic machinery that might have baffled his father, he takes the "raw" sounds, breaks them up into components, forms rhythmic patterns with them, amplifies and filters them till they bear no resemblance to their former selves. After such treatment, the kiss, for instance, sounds like three people in high heels kicking out a wicked beat.

Last week, at Manhattan's Town Hall Composer Varese exhibited his latest composition, a piece for orchestra and tape recorder entitled Deserts. Onstage was a 20-man orchestra, five of whose members played percussion. Backstage, peering out under beetling brows, was Composer Varese himself, one hand on the controls of an Ampex tape recorder, the other giving the beat to Conductor Jacques Monod onstage. Nobody could miss the fact: about to turn 70, Varese is as unreconstructed a rebel as he was 35 years ago.

Faceless Roar. The composition started with chimes, but chimes whose tone got an added kickoff from a xylophone tick and was sustained by the high squeal of clarinets. For the next 21 minutes nothing else was so recognizable. Instrumental sounds tumbled about in wild confusion; there was never a concerted attack or a distinguishable pulse. The percussionists made sense only because many of their rat-a-tats and grumblings came out as minute variations on themes. The winds, on the other hand, were so overpowering, so agonizingly taut, that the listener felt lucky to find a recurring chord to hang on to.

Suddenly, Paris-born Conductor Monod, at 28 a standout interpreter of contemporary music, dropped his arms, and the orchestra stopped; but instead of silence, a frightful, apocalyptic roar came from one of the two loudspeaker units. At first it seemed to have no connection with the preceding part, but then it began to come clear through the clangorous fog: many of the rhythms were regurgitations of foregoing rhythms. Twice more the taped sounds interrupted the orchestra, each time became more drastic, until the effect was of actual terror, as machine-gun bursts alternated with animal wails, with monstrously loud cricket chirps, with the sounds of huge crowds of faceless people roaring. Eventually, a passage of simple dissonance sounded as sensual as Ravel.

Tumultuous Labors. "Why do I compose the way I do? Because it pleases me," says Varese amiably, and will say no more. But there is evidence that Varese writes that way as a protest. First there was his antimusical father to protest against, then (although his early work earned Debussy's admiration) an indifferent or hostile public. Again and again, his career ran into difficulties. Just as he was beginning to work on an opera with Librettist Hugo (Rosenkavalier) von Hofmannsthal, World War I broke out--Varese still takes it as something of a personal affront--and parted the Frenchman and the Austrian. After Varese moved to New York, Stokowski premiered such cacophonic--but still nonelectronic--Varese works as Ameriques and Arcana with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At that time (the 1920s) one critic wrote that Varese "thrusts up towers of steel and stone to scrape the clouds"; another found him "subterranean, cyclopean, as of blind tumultuous labors in the secret places of the earth." (Varese still thinks they both meant well.) Later observers found his discoveries of utmost importance to the growth of music, and compared him to Bauhaus architects.

More tolerant than some modernists, Varese does not think his new music ought to replace the old ("After all, you don't kill a horse because you ride a plane"). Nor is he too concerned with the fact that this music "won't sell"--he enjoys it so much himself. "It is fascinating," he says. "When I work, I promise my wife I will come to bed by 11:30. Pretty soon I think to myself, 'My God, I'm getting senile; I cannot stand up any more.' Then I look at my watch and it is 8:30 in the morning."

Years ago, Varese predicted that music "will develop with engineers and composers working together." As he tinkers with his tapes, tubes and wires, he is obviously working happily with papa, the engineer.

New Records

With only a month to go before the crack of Mozart's bicentennial year, record companies are splitting their grooves to get ready. Most of Mozart's best has been recorded already, but recording directors (and critics) can always find enough flaws to justify new versions.

Don Giovanni, one of the finest, if one of the most unpleasantly peopled, of all operas, is now out in two new versions, on three Epic LPs (with George London, Walter Berry, Hilde Zadek and Sena Jurinac, and the Vienna Symphony, conducted by Rudolf Moralt) and on four London LPs (with Cesare Siepi, Fernando Corena, Suzanne Banco and Lisa Delia Casa, and the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Josef Krips). Both casts are of first quality, but the Epic version develops a more consistent ardor, a greater urgency of the kind that might have frightened Prague opera lovers in 1787. Tone on the London set is a bit tubbier, its performance a hair more routine.

Angel has turned out a new Cos`i Fan Tutte (3 LPs) with an orchestra that sounds radiant, but with male singers (Rolando Panerai, Leopold Simoneau) who are spineless, even fearful, as they go about their sport. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Nan Merriman are more positive, but even they are no match for Herbert von Karajan's incredibly flexible Philharmonia Orchestra. Another modest-scale Mozart opera is the Abduction from the Seraglio (Decca, 2 LPs), written when the composer was 26. It is rich in broad, almost Schubertian melody, e.g., Joseph Greindl's robust first aria and Maria Stader's thrilling song of defiance. The RIAS Symphony Orchestra is not so well recorded as the Philharmonia, but talented Conductor Ferenc Fricsay whips it along at a stimulating rate.

To round out its imposing operatic catalogue. London has also released The Marriage of Figaro (4 LPs), with Hilde Gueden, Danco and Siepi, and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Erich Kleiber, and The Magic Flute (3 LPs), with Gueden, Wilma Lipp, Simoneau and Berry, conducted by Karl Bohm. Both are first-rate performances and, as a bonus, the albums contain the complete musical scores.

Other new records:

Bruckner: Quintet (Koechert Quartet; Decca). A mellow, untroubled piece in pastoral mood, the only chamber work that Symphonist Bruckner ever wrote.

Debussy: Blessed Damozel (Victoria de los Angeles. Carol Smith; Radcliffe Choral Society; Boston Symphony Or- chestra conducted by Charles Munch; Victor). A piece that Debussy submitted, at 24. as part of his duties as a winner of the Prix de Rome. (Officials hesitated to accept it because of its "systematic" vagueness.) It is less vaporous than his more mature works, but its earthy enthusiasm is winning, especially in this crystalline performance.

Folia: Harpsichord Concerto (Sylvia Marlowe; Concert Arts Players; Capitol). An uncompromising concert work (1926) by the composer of the ballet Three-Cornered Hat. The style varies between a toccata motion of unceasing activity, and arpeggios opposed by ponderous chords. The small orchestra sounds smooth through the sometimes ripping dissonances; the harpsichord sounds like somebody jumping on the bedsprings.

Roy Harris: Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (Nell Tangeman and chamber group; M-G-M). A deeply pulsing lament of heavy piano chords (played by Composer Harris' wife Johana) and elegiac countermelodies played by the violin and cello. Mezzo-Soprano Tangeman sings the Vachel Lindsay words with power and feeling to produce some fine music.

Josef Hofmann Golden Jubilee Concert (Columbia). Six Chopin works and four other romantic numbers, played in 1937 by one of the few men (now 79) who could always make the piano exciting. Even after 50 years of concertizing in the U.S. (he began at eleven, in 1887), and through the crackling of a bad recording, his elegance, fleetness, playfulness, aptness are astonishing.

Honegger: A Christmas Cantata (Michel Roux; Lamoureux Orchestra, choirs and organ conducted by Paul Sacher; Epic). A pacing, brooding opening chorus wells up to a shrieking appeal to the Saviour. After that, the music carries on with more competence than excitement, but it does weave in several Christmas carols (sung in their original languages by children) to make a big, festive impression. A typical work by the first member of France's famed Les Six to die.

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