Sibelius

Dark turning of the earth into light.
Return of hope.
Though for a child it is again, again.
Amidst the blades of grass, a whisper.
My house has always been full of music.
Soft vibration easing air.
Earliest memories in the country.
Scratchchch of the needle.
Saturday mornings, the overwhelming volume and scale of Mahler.
Beethoven symphonies through youngsters’ house.
Great roars and rippling.
That accompanied my father, writing his sermon for tomorrow.
His sermon, his music, to all intents and purposes his house.
Like having a whole orchestra in my living room.
Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse, said Flanders.
Than having a whole orchestra in my living room.
My father would laugh at that.
Collections of Bruno Walter performances.
The township around us full of sounds.
Milk trucks, magpies, whistling.
The self is just an example.
The Pastoral Symphony.
When I came to the big city I discovered another music.
It was on the radio.
Rectangle box plugged into the skirting board.
On the advertising stations my father never listened to.
On principle.
English rock and roll.
Detroit soul.
Australian synthesis.
Friday on my mind.
This became my music.
The energy was my thing, it’s beautiful simplicity.
Under the sheets and blankets in the dark.
I was possessive of this music.
And it was the music my father did not like and did not play.
Silence on the subject.
His music was long and boring whereas my music was brief and brilliant.
Little did I know.
Little did I know that every other boy in the city of two million had the same.
Same possessiveness possessiveness.
The energy of being alive.
On Sundays we were allowed to play Peter, Paul, and Mary after dinner.
Lemon Tree, See What Tomorrow brings.
Probably at mother’s insistence a rock and roll record entered the house.
An EP of Twist and Shout.
The Fab Four, but they were acceptable, everyone bought their records.
And they were stylish.
Thereafter possibilities increased.
Followed many phases of teenage music.
Followed for a season or for a reason.
Agreement in the schoolyard.
Haircuts and little symbols of rebellion on lapels.
The resistance to my father’s music became entrenched, a habit.
A reaction to authority or wrong or disappointment.
No longer a response of the ear.
That stuff just goes on and on.
I suppose eventually my habit became long and boring, like his music.
Not a brief and brilliant attitude.
Winter returned after the brown leaves.
Black evening and golden streaks.
One cold night in my room I switched over to the classical station.
Warming.
Something to do.
I thought I knew about this long classical stuff that had no singing.
And no catchy riffs.
But for once my oedipal prejudice was ignored.
The fixed attitude was forgotten.
What is this sensation?
This music was kind of melancholy, but powerful.
It seemed to have courage.
How could music have courage?
And instead of stopping after three minutes, after three minutes it started going deeper.
Entirety of attention, bodily feeling, my head entranced.
I looked into my dark garden, nectarine bare branches.
But I could have been anywhere.
I needed to know.
Eight PM.
Checked the Green Guide.
Next evening I spoke.
“Last night I heard this amazing music. Sibyl-us, um, Sigh-by-us. Something.”
Couldn’t even pronounce the name.
“Sib-bay-lee-ouse,” my father corrected me.
I don’t remember anything else.
A correction, a reprimand: normally enough to make me go back inside.
Inside myself.
Over-sensitive to a fault.
The self in a constant process of becoming.
He was the expert.
Surprisingly though, my father had some Sibelius records.
Surprising because this was meant to be my possession, not his.
Great black discs fell out of album covers onto the player.
Selves enjoying their own game of finding.
He must have been delighted.
I didn’t see that, his interest.
But I had broken through.
I was going to listen to any Sibelius that was around.
My father had No. 1 and No. 2.
Slow moody openings.
Haunting sounds in the distance, then gradual takeover by some rush of power.
I couldn’t tell you what the instruments were or the orchestration.
Later I would read critics who called this Late Romantic.
Or Scandinavian nationalism.
Harbingers of the modern.
For me, they were moody openings and rushing sounds.
It was the way an emotion took hold inside and grew in intensity.
Technical words still mean little to me.
It’s always the music moves and takes hold.
About the first Sibelius record I bought was a couple of years later.
Symphony No. 5, with its amazing ending.
Huge strikes of sound filled with huge silences.
I played it over and over.
The fourth movement in particular.
I learnt that this ending was famous.
But what does famous mean?
This was a private discovery to which I brought all my own meanings.
There wasn’t anyone else involved here.
The sounds kept taking me places.
And I began to anticipate the changes in the movements.
It was like reading my own changing days and emotions.
On the cover of No. 5 was a picture of a Finnish lake.
Sibelius covers always had pictures of snow fields and birch trees.
Swans or flocks of ducks could often be seen in the icy distance.
Never any people, other than a picture of the composer on the back, maybe.
Young, with a stern look, swept back hair and a dashing moustache.
Old, with a stern look, bald head and no moustache.
But this music was so set in my mind that I still don’t think of Finland.
Sibelius means cold winter evenings in Melbourne.
Sunset steak-red.
A cold wind in the street.
Coated figures walking home from the railway station.
The dark garden.
A cat scratching the door to be let in.
And the light on in my own room, concentrating on the next subject of interest.
Especially Sibelius now.
Once in Stockholm I heard him on the radio.
But all I could remember was Melbourne in July.
There is favourite music I collect randomly.
Miles Davis, West African music, Sonic Youth, Claudio Monteverdi, John Cage.
There is nothing systematic about this.
And I still collect any Sibelius, when I think about it.
One day I might become systematic about this composer.
Even write something about him.
I go into Thomas’s and pick out a version of No. 2.
“Hmm,” says the bearded expert behind the counter.
“Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic. That’s a really weird version.”
He rummages through a CD-file while saying this.
“Are you sure you don’t want something else?”
Instant my reply.
“Yes, I know Sib-bay-lee-ose. This is No. 2. This is the one I want.”
I am the expert.
I can pronounce his name too.
He backs down.
“Okay, okay. Sure.”
I get the feeling he has a different attitude towards me.
So he wants Bernstein’s No. 2, so he must know what he’s on about.
This mind game goes on all the time at Thomas’s.
I had never heard Bernstein’s version, but it is amazing.
The cover has a picture of Bernstein, not the composer.
Either he is worried about the horns or he is zooming into the stratosphere.
Bernstein, so New York.
Sibelius, so Helsinki.
This is not a weird version at all.
It’s amazing.
It is Melbourne in the winter.
There is a funny anecdote I’ll tell you about Noel Coward sometime.
The funniest thing being Sibelius, not Coward.
But who really cares about the Book of Musical Anecdotes?
All the leaves have blown off the nectarine tree.
I’m listening to the radio at nine o’clock at night.
And it could start raining at any moment.
The cat wants to get in.

-- July 1998