Sibelius: Incidental Music to Pelléas et Mélisande, Op.46 (1905)
1. At the Castle Gate
2. Mélisande
2a. By the Seashore
3. By a Spring in the Park
4. The Three Blind Sisters
5. Pastorale
6. Mélisande at the Spinning Wheel
7. Entr’acte
8. Death of Mélisande
The years which separated the completion of the second symphony (1902) from that of the third (1907) were particularly significant for Sibelius, in that his whole attitude to musical expression was undergoing an internal metamorphosis: from the big Romantic/Nationalistic style, which had already made him famous, was to evolve a leaner, more compressed Classicism, through which his most personal utterances were later to find their most satisfying outlet. It was surely no coincidence too that during this time he chose to leave the bustling metropolis of Helsinki to make his home in the peace and solitude of the forests about twenty miles to the north, near the village of Järvenpää. Of course, this transitional period is endlessly fascinating for scholars, but it also gave rise to a number of compositions which have become particularly well-known, but which are less concerned with the rigours of the symphonic process.
One such example is the sombre Valse Triste, which happens to be the opening number of some incidental music Sibelius wrote for a play (Kuolema – Death) by a distant relative, Arvid Järnefelt. During the next few years, he was called upon to provide scores for several more such productions, nearly all of which remained in manuscript – although he did publish concert suites selected from some of the music. The most substantial of these is Pelléas et Mélisande (1905), where he considered only one item to be inappropriate outside the theatre. Six of the movements were preludes to various scenes in the play, two more (Nos. 2a and 5) actually accompanied dialogue, while The Three Blind Sisters was a setting of Mélisande’s little song at the beginning of Act III:2. Sibelius arranged this for cor anglais and a pair of clarinets – the instruments which seem to be featured most prominently throughout. Should we look for any significance in this? Certainly Maeterlinck’s play, with its shadowy symbolism and imagery, might have been expected to provoke some such response – as it did at much the same time with Fauré, Schönberg, and – of course – Debussy. But one ought not to seek here a truly authentic representation of the author’s peculiarly intangible world: Sibelius was hardly of the same Gallic temperament. There is no sense of a “gauze” across the front of the stage to distance us from the action, as with Debussy’s opera; colours are clearly defined, with a Nordic sparkle – brilliantly achieved with such restricted forces at his disposal. Atmosphere is not wanting either, particularly in By the Seashore, with its fearsome “rising of the wind” (this is one of the two melodramas, actually omitted by Sir Thomas Beecham in his legendary recording).
Most of these pieces are indeed miniature tone-poems, setting the scene for what is to follow – e.g. Mélisande at the Spinning Wheel, with its ominous portends of the disasters soon to unfold. The plot itself is hardly the raison d’être of the drama: nothing could be more stereotyped than the husband (Golaud) whose unproven suspicions grow into frenzied jealousy and the subsequent murder of his half-brother (Pelléas). Everything is only half real: we don’t know where the castle in “Allemond” really is, nor who the characters are and where they came from. Most mysterious of all is the little Mélisande herself, pale and fragile; Sibelius’s affecting portrait of her (another Valse Triste) may not ultimately be as striking as the delicious Pastorale, or the pure joie-de-vivre of the Entr’acte. But her innate sadness touches a deep nerve through the halting phrases of the cor anglais, so that the simply expressed Death music at the end achieves a greater poignancy as that half-remembered picture is recalled.
© Alan George
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