Still, the
honesty, the grimness and savagery and lack of sensuality, are
Sibelius's own. The adagio is steeped in his proper pathos, the pathos
of brief, bland summers, of light that falls for a moment, gentle and
mellow, and then dies away. Something like a memory of a girl sitting
amid the simple flowers in the white northern sunshine haunts the last
few measures. The crying, bold finale is full of the tragedy of northern
nature. And in the Second Symphony the independence is complete. The
orchestra is handled individually, sparingly, and with perfect point.
Often the instruments sound singly, or by twos and threes. What had been
but half realized in the earlier work is distinct and important in this.
It is as if Sibelius had come upon himself, and so been able to rid his
work of all superfluity and indecision. And, curiously, through speaking
his own language in all its homeliness and peasant flavor, he seems to
have moved more closely to his land. The work, his "pastoral" symphony,
for all its absolute and formal character, reflects a landscape. It is
full of home sounds, of cattle and "saeters," of timbered houses and
sparse nature. And through it there glances a pale evanescent sunlight,
and through it there sounds the burden of a lowly tragedy.
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