For the
symphony is like a summary and a conclusion. It carries us into some
high place before which the life of man is spread out and made apparent.
The four movements are the four planes that solidify a single concept.
The first sets us in a grim forest solitude, out in some great unlimited
loneliness, beneath a somber sky. There is movement, a climax, a single
cry of passion and despair, and then, only the soughing of wind through
hoary branches. The scherzo is the flickering of mad watery lights, a
fantastic whipping dance, a sudden sinister conclusion. In the adagio, a
bleak lament struggles upwards, seems to push through some vast inert
mass, to pierce to a momentary height and largeness, and then sinks,
broken. And through the finale there quivers an illusory light. The
movement is the march, the oncoming rush, of vast formless hordes, the
passage of unnamed millions that surge for an instant with their cries
and banners, and vanish into nothingness. It is possible that Sibelius
will create another work similarly naked and intense. More definitive,
it cannot be.
Loeffler
Legend records of Inez de Castro, Queen of Castile, that she was
dethroned and driven into exile by a rival, and that before her husband
and her partisans could restore her to kingdom, she had died.
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