![]() But what does any of this mean? As Knussen pointed out, Sibelius “was in fact a great structural innovator. The title is a reference to Tapio, the forest spirit of Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala, and when he wrote the piece Sibelius already had a well-earned reputation as one of the great nationalist composers. Composed in 1926, this brooding quarter of an hour is a starkly beautiful thing, a piece that the late English composer Oliver Knussen once said “would be very hard to listen to and not think of snow.” Mellor gets off to a promising start with Sibelius’s last completed orchestral work, Tapiola. If further connections can be drawn to the landscape, architecture and design, and Nordic noir miniseries, so much the better.īut how can he hear the music minus its cultural appurtenances? Nielsen’s Sinfonia espansiva, “the most overtly Danish” of his six symphonies, gives “musical expression to the blustery energies experienced in flat, coastal Denmark.” Really? ![]() Mellor’s book considers music from Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland, the author’s aim being to find connections between the works of Carl Nielsen, Edvard Grieg, Kurt Atterberg, Jean Sibelius and Jón Leifs, as well as their musical heirs and he is determined to find them. When Andrew Mellor mentions that second joke early in his new book, The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture, he admits that the humour relies on nothing more than a stereotype. How do you know when you’ve met a Finnish extrovert? He’s looking at your shoes, not his own. ![]() Two clichés in a single, admittedly quite funny, joke: the silent Finn and the hard-drinking Finn. As they raise their first glass, the Dane calls out “Skål!” The second time it’s the Swede’s turn: “Skål!” On the third round the Norwegian goes to speak but the Finn interrupts: “Look, are we here to drink or talk?” A Dane, a Swede, a Norwegian and a Finn walk into a bar and order a bottle of aquavit.
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