Vers un cosmopolitisme nordique : Space, Place, and the Case of Sibelius’s “Nordic Orientalism”

Abstract

Major anniversaries offer an auspicious opportunity to reassess the contribution that a particular composer has made to his or her respective musical canon. But celebrations and other commemorative events can often retrench established patterns of reception rather than clearing fresh ground: the dogged persistence of critical tropes or myths can frequently overcome the need for renewed scholarly scrutiny. Writing in the wake of Jean Sibelius’s 150th anniversary is an opportune time to contemplate such issues of critical balance and coverage, and to assess the significance of his work for the promotion of Finnish cultural identity both at home and abroad. At first glance, this seems a promising enterprise. The Sibelius150 website (http://sibelius150.org/en), for example, eschewed the customary images of pine forests, lakes, and snow-clad landscapes with which his music has often been associated in the public imagination, and instead boasted a genuinely eclectic outlook.1 The homepage included links to the inaugural International Jean Sibelius Composition Competition (with prize-winners from Mexico, South Korea, China, and Argentina); a three-day festival of electronica and digital technology held in Rotterdam titled “SibHack”; testimonies from superstar musical celebrities such as Sir Simon Rattle; the publication of My Sibelius, an anniversary volume of short essays by musicians, scholars, and enthusiasts (including a contribution from Sir Roger Gifford, “a notable figure on the London cultural scene” and UK manager of Skandinaviska Enskilda Bank); and a distinguished portrait of the Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, alongside daily listings of Sibelius-related events, photographs, and archive film footage. One might, on this basis, acclaim the cosmopolitization of Sibelius: his transformation from local hero to a powerfully global brand (complete with anniversary logo) is surely welcomed. Yet this narrative conceals a more complex historical context, one that downplays the multiple layers of identity that closer examination of his work reveals.2 As Tomi Mäkelä perceptively warns, we should be wary of locating Sibelius’s music too firmly “along a cultural axis between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’” in a way that fixes or overdetermines his position in relation to the European mainstream without acknowledging the dynamic nature of such sliding scales.3 In part, the story being promoted by the anniversary is inevitably an exclusive one. For example, the Sibelius150 website has been published largely in parallel Finnish-English translations only: noticeably fewer texts were available in Swedish, Sibelius’s own first language. Attending to corners of Sibelius’s career absent from such promotion might then unveil aspects of his life and work that have remained under-investigated in recent years. And readdressing the precise quality or character of the work that results may in turn complicate our understanding of the process of identity-formation in ways that challenge received notions of musical cosmopolitanism as a positive or productive scholarly paradigm. The casual or uncritical application of the term can conceal more insidious discourses of language, race, and political appropriation, as the case of Sibelius’s anniversary begins to reveal.