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Work

Sibelius - Valse triste, Opus 44, No. 1

Composer

Jean Sibelius

Sibelius wrote his familiar Valse triste as part of incidental music to a play by his brother-in-law; within the play, the wistful dance illustrated a dying woman’s memory of her halcyon days.

Sibelius composed Valse triste as part of incidental music for Arvid Järnefelt’s play Kuolema in 1903; Valse triste was published separately the following year. Sibelius conducted the concert premiere of Valse triste on April 25, 1904, with the Philharmonic Society in Helsinki. Max Fiedler led the first BSO performance of Valse triste on April 1, 1910. Serge Koussevitzky led the first Tanglewood performance of Valse triste with the BSO on August 3, 1948, as part of the Tanglewood on Parade gala concert that summer in a segment called “The Evolution of the Waltz,” which included Johann Strauss II’s Voices of Spring and Ravel’s La Valse.

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius 's Finlandia and Valse triste are his two most famous and popular works—so famous and so popular that they're seldom heard in serious symphonic concerts anymore, though they deserve to be. In fact, until BSO performances of both works in March 2010—when they were programmed late in the game by a substitute conductor—it had been more than fifty years since the BSO had performed either of them. Valse triste appeared frequently on Boston Pops programs, meanwhile, as well as on Youth Concert programs.

Sibelius composed Valse triste (“Sad waltz”) four years after Finlandia, and like the earlier piece, it was written as incidental music, this time for a play by his brother-in-law, entitled Kuolema (“Death”). Originally called Valse lente (“Slow waltz”), the music accompanied a scene in which an old woman dreams she is at a masked ball; her partner, it turns out, is Death. Like the famous waltzes of Johann Strauss, Jr., that Sibelius admired so much, Valse triste is actually a series of interrelated waltzes, four of them in fact. The piece begins subtly, with a rhythm, before we hear a harmony or a melody—a gambit Ravel was to remember when he composed La Valse. Melancholy is the chief mood of all four waltzes, from the gentle, almost-pleasant kind, through the kind you can't shake off, like the opening waltz, which links the others and reappears at the end. Then there is a quiet, chilling, three-chord postlude, to tell us it's all over.

But here's a brief postscript: Sibelius considered Valse triste a trifle and sold all the rights for a pittance; yet the publisher made a fortune, and Sibelius of course couldn't escape the piece for the rest of his life.

RICHARD DYER

Richard Dyer was the longtime classical music critic of the Boston Globe and the author of a series of podcasts for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.