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Sun Forest Lake: The Symphonies & Tone Poems of Jean Sibelius
‘David Vernon’s book helps everyone, no matter how previously informed, to find their own way into Sibelius’s extraordinary world.’ — Sakari Oramo, chief conductor, BBC Symphony Orchestra
‘Sibelius’s music is as synthetic as a skyscraper but as natural and spontaneous as a dividing cell’
Developing a style and logic all his own, outside the trends of modernism, Jean Sibelius wrote some of most captivating and resonant orchestral works of the twentieth century, and his symphonies and tone poems have become among the most celebrated music of all time – yet it is music which is darker, more challenging and complex, than has often been supposed.
In his new book, David Vernon – author of Beauty and Mahler’s 11 Symphonies and The String Quartets – explores these evocative, compelling and thought-provoking works of art, examining in particular their relationship with the natural world and the great Finnish literary epic, the Kalevala.
Each work, including Kullervo, the seven symphonies, and the tone poems from En Saga to Tapiola, is given its own chapter, which includes an essay followed by a detailed movement-by-movement guide to the music.
‘Sibelius’s music is as synthetic as a skyscraper but as natural and spontaneous as a dividing cell’
Developing a style and logic all his own, outside the trends of modernism, Jean Sibelius wrote some of most captivating and resonant orchestral works of the twentieth century, and his symphonies and tone poems have become among the most celebrated music of all time – yet it is music which is darker, more challenging and complex, than has often been supposed.
In his new book, David Vernon – author of Beauty and Mahler’s 11 Symphonies and The String Quartets – explores these evocative, compelling and thought-provoking works of art, examining in particular their relationship with the natural world and the great Finnish literary epic, the Kalevala.
Each work, including Kullervo, the seven symphonies, and the tone poems from En Saga to Tapiola, is given its own chapter, which includes an essay followed by a detailed movement-by-movement guide to the music.
510 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 5, 2024
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March 5, 2026
I’m becoming a fan of this guy—David Vernon—’s books. I previously read his history of Gustav Mahler, Beauty and Sadness, and loved it. Here, Vernon gives similar treatment to another of my favourite composers: Jean Sibelius, the magical “apparition from the Nordic woods”.
Vernon is an academic (originally a Shakespeare expert), but I like how his academic training never eclipses his love of music, which shines through in the poetry of his writing, rarely compromising the logic of his arguments while still allowing for some subjective reach:
Sibelius’s long life doesn’t find the same hyperactive peaks and troughs of Mahler’s short and fiery one. Mahler, every inch a genius, was a comet burning far too hot for longevity; Sibelius, on the other hand, landed as a mellower figure, not without a spark for life, but seemingly a man always minded to retreat back, after he’d had his not inconsiderable fill, to his woodland hideaway (something I relate to). Vernon’s two respective books reflect this difference. Sun Forest Lake is not quite so engaging as Beauty and Sadness, albeit through no fault of Vernon’s; it’s simply that Sibelius’s life lacked some of the energy and drama of Mahler’s.
Nevertheless, Sibelius remains a mysterious figure. A man of contradictions: the Finnish national hero who both enjoyed his solitude and his lavish excesses. Hints of manic depression and (barely) functional alcoholism contrast with his lucid, almost terrifying economy of style. His love of nature perhaps also fuelled his deep tendency towards solitude and melancholia, a state of mind that proved artistically fruitful but personally costly. Some of his greatest works seem to have come from his darkest periods: the death of his two-year-old daughter, Kirsti, of typhoid, in 1900; the lingering dread left by the removal of a cancerous growth; a deepening alcohol dependency; and finally his lifelong battle with self-doubt, which culminated in the burning of the manuscript of his lost 8th symphony.
Indeed, Sibelius appears to have been an artist, perhaps like Virginia Woolf, for whom the art that channelled out came at such an inordinate price that one can’t help but wonder whether, to him, it was worth it. After completing his late masterpieces (the 7th Symphony and the winter woodland evocations of the anti-symphonic final tone poem, Tapiola) he became stuck. His commitment to musical economy had already reached its apotheosis, leaving him with nowhere left to turn. The following 30 years of (near) silence are often regarded as some great mystery, but Vernon argues that Sibelius had written enough. And I’m inclined to agree. For one thing, I suspect he was of the temperamental persuasion where, had he forced more from himself, the path may have taken him further into the muddy waters of despair, perhaps one day driving him down to the bottom of some Finnish Ouse. Instead, Vernon argues that he simply decided to retire, concluding his legacy with a collection of capstone masterpieces which sit atop an impressive catalogue of music which includes the seven symphonies, a vast body of tone poems and songs, as well as the incidental music to The Tempest. It seems only wise to have stopped when he did. As a symphonist, his reputation is secure and well-earned. All seven are extraordinary, and, as a unit, they sit comfortably on top table alongside the catalogues of the greatest symphonists in history: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and Shostakovich.
Sibelius went on to live into his early nineties, finally leading a balanced and wholesome life in his retirement. I’ve always previously imagined the burning of his 8th as a tragedy rendered from a fit of despair, but Vernon made me wonder whether, in truth, it was instead a defiant act of self-preservation. Indeed, I’m still haunted by these two quotes from his fellow composer, Malcolm Arnold:
And, more chillingly:
So, although Sibelius’s decision appears at first to have been a sad one, he escaped Arnold’s crippling late-life malaise. In any case, I wonder whether the existence of an 8th symphony would’ve tempered some of the mystery of the strange, all-consuming white light that seems to saturate itself into oblivion at the end of the 7th (one of the most mysterious and beguiling moments I know of in all music). After that, perhaps silence was a positive artistic act.
A favourite image Vernon left me with was that of the moment of Sibelius’s passing, at 91, in 1957. By sheer chance his 5th symphony was being broadcast live that night from Helsinki. As the great Finn slipped away, his family listened to the concert on the radio beside his bed. Noticing that he seemed to have gone, they turned up the volume in an attempted revival, but to no avail. I like to imagine his soul borne aloft, flying away from Ainola alongside his favourite graceful birds, the majesty of the gradual re-emergence of the 5th’s desperately beautiful Swan Theme, music I hear as an extraordinary yearning for freedom — freedom from living and freedom from oneself —, serenading his journey into eternity.
Vernon is an academic (originally a Shakespeare expert), but I like how his academic training never eclipses his love of music, which shines through in the poetry of his writing, rarely compromising the logic of his arguments while still allowing for some subjective reach:
“Above all, Sibelius's music concerns itself with the relationship between a melancholic yet ebullient mind and the wider world outside it; with the function of emotions, the imagination and the intellect in human life; with how art can survey, scrutinise and give meaning to the strangeness of existence.
“Frequently, therefore, not only do the abstract and the programmatic coalesce in Sibelius; the elemental — fire, earth, air, water — are also attached to the psychological. Nature painting in his music is never mere sonic landscaping but a penetrating examination of human mental processes, as well as insecurity and instability. The dark forests of Tapiola (1926) are the gloomy forests of the mind; the harsh, stark landscapes of the Fourth Symphony (1911) are soundscapes of spiritual, cerebral and ecological anguish; the erotic thrills and dangerous liaisons of Kullervo (1892), Lemminkäinen (1896), and the First Symphony (1899) serve as prophetic warnings not just about psychosexual licentiousness but environmental debauchery too.
“In his extraordinary symphonies and tone poems, Sibelius explores the stimulating forces and shadowy agencies lurking behind the locked doors of nature, the dense layers of myth and the misty windows of the soul. His is a captivating and increasingly pertinent musical mind we would do well to heed.”
Sibelius’s long life doesn’t find the same hyperactive peaks and troughs of Mahler’s short and fiery one. Mahler, every inch a genius, was a comet burning far too hot for longevity; Sibelius, on the other hand, landed as a mellower figure, not without a spark for life, but seemingly a man always minded to retreat back, after he’d had his not inconsiderable fill, to his woodland hideaway (something I relate to). Vernon’s two respective books reflect this difference. Sun Forest Lake is not quite so engaging as Beauty and Sadness, albeit through no fault of Vernon’s; it’s simply that Sibelius’s life lacked some of the energy and drama of Mahler’s.
Nevertheless, Sibelius remains a mysterious figure. A man of contradictions: the Finnish national hero who both enjoyed his solitude and his lavish excesses. Hints of manic depression and (barely) functional alcoholism contrast with his lucid, almost terrifying economy of style. His love of nature perhaps also fuelled his deep tendency towards solitude and melancholia, a state of mind that proved artistically fruitful but personally costly. Some of his greatest works seem to have come from his darkest periods: the death of his two-year-old daughter, Kirsti, of typhoid, in 1900; the lingering dread left by the removal of a cancerous growth; a deepening alcohol dependency; and finally his lifelong battle with self-doubt, which culminated in the burning of the manuscript of his lost 8th symphony.
Indeed, Sibelius appears to have been an artist, perhaps like Virginia Woolf, for whom the art that channelled out came at such an inordinate price that one can’t help but wonder whether, to him, it was worth it. After completing his late masterpieces (the 7th Symphony and the winter woodland evocations of the anti-symphonic final tone poem, Tapiola) he became stuck. His commitment to musical economy had already reached its apotheosis, leaving him with nowhere left to turn. The following 30 years of (near) silence are often regarded as some great mystery, but Vernon argues that Sibelius had written enough. And I’m inclined to agree. For one thing, I suspect he was of the temperamental persuasion where, had he forced more from himself, the path may have taken him further into the muddy waters of despair, perhaps one day driving him down to the bottom of some Finnish Ouse. Instead, Vernon argues that he simply decided to retire, concluding his legacy with a collection of capstone masterpieces which sit atop an impressive catalogue of music which includes the seven symphonies, a vast body of tone poems and songs, as well as the incidental music to The Tempest. It seems only wise to have stopped when he did. As a symphonist, his reputation is secure and well-earned. All seven are extraordinary, and, as a unit, they sit comfortably on top table alongside the catalogues of the greatest symphonists in history: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and Shostakovich.
Sibelius went on to live into his early nineties, finally leading a balanced and wholesome life in his retirement. I’ve always previously imagined the burning of his 8th as a tragedy rendered from a fit of despair, but Vernon made me wonder whether, in truth, it was instead a defiant act of self-preservation. Indeed, I’m still haunted by these two quotes from his fellow composer, Malcolm Arnold:
“I did too much. I think of all my music… it’s uneven, because there’s too much. It’s good in parts.”
And, more chillingly:
“I didn’t wish to live to be 70, and I’m very sad I have done. Because 70 is too old. I wished to commit suicide and I tried to unsuccessfully on many occasions in Cornwall, which was the height of my happiness.”
So, although Sibelius’s decision appears at first to have been a sad one, he escaped Arnold’s crippling late-life malaise. In any case, I wonder whether the existence of an 8th symphony would’ve tempered some of the mystery of the strange, all-consuming white light that seems to saturate itself into oblivion at the end of the 7th (one of the most mysterious and beguiling moments I know of in all music). After that, perhaps silence was a positive artistic act.
A favourite image Vernon left me with was that of the moment of Sibelius’s passing, at 91, in 1957. By sheer chance his 5th symphony was being broadcast live that night from Helsinki. As the great Finn slipped away, his family listened to the concert on the radio beside his bed. Noticing that he seemed to have gone, they turned up the volume in an attempted revival, but to no avail. I like to imagine his soul borne aloft, flying away from Ainola alongside his favourite graceful birds, the majesty of the gradual re-emergence of the 5th’s desperately beautiful Swan Theme, music I hear as an extraordinary yearning for freedom — freedom from living and freedom from oneself —, serenading his journey into eternity.
April 9, 2026
I read Sun Forest Lake selectively and was especially interested in the biographical elements and the tales on which the tone poems and Kullervo are based. However, I decided to avoid Vernon’s analyses of the numbered symphonies because the subjective interpretations he imposes on them would have spoiled my enjoyment of the music for its own sake. Vernon ascribes philosophical, religious, and nature-based meanings to what are essentially abstract works, delivered in an ornate literary style. Although it is conceivable that Sibelius intended these meanings, I would have preferred a more straightforward exposition.
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