Even though Im now in the middle of busying myself with work, sorting out business and generally getting life back on the rails, my thoughts still circle back to Marshall, as I expect they will do for a good while to come. I recently expressed aloud my thought that by now he will have joined his peers up in the Great Concert Hall in the Sky. One of them is bound to be Sibelius: I know that his music was close to Marshalls heart, as it has been to mine since I was 10. And even today, I will still come across something of his that I havent encountered before. Such a work is his Funeral Music for organ op.111b, unknown to me until today. Its a late work, from 1931. Very unusual in more than one way. Sibelius wrote little for organ, and Ill always wonder if Marshall knew this piece. It would have held an especial fascination for him if he did know it, as it is believed to use material which would have made up part of his long-vanished, all but mythical 8th Symphony. Whether thats so or not, its unlike anything else in Sibelius that I know of: its harmonic language veers from a hard, plain, almost medieval starkness to a degree of dissonance very rare for this composer (think Symphony 4 or Tapiola). Somehow it fits my mood at the moment as I try, however slowly and painfully, to assimilate the reality that my old friend no longer walks amongst us. I still dont want to believe it, but its there staring me in the face, and I ultimately cant turn away from it or tune it out. And I thus feel that the Colossus of Jarvenpää (as Sir Arnold Bax called Sibelius) is, in some way, helping me right now in the difficult task of coming to term with my loss with this strange, dark, stonily powerful work. Beauty and truth are not always one and the same, and no art form can reveal this more ruthlessly than music. Sibelius knew it. So did Marshall. This music is not about beauty, but integrity. And that is what most strongly comes to mind at the moment when thinking of my late, much loved friend through Sibelius Funeral Music. Here it is. Rest well, Marshall. https://youtube/watch?v=yKF5kGj04m0
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 03:25:49 +0000
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