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nyankoframeI'm indebted to the Wikipedia entry for Jean Sibelius and the Afterword from Otto Taubmann's arrangement for piano duet (1 piano, 4 hands) published by Brietkopf & Härtel in Wiesbaden (Fall 1999) as "Edition 2273", as well as the William and Gayle Cook Music Library (which contains orchestral transcriptions for all his tone poems) for what follows.
The piece can best be summarized by repeating verbatim the Afterword, because it expresses the piece much better and more technically than I can:
The piece can best be summarized by repeating verbatim the Afterword, because it expresses the piece much better and more technically than I can:
"The scene depicts a dying mother in the throes of one last feverish dream. It is night. Exhausted from watching over her, her son has fallen asleep at his mother's sickbed. A light with a reddish shimmer begins to spread over the scene; one hears music in the distance, which grows closer and louder as the light grows stronger, and finally turns into a hovering waltz melody. The mother awakens, rises from her bed and, in a white garment similar to a ball gown, begins to move lightly and silently, all the while waving pleasantly in all directions to the rhythm of the waltz. Wherever she waves, dancing couples appear, men and women. She presses forward into this round dance and tries to get the dancers to notice her and turn their eyes towards her; they all seem to avoid her, however. Gradually, her strength gives out and she collapses in exhaustion. The music suddenly breaks off, and the reddish light disappears along with the dancers. Once again, she gathers all her strength and attempts to start up the dance anew with lively waving. And once again the music returns and the dancing couples reappear. A frenetic round dance. As the frenzy reaches its climax, there is a knock at the door. The door opens, the mother screams, freezes, the visions disappear, the music falls silent. For through the door has walked... Death." (Rosa Newmarch)
This poetic description also contains information about the musical form: "again", "once again", "anew" and the term "round dance" all suggest repetitions. The Valse triste thus emerges as a work constructed in a rondo-like form, whose expressive import is determined by the chromatically falling Lamento. Expressive marks such as "deciso", "espressivo" and "risoluto" place additional emphasis on the formally important interior sections of the play. This clear structure does not, however, mean that the Valse triste does not unfold analogously to the activity on the stage.
The tonal relationships are completely open, and the music arrives at a completely different point at the end. It begins in a (veiled) B minor and closes in G minor; the sharp in the key signature suggests either G major or E minor, both of which, however, are led ad absurdum by the fundamental bass note of G sharp. If one considers solely the fundamental notes of G sharp at the beginning and G at the end, one has the impression of a cinematic long shot, a chromatically descending entity that encompasses the whole work. This broadly laid-out Lamento exerts an irresistible pull - music of mourning as a slice of (stage) life. It is not by chance that the Valse triste has often been used in film music.
