The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (known to some of his devotees as The Big Man) is looking a little disgruntled in our picture. It is because he has mixed feelings about what the world, Australia and Canberra has planned for him this year.
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Quite why our pictured magpie looks so disgruntled is more of a mystery. On to the latest in our occasional series about magpies and their "play" a few paragraphs hence – but first to Sibelius.
He is 150 this year and his greatest hits are going to receive (and are already receiving) commemorative tootlings of varying qualities and kinds. He is especially worried (and we his devotees are worrying with him) about what's in store for his Finlandia.
Back to these anxieties in a moment, but first we thank Finnish painter Heikki Sivonen for permission to use his new portrait of his nation's adored compatriot. Sivonen has told us from Finland that he would be "honoured" to have us use it. We promised him a reverent use of it because this columnist is an utter Sibelius devotee.
Of course all nations have their own national anthems but, readers, what if as well there was a World Anthem? What if there was one divine ditty with an arresting melody all the peoples of the world could readily recognise and whistle and sing? Its words might celebrate the fragile loveliness of our dear little planet. The chosen melody might represent (perhaps to a listening universe, listening in awe) our species' magical gift for music. Which melody, which tune, would the world choose?
Well, the great orchestral conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) thought that there should be such an anthem and that there was the perfect melody for it. He prescribed the profound "hymn" passage in Jean Sibelius' otherwise dashing and stirring Finlandia.
It is one of the most famous, most recorded, most adapted tunes of all. All of you will have heard a version of it being employed somewhere, perhaps in movies, perhaps as muzak in your aromatherapist's rooms, perhaps as a ring tone. The Finlandia hymn is going to get a million tootles and warbles this year from choral societies galore. We know of at least one coming up soon in Canberra, and will put our house (a modest hovel in a Garran frost pocket) on there being other Canberra goes at it this year.
But the problem for Sibelius (turning in his grave) is that several sets of very silly and worst of all often God-bothering English words have been set to his secular Finlandia hymn. They knot the knickers of Sibelians. Those words are contrary to what his Finlandia is about. It is an expression of Finnish patriotism, urging the much-oppressed Finns to rejoice at the way that Finland is awaking to a new dawn of independence. To sing it as a wussy hymn about obedience to God is a travesty.
The Big Man never intended the hymn to be sung but eventually agreed to it being sung, if it must be sung, to appropriate words by Finnish poet Veikko Koskenniemi. Here is some of a respected English translation of those words. And (joy of joys Canberra choristers planning to warble it in any form this year!) the words fit the music so well that all you have to do is print them out and sing them. In that way you will be paying Finland, Finns and The Big Man, due respect.
All together now:
Finland, behold, thy daylight now is dawning,
the threat of night has now been driven away.
The skylark calls across the light of morning,
the blue of heaven lets it have its way,
and now the day the powers of night is scorning:
thy daylight dawns, O Finland of ours!
We call upon Tobias Cole and his Canberra Choral Society, at this stage planning to soon perform* one of the wussy Christian Finlandia travesties* to think again. Come on Toby, set a good example to musical Canberra in this Sibelius-conscious year by performing a Finnish Finlandia.
And so on to magpies, those magically musical birds. In the wake of this column running readers' magical pictures of young magpies at play we have been asking if, scientifically, what we call "play" in playful-looking animals is anything of the sort. Are we being anthropomorphic when we think they're just romping?
A reader points us to Professor Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist and a towering authority in this field. He seems to say that play in animals is both joyous and purposeful. See if what he says fits what you are seeing when you watch young magpies frolicking.
"Young animals play with each other in order to navigate social possibilities in joyous ways. The urge to play was not left to chance by evolution, but is built into the instinctual action apparatus of [the brains of those species that play].
"It could be argued that play is that experimental process which brings young animals to the perimeter of their social knowledge, to psychic places where one must contemplate what one can and cannot do to others. Play allows animals to be woven into their social structures in interactive ways. It may achieve this by utilising the many plasticities of the brain to create social brains that will work well in the environments in which young ones find themselves."
*The concert is Birthdays at BAC. It is at Belconnen Arts Centre at 5pm on Saturday 21 March. Tickets available shortly through Trybooking.
