Valse Triste, Op. 44 Jean Sibelius
By 1903, Jean Sibelius had become something of a national hero in Finland. Works such as the 1899 Finlandia sounded the call of protest for the Finnish people, increasingly beleaguered by restrictions from Russia. Sibelius was granted a 10-year pension from the government, which eventually became life-long. His symphonies were beginning to spread his name beyond Finland, but it was really the little Valse Triste that helped to make Sibelius a household name around the world.
Written as the first of six, later eight, numbers to accompany a 1903 play, Kuolema ("Death") by his brother-in-law, Arvid Jarnefelt, Valse Triste describes the opening scene: an old, sick widow dreams that she is at a ball, dancing a waltz with her late husband. As the play proceeds, other guests appear, shadowy, strange, avoiding her eyes; the play ends with the woman's realizing, with a despairing cry, that she has been dancing with Death himself. A year later, Sibelius rescored the haunting waltz for a larger orchestra and published it under the present title.
Unfortunately, Sibelius was a notorious spendthrift, with Helsinki restaurant bills in the fall of 1903 reportedly approaching the equivalent of $300 a night. Desperate for cash he sold the revised Valse Triste to the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf and Hartel for around $25 in what soon proved to be one of the worst deals (for the composer, that is) in music publishing history. The "Sad Waltz" caught fire abroad, and was soon showing up in endless arrangements in the world's tea rooms and saloons (even becoming, half a century later, the theme music for the popular American radio broadcast, I Love a Mystery). Sibelius received not a cent in royalties.
With his financial strains being so obvious that nationwide collections were taken up for him multiple times through his life (once, a beautiful Steinway grand piano he'd received through one of these collections was immediately confiscated by bailiffs), Sibelius was aggravated that he had no access to his own goldmine. It is said he tried for years to recreate the success of Valse Triste, but it was not to be. He was left to kick himself over the Little Waltz That (unexpectedly) Could.
Valse Triste
