A Sibelius Solitude in London

In this richly evocative essay, Emre Aracı follows the footprints of Jean Sibelius through London, from Cecil Court to Campden Hill Square, interweaving personal reflection, historical insight, and literary resonance. What begins as a chance encounter with the composer’s autograph unfolds into a lyrical meditation on friendship, solitude, and the enduring power of music and memory, framed by the correspondence between Sibelius and Rosa Newmarch, and guided by the spirit of a forgotten age.

Long ago, in the days just after my student years had drawn to a close, I remember wandering through London’s Cecil Court when my eye was caught by the window of an old ephemera shop. There, beneath a sepia postcard of Jean Sibelius — his arms crossed, his countenance as austere as ever — lay, framed within a cream-coloured mount, the composer’s original signature, penned in dark ink with a deliberate, solemn hand. At that moment, gazing into the shop window felt uncannily like coming face to face with history itself. What rendered the encounter all the more arresting was the line he had inscribed below his name, in delicate French: “qui possède le chemin éternelle”, translating as —

“He who possesses the eternal path” — or perhaps, “he who walks the road of eternity”.

"He who possesses the eternal path" - Jean Sibelius's autograph signature (© Emre ARACI)

These luminous words, like pearls placed in my path on a solitary London afternoon, seemed to open up a route altogether different from the one mapped by the usual street signs, direction posts, or city maps around me. They pointed, instead, to a realm beyond — charting the coordinates of a more profound and timeless journey. After all it was Sibelius himself who had written those words — perhaps at the close of a letter, addressed to someone now lost to time, or else inscribed obligingly in the autograph album of an admirer — never imagining that one day his signature, and those few quiet words, would appear before the eyes of another musician, one attuned to the sensitivities of his art, and in doing so, gently alter the course of that musician’s life. Yet this was no mere coincidence. It felt, rather, like a ticket preordained — a subtle intervention in the flow of life, issued to carry me to my next destination — and the one who had issued it, as improbable as it sounds, was none other than Sibelius himself.

I remember standing before that yellowed slip of paper, frozen behind the glass of a London shop window, its price tag still clinging faintly to the mount — and as I gazed, a line from Oscar Wilde seemed to echo in my ears, as if in quiet defiance of those who scoff at such sensibilities: that line spoken by Lord Darlington, “They know the price of everything and the value of nothing”. It was as though the paper itself had summoned it, in prophetic allusion to the tragic fates reserved for those who fail to see beyond appearances. Yes — this original signature of Sibelius was valuable indeed. But its worth lay far beyond any sum printed on a label. Then and there, I went in and acquired it — perhaps to give it a talismanic quality in my own solitary artistic search in those days. In that moment, a modest shopfront in Cecil Court had been transformed into a corner of Ainola, and the message it conveyed surpassed the bounds of any formal syllabus. It was a quiet epiphany, wrapped in ink and silence.

Only a few days ago — many years after that earlier encounter — I found myself once more alone in London, setting out towards the British Museum, intent on revisiting the story behind the discovery of the Townley Discobolus, whose head, as we know, had been affixed at an incorrect angle. On my way there, I stepped quite by chance into Judd Books, and as I reached for a volume edited by Philip Ross Bullock — The Correspondence of Jean Sibelius and Rosa Newmarch, 1906–1939, a collection of letters documenting a friendship that endured for thirty-three years — I was at once transported back to that day in Cecil Court, standing before the shop window where Sibelius’s autograph had first stirred something deep within me. The book's cover bore the very same photograph of Sibelius with arms crossed — severe, enigmatic — that I had seen framed above his signature all those years ago, as though the past had suddenly folded in on itself. It seemed that in choosing, all those years ago, to follow the path quietly indicated to me, I had now — quite without seeking — been led to this book, appearing with quiet inevitability in the heart of Bloomsbury, just as I turned the corner from Handel Street, on the very street where Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley once lived.

Ex Libris Eva Janes (© Emre ARACI)

I first encountered the name of Rosa Newmarch (1857–1940) through her two early biographies of Tchaikovsky, published in 1900 and 1904. These were groundbreaking works, emerging shortly after the composer’s death and incorporating many of his letters, which opened new vistas for English and North American readers alike. The first of these — Tchaikovsky: His Life and Works — which Newmarch dedicated to Sir Henry Wood and his wife, occupies a cherished place in my own library. My copy, an original edition, bears the gentle traces of its earliest owner: a lady named Eva Janes, who inscribed her name in August 1900. Within its covers is affixed her Ex Libris depicting Apollo amid the hills of Florence, along with the discreet label of Tyrell & Co., a Toronto bookseller.

It is touching to observe how, in that era, individuals held their books in such deep regard — treating them not merely as vessels of knowledge, but as objects of beauty and reverence, worthy of preservation and personalised care, almost as one would a work of art. And for us, their distant heirs, it surely falls — however temporarily — to act as custodians. To safeguard these volumes, to absorb something of the quiet energy they contain, and to pass them on, in time, to future generations with the same values and devotion with which they were once received. The friendship between Sibelius and Rosa Newmarch, too, was born in such an age — a time when people still carried Apollo with them in their books, gracing the inside covers with Ex Libris labels as if to sanctify the printed word.

Jean Sibelius by Eero Järnefelt, 1892

The Finnish composer visited England on five occasions — in 1905, 1908, 1909, 1912, and finally in 1921 — yet the London public had already made his acquaintance much earlier, on 26 October 1901, at the 55th Promenade Concert in Queen’s Hall. On that evening, under the baton of Henry Wood, his King Christian II, Op. 27 orchestral suite was performed for the first time in Britain. The programme had also included Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Elgar’s First Pomp and Circumstance March, and the Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Two years later, on 13 October 1903, Henry Wood introduced Sibelius’s E minor First Symphony to a London audience — that lyrical and austere work which begins with the sombre resonance of the timpani beneath a lonely, wistful clarinet, soon embraced by the trembling rapture of the strings. Then, on 2 March 1905, Hans Richter conducted the British première of the D major Second Symphony with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester — the very work Sibelius had once described as “a confession of the soul”.

By then, the time had surely come for Sibelius himself to set foot on English soil, and his first visit in 1905 was made possible not only through the efforts of Henry Wood, but also through the advocacy of Granville Bantock (1868–1946) — now a largely forgotten figure, as is his music, though in his day a considerable presence in British musical life. Bantock had composed a three-part choral epic entitled Omar Khayyám, based on Edward FitzGerald’s celebrated English rendering of the Rubáiyát. It was perhaps as a gesture of gratitude for Bantock’s support that Sibelius would later dedicate his Third Symphony to him. It was also Bantock who invited Sibelius to Liverpool, where on 2 December 1905 the composer conducted his First Symphony and Finlandia. According to a letter Sibelius wrote to his wife Aino, the concert in Liverpool was a resounding success. 

But Bantock did more than bring Sibelius before the English public — he also introduced him personally to Rosa Newmarch, a meeting that marked the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship. It was the early seed of that friendship which I found flourishing still in the volume I picked up at Judd Books — a collection of their correspondence, preserved with great care and tenderness, as though echoing across time. And even as I write these very lines, my postman has just dropped a parcel through the door: a copy of Jean Sibelius: A Short Story of a Long Friendship, published in London by Goodwin & Tabb in 1944, with a foreword by none other than Granville Bantock himself. As if summoned by fate, it has arrived at precisely the right moment.

Sir Granville Bantock by Bernard Munns (University of Birmingham)

Between 1906 and 1939, some 130 pieces of correspondence — including letters, telegrams, and notes — passed between Jean Sibelius and Rosa Newmarch, at least as far as can be determined from the present volume. Of these, Newmarch contributed no fewer than ninety letters, amounting to a remarkable 30,000 words. Sibelius, by contrast, penned just forty, his total output barely exceeding 4,500 words — a disparity which gently reveals that, in the art of letter writing, the Finnish composer was perhaps not quite as prolific as he was in the symphonic domain. Indeed, Newmarch herself, with wry affection, recalls that the two would occasionally joke about this very fact — and that no one, following the composer’s death, need ever fear the burden of editing vast tomes of his collected correspondence. Even so, the letters Sibelius did write offer us invaluable glimpses into his life and character. One such example is his letter to Aino, written after conducting En Saga and Finlandia at Queen’s Hall on 13 February 1909:

“It is all over now. Everything went well. The concert was at three o’clock, and I had to appear in morning dress with light-striped trousers. They are the fashion now; last autumn it was dark stripes! Everyone has been very complimentary. After the Saga I was called back to the podium seven times, and after Finlandia many more times. The orchestra is altogether perfect. They all stood up as I made my entrance, which is the greatest honour I have ever been paid! The hall was sold out. Tomorrow I am going to Rosa Newmarch for lunch and the day after to Wood. On the 16th there is to be a soirée in my honour and Bantock will be there. He now has an important position here. University professor. Everyone else gets positions; only I compose and live in my moods and dreams. It was so pleasant to be sober for once when I conducted. All my nervousness has gone. I conducted really well, people said. The Saga even prompted tears here and there among my admirers. I am thinking of staying here to work. This London is something magnificent. I have explored the city, the British Museum and so on”, (Erik Tawaststjerna, Sibelius, Vol. II, Faber and Faber, 1986, p. 105).

“Everyone else gets positions; only I compose and live in my moods and dreams” — how consoling I found those words.

After spending the afternoon at the British Museum, returning home to read this final line in Sibelius’s letter — “he who walks the path of eternity” — no longer surprises me in the least, especially as I set down these very lines. During his 1909 visit to London, Sibelius had taken up residence at the Langham Hotel, just beyond Oxford Circus, directly opposite Queen’s Hall. The Langham, later requisitioned by the BBC in the post-war years and threatened with demolition in the 1980s to make way for a modern structure, thankfully survives to this day, still fulfilling its original function as a hotel. The same, alas, cannot be said for Queen’s Hall.

On the evening of 10 May 1941, following a lunchtime performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius under the baton of Malcolm Sargent, the hall was struck by an incendiary bomb dropped by the Luftwaffe. Delays in the fire brigade’s response — occupied elsewhere by the night’s widespread raids — allowed the blaze to take hold. Thus perished, before the helpless eyes of London, one of the city’s most hallowed musical temples, a three-thousand-seat hall steeped in memory and meaning. A faded photograph of Sibelius with Ferruccio Busoni, taken in 1921 before the entrance of Queen’s Hall, is now one of the few tangible traces that remain of that iconic building.

Queen's Hall was destroyed during the Second World War in May 1941

In such moments, one cannot help but hear the strains of Valse Triste. Sibelius himself, on the afternoon of his first day in London, had heard the sound of a military band drifting in from somewhere near Oxford Street. As he drew nearer, he recognised with incredulous delight that they were playing none other than Valse Triste — and he could scarcely believe that the first piece of music he would hear in England was one of his own.

(Photo © Emre ARACI)

So it seemed only fitting to follow Sibelius’s footsteps a little further through London, beyond Oxford Street and westwards towards Kensington. When the composer decided to extend his stay in February 1909, he began searching for a more modest and tranquil lodging outside the Langham, and Rosa Newmarch swiftly came to his aid. In a letter dated 15 February 1909, she informed Sibelius that she had found two rooms for him in a quiet street near Kensington and Campden Hill. The address — 15 Gloucester Walk — was just a short walk from her own home at 52 Campden Hill Square. That street, with its charming, uniform row of terraced houses, continues to stand today — serene and intact, a typical corner of residential London. And beneath the first-floor window of the house where Sibelius once stayed, a blue plaque now quietly proclaims to passers-by that the great composer once lived there. Perhaps some do not notice it. Others may glance up at the unfamiliar name and walk briskly on. But there may be a few who pause — and in that moment, perhaps, hear within themselves the solitary clarinet that opens his First Symphony, plaintive, unadorned, and utterly unforgettable.

In truth, Sibelius’s days at Gloucester Walk proved to be far less tranquil than he might have hoped. According to Rosa Newmarch, the house was also inhabited by three elderly ladies — one of whom was the landlady — and whom the composer, drawing inspiration from Macbeth, wryly referred to as “the three witches”. Given Sibelius’s extreme sensitivity to noise, Newmarch had made certain to receive assurances that there was no piano in the house. At the time, the composer was working on his Voces Intimae string quartet, and silence was of the essence. Yet one day, to his horror, the strains of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, played most ineptly on an abominable piano, drifted up into his room. In a state of alarm, Sibelius resolved then and there to leave the house. As it turned out, one of the elderly ladies — a sometime musician herself — had, upon learning that a great composer was residing under her roof, taken it upon herself to demonstrate her “talent” on a small parlour piano. Whether it was the Moonlight Sonata or the moonlight itself, Sibelius shortly thereafter removed himself from Gloucester Walk and relocated to 15 Gordon Place. Standing before that typical London house today — a motorbike tucked beneath a tarpaulin in the front garden, an Italian flag fluttering from an upstairs window — one cannot help but reflect on how swiftly the world changes, and how even those composers we have since cast in bronze often lived, at times, in remarkably modest circumstances.

As I continue leafing through their correspondence, I come across a letter dated 23 February 1909 in which Rosa Newmarch invites Sibelius to her home on Campden Hill Square. Her line — “If the fog thickens, don’t come out this evening” — instantly transports me to the London of Sherlock Holmes, or to the sepia-toned, mist-shrouded photographs of the Belgian photographer Léonard Misonne (1870–1943), who so hauntingly transformed the city’s fog into a kind of silent poetry.

"If the fog thickens, don’t come out this evening" - London fog captured by Léonard Misonne 

In another letter dated 26 February, Newmarch writes: “And then, if one must not hope for too much from life, neither must one fear anything. Here again is the sort of grandmotherly advice of which I believe you have no need! You will continue to live and will write your ‘heroic symphony’ [the Fourth], in entirely your own way. This symphony is dear to all our hearts. Tomorrow I shall come and fetch you at half past midday, and we shall go together to Pagani’s and then afterwards to the concert”. It is clear from these letters that in the midst of the composer’s frequent emotional tempests, Newmarch offered him not only practical support but spiritual companionship as well. Sibelius once wrote to Aino that Newmarch possessed “a curious strength and ability in perceiving and weighing events. She contributes enormously to my art”. Yet perhaps it is another phrase — the one Sibelius himself once used to describe her, and which later provided the title for Lewis Stevens’s biography — that best captures her significance in his life: une femme inoubliable — “an unforgettable woman”, (Lewis Stevens, An Unforgettable Woman: The Life and Times of Rosa Newmarch, Matador, 2011).

Pagani’s Restaurant in London

The romantic and bohemian Pagani’s Restaurant on Great Portland Street, once a favourite haunt of artists and musicians, sadly no longer exists. Like the Queen’s Hall, it too suffered severe damage during the Second World War and eventually closed its doors. Its celebrated art nouveau façade, once adorned with some 5,000 signatures — including a few bars of music penned directly onto the wall by Mascagni, now preserved by the Museum of London — once welcomed the likes of Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Giacomo Puccini, Paolo Tosti, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the American painter whom Proust immortalised as the model for his fictional artist Elstir. On Saturday, 27 February 1909, Jean Sibelius and Rosa Newmarch entered through those very doors, before heading to the Queen’s Hall for a concert. That evening, Claude Debussy himself conducted the orchestra, presenting the British première of his Nocturnes alongside Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. A few days later, the two composers met again over luncheon. In his journal, Sibelius noted simply: “Interesting” and “Compliments” — his usual brevity intact.

During that London sojourn, Sibelius also heard Elgar’s First Symphony and Bantock’s Omar Khayyám, and was introduced to Vincent d’Indy, who would later teach the young and promising Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. In a letter to Aino dated 5 March 1909, Sibelius wrote: “Everything I heard served to confirm my personal conviction regarding the path I have followed — and must continue to follow”. Two years later, writing to Newmarch from Berlin on 1 January 1911, he confessed:

“As always, I feel an insurmountable antipathy towards modern trends. Hence this persistent feeling of loneliness”. And later that year, from Paris, he would write simply: “There is loneliness here! Give me either the solitude of the Finnish forests or the solitude of great cities”. Sibelius, it seems, understood better than most the nature of artistic and spiritual solitude.

Reading these lines in Newmarch’s short biography of the composer, I felt, for reasons I cannot quite explain, compelled to make a solitary visit to her former home at 52 Campden Hill Square — the house Sibelius so often visited. Perhaps I believed that by connecting text to place, the tableau before me might come alive.

Campden Hill Square (photo © Emre ARACI)

And there it was: that quiet Holland Park enclave, still complete with its shared central garden, the cast-iron gas lamps painted green, and the white-columned portico through which Sibelius himself must have stepped. A few doors down, at No. 23, lived the poet Siegfried Sassoon — relative of Sasun Efendi, a deputy in the Ottoman parliament — whose poem Idyll I have read many times. 

Blues and Royals trooper
(© Emre ARACI)

Life continues; children played among trees just beginning to leaf, and the breeze carried with it the hesitant stirrings of early spring. In a letter dated 19 May 1909, Rosa Newmarch described that very garden to Sibelius in words as tender and painterly as a faded canvas—like the damaged painting of a Blues and Royals trooper, signed simply ‘Moyle’, I had just bought from Spitalfields Market and was carrying protectively beneath my arm, a quietly stirring depiction of ceremonial London that endures: “I should like you to see our gardens in Campden Hill now. The greenery is so fresh, and the lilacs, with their various delicate hues, flutter in the wind like the feathers on the helmets of a proud cavalry regiment. And then there are the crimson fleurs-de-lis which exude Florentine scents, and then also the laburnums which are beginning to cast down their golden tresses – I assure you it is ravishing”. 

As I stood there in the desolation of March, viewing that garden through the filter of her May letter, I found myself resolving to return one spring, and, from behind the wrought-iron railings that have enclosed that private garden since 1826 — accessible only to local residents — to gaze once more, listening to Sibelius’s First Symphony, her favourite, wafting faintly through the leaves. And so, as I look at the handwritten line that once stopped me before the window in Cecil Court — now framed on the wall above my desk, that message of eternity from Sibelius’s own hand — I close this reverie with the lines that Granville Bantock chose to end his foreword to Rosa Newmarch’s biography of Sibelius, attributed to Robert Browning:

“I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty / Sought – found – and did my duty”.

However simple and solitary he may have been, Sibelius leaves us — through his life and his music — alone before a landscape of extraordinary beauty.

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Londra’da Sibelius yalnızlığı’ in the April 2017 issue (No. 126) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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