Adolf Paul — The Devoted Enemy

Sibelius wrote incidental music throughout his active composing period, despite his increasing annoyance with the restrictions that text imposed on his music. The early Scenic Music for a Festival and Lottery in Aid of Education in the Province of Viipuri (1893) had included vocal parts, but the first incidental music that actually contained songs was the music he composed for King Christian II (1898) by his old study comrade and “contentious brother” Adolf Paul (1863–1943), full name Adolf Georg Wiedersheim-Paul.

Sibelius had known Adolf Paul from their student years in Helsinki in the 1880s. Paul was born in Sweden, moved to the southwest part of Finland and began studying piano at the Helsinki Music Institute in 1886. When Ferruccio Busoni arrived in Helsinki – he taught in Helsinki from 1888 to 1890 – Paul studied with him for one year before moving to Weimar in 1889. Adolf Paul’s musical career soon turned into a writing career, and for the rest of his life he stayed mainly in Berlin. He published about twenty novels, including En bok om en människa (mentioned in chapter 1), twenty plays and some autobiographical stories. Many of his works deal with mental disorders, sexual deviation and spectacular crimes, and his collection of short stories, The Ripper, was banned by the censor.

In these early Helsinki years, Busoni, Adolf Paul, Sibelius and the brothers Armas and Eero Jarnefelt formed a group, calling themselves the Leskovits after the name of Busoni’s dog, Lesko. The friends usually met in a cafe for discussions, improvisations and the critique of compositions. Sibelius dedicated two early piano compositions to Paul: Andantino in E major JS 41 and Florestan JS 82. Despite Paul’s early removal to Germany and his later Nazi sympathies, the two remained in contact throughout their lives. Sibelius often visited the Paul family in Berlin, and their familiar, sincere and revealing correspondence was published in 2016 with a commentary by Fabian Dahlström. The Ainola library contains a seemingly complete collection of Paul’s literary works.

Their most intensive common enterprise was King Christian II. The main character of the play was the contradictory Danish king (1481–1559), in Denmark called “Kristian the Good” and in Sweden “Kristian the Tyrant.”