Jean Sibelius on Music Theory Print

Andante festivo

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History#

Walter Parviainen requested a cantata from Sibelius to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Säynätsalo sawmills before Christmas of 1922. Sibelius wrote instead a composition for a string quartet, to become . It may be based on older projects, such as a planned oratorio, Marjatta, from the 1900s. At the marriage of Riitta Sibelius, a niece of the composer, in 1929, was performed by two string quartets, perhaps with modifications. Sibelius listened often to the radio in the 1930s. He thought about composing for the radio in a different way, to accommodate the distortions created by the loudspeakers of the time. When Olin Downes, a critic of The New York Times, asked him to “conduct a piece of music as Finland’s greeting to the world in a radio broadcast to celebrate the New York World Exhibition”, he tried the concept by adapting the former string quartet. Full-throated and hymnic, this piece is a smooth, continuous stream of similar melodic phrases that flow into and out of each other. Sibelius was a violinist and knew how to compose for strings. A “seamless repeated melody” is played by the strings and answered in the last four bars by the timpani, in an almost religious statement in a world before a Second World War. The version for strings and timpani was first performed in a broadcast on 1 January 1939 by the Radio Orchestra conducted by the composer, as the only recorded example of the composer interpreting one of his own works. He maintained a slow tempo professionally, with “unforced rubato”, creating a solemn, singing string sound. He sometimes took liberty with the tempo markings in the score (and altered the first double bass entries to a C, not a G.) A 2015 collection of recordings of music for orchestra by Sibelius, played by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leif Segerstam, and recorded in 1995–2007, includes the recording of from the archives of the Finnish Broadcasting Company and contrasts it to other works, including the Violin Concerto and the Second Symphony. The recording conducted by Sibelius is also part of a collection of historic performances from 1928 to 1948, including recordings of the Columbia Gramophone Company (later EMI) from the 1930s, when Robert Kajanus conducted the symphonies and tone poems, many of which he had premiered. The recording of was Sibelius’s last performance as a conductor.

Arioso (Sibelius)

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Reception#

The British musicologist Robert Layton describes "" as possessing “the grave air of melancholy that distinguishes the elegiac Grieg, and much the same intentness and conviction … there is a touching directness of utterance about this music and more than a hint of the wide-ranging vocal writing” that Sibelius would master subsequently with the tone poem Luonnotar (Op. 70, 1913). The Sibelius biographer Andrew Barnett, too emphasizes the relation to the Norwegian master: """ is a very fine song, with a vein of Nordic melancholy and string textures that have often been compared to Grieg".

Belshazzar's Feast (Sibelius)

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History#

Sibelius composed in 1906 eight movements, scored for orchestra, with singers also being required in some numbers. The first performance of the play and its incidental music was at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki on 7 November 1906, conducted by the composer. It had 21 performances through to January 1907. The suite has the opus number 51. It had its first performance in Helsinki on 25 September 1907, in the same concert as the premiere of the Third Symphony; the Orchestra of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society was again conducted by the composer. He also made a piano arrangement of the suite in 1907. The suite has had a number of recordings, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Neeme Järvi, Pietari Inkinen and others. The full original score had its world premiere recording by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Lilli Paasikivi (mezzo-soprano), Petri Lehto (tenor), Sauli Tiilikainen (baritone), Lahti Chamber Choir, conducted by Osmo Vänskä, as part of BIS Records’ Complete Sibelius Edition.

Cantata for the Coronation of Nicholas II

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Instrumentation#

The Coronation Cantata is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Mixed choir () *1 flute (doubling on piccolo), 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, and 1 bassoon *2 horns, 2 trumpets, and 3 trombones *Bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Structure#

The Coronation Cantata is in two movements. They are: The cantata remains in manuscript, although will eventually be published as part of the Jean Sibelius Works (JSW) critical edition, an ongoing collaborative project between the National Library of Finland, Breitkopf & Härtel, and the Sibelius Society of Finland. (Begun in 1996, the series is projected at 52 volumes and will eventually cover all of Sibelius’s completed original compositions and arrangements, including relevant JS-designated works.)

Cantata for the University Graduation Ceremonies of 1894

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Instrumentation#

The Promotional Cantata of 1894 is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Soprano, baritone, and mixed choir () *2 flutes, 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, and 1 bassoon *2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, and tuba *Timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Structure#

The Promotional Cantata of 1894 is in three movements. They are: Movement I is scored for mixed choir and orchestra, while Movement II adds to these forces solo parts for soprano and baritone. Finally, Movement III is for soprano and orchestra, although the solo part (which occurs during a brief, middle trio section) has not survived; however, according to the Sibelius biographer Andrew Barnett, “luckily the lack of a solo part does not render the piece unperformable as a movement for orchestra alone “. The cantata remains in manuscript, although will eventually be published as part of the Jean Sibelius Works (JSW) critical edition, an ongoing collaborative project between the National Library of Finland, Breitkopf & Härtel, and the Sibelius Society of Finland. (Begun in 1996, the series is projected at 52 volumes and will eventually cover all of Sibelius’s completed original compositions and arrangements, including relevant JS-designated works.)

Cassazione (Sibelius)

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History#

In early 1904, Sibelius labored on his first concertante work, the Violin Concerto in D minor, the premiere of which he had promised, in autumn 1903, to the German violinist Willy Burmester. However, Sibelius—who needed cash in order to fund the construction of his new home, Ainola—opted to premiere the concerto at a concert of his works set for 8 February, even though Burmester was unavailable. (The concerto instead was given by the “far less distinguished player”, (violin), a young violin teacher based in Helsinki. To fill out the program, Sibelius hastily composed a few weeks prior to the concert. Also on the program was The Origin of Fire (, Op. 32), a cantata for tenor, male choir, and orchestra that had premiered in 1902, as well as a third novelty, the choral song for male choir and orchestra, Have Your Courage? (, Op. 31/2). Sibelius conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic Society in all four pieces. The concert was repeated on 10 and 14 February. A review by Oskar Merikanto evaluated as “fairly insignificant”. Sibelius revised the work in 1905, but left a note "" (“Must be revised”).

Compositions for brass septet by Jean Sibelius

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Instrumentation#

All six pieces are scored for (in Swedish: ), a “specifically Finnish” kind of brass septet that originated in 1870 when the Finnish composer, music arranger, and military band leader founded the first within the Guards’ Band, the premiere ensemble of the Finnish Defense Forces (then in service to the Russian tsar, Alexander II). The standard consists of the following instruments: * 1 soprano cornet (in E), 1 alto horn (in E), and 1 tuba (in E) * 1 euphonium (in B) * 2 cornets (in B) and 1 tenor horn (in B) At the time, it was typical to place the euphonium in the center, with the E instruments grouped to one side and the B instruments grouped to the other. A can also include percussion . Indeed, both the Allegro and the Preludium include parts for triangle, while Tiera calls for bass drum and cymbals.

Compositions for organ by Jean Sibelius

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Intrada#

In August 1925, Sibelius paused work on his major project at the time, the incidental music to The Tempest (Op. 109) to compose an occasional piece for solo organ—a genre that he had never before attempted. The event was the state visit of King Gustav V of Sweden, who was scheduled to attend a special church service at Helsinki Cathedral (then known as Nikolai Church). Sibelius responded with Intrada, “a monumental, hugely dignified piece”, that the Finnish organist John Sundberg—with whom the composer had consulted on the capabilities of the cathedral’s organ—premiered on 22 August. Intrada takes about 5 minutes to play; its time signature is and its tempo marking is Largamente molto (poco adagio). Stylistically, it is related to the Symphony No. 7 (Op. 105) from the previous year, as well as Prospero from The Tempest (Suite No. 2, Movement IV; 1926). It has since become one of the most performed pieces in the Finnish organ repertoire—indeed, “something of a display piece” for domestic organists. The Finnish firm published the double pedal version of Intrada in 1943 and the single-pedal version in 1957.

Danses champêtre

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Structure#

The following numbers comprise the :

Discography#

The sortable table below lists commercially available recordings of the complete :

En saga

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Composition#

Although the creative origins of En saga remain somewhat uncertain, it appears as though the material that would become En saga may have begun as, and thus evolved from, a septet or octet for flute, clarinet, and string ensemble that the composer had begun in 1890–91, during which time he was a student in Vienna under Robert Fuchs and Karl Goldmark. (This chamber piece, however, has never been found.) Following the early success of the choral symphony Kullervo, premiered in April 1892, Robert Kajanus, founder and chief conductor of the Helsinki Orchestral Association, requested from Sibelius a purely orchestral piece, albeit one “in a more popular style” that would not make “too great demands on the general public’s powers of concentration and comprehension”; in the 1930s, Sibelius told his biographer, Karl Ekman, that the result of this invitation was the orchestral tone poem En saga. Later in life, however, Sibelius dismissed Kajanus’s influence, telling a second biographer, Eric Ringbom, in the 1950s that En saga actually had not been the result of Kajanus’s offer: “… Nothing came of it. Instead I completed the orchestral work I had already started and to which I gave the name En saga … I did not comply with his request … to write ‘a short Da capo piece’”. That Sibelius’s statements to Ekman and to Ringbom are inconsistent is, perhaps, a sign either that Sibelius wished to downplay the influence of his on-again-off-again friend/rival decades after the latter’s death (Kajanus had died in 1933) or that he was eager to dispel any notion that En saga was of less seriousness than his other compositions. The autograph manuscript of the original 1892 version of En saga does not survive, although a manuscript and complete set of orchestral parts are preserved in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra collection. The copyist for these documents remains unknown; although surviving invoices indicate that two copyists Sibelius typically employed, August Österberg and Ernst Röllig, each copied the score, in July 1895 and December 1898, respectively, neither the surviving manuscript nor the orchestral parts are in the hand of either man. Most likely the documents were produced in 1901 by an unidentified copyist for the conductor Georg Schnéevoigt, who conducted the original version of the tone poem during his concert tour of Riga.

Everyman (Sibelius)

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Composition#

On 15 May 1916, the theatre director wrote to Sibelius asking if he would like to score the Finnish National Theatre’s upcoming Finnish-language production of , a modern adaptation by the Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal of the fifteenth-century English morality play Everyman. , which Max Reinhardt had premiered in Berlin on 1 December 1911 at the , had taken Europe by storm, with subsequent productions in Austria, Denmark, and Sweden. By 1916, it was Finland’s turn, and competing productions were scheduled in Helsinki for the end of the year. (The other staging was at the Swedish Theatre, with original music by , as well as Palestrina’s motet .) Sibelius accepted the commission in mid-June, likely—as the musicologist Daniel Grimley has argued—simulated by the play’s “images of devotion, sacrifice, pilgrimage, and sacred mission”: Sibelius began working on the score on 10 July, although by the next day he already was confiding in his diary doubts about the project. By 13 July, he had broken off work on the project to attend to more pressing matters: the impending marriage of his daughter to (both were stage actors at the National Theatre) on 21 July. Sibelius considered it his responsibility to marry off his daughters “in style … all this cost money”. To address his finances, he “worked like a blacksmith” to compose a handful of piano pieces for the Helsinki-based music publisher .

Finlandia

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History#

The British premiere of Finlandia was on 13 October 1906 at the Promenade Concerts at Queen’s Hall, conducted by Henry Wood. As with the Karelia Suite, the original Press Celebrations Music suite was never originally released under Sibelius’ supervision, but after almost 99 years with the sheet music untouched, the suite was reconstructed and released on two different CDs, the first one by the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in 1998, conducted by Tuomas Ollila, and the second by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in 2000, conducted by Osmo Vänskä. The last two movements of the suite were reworked to become Finlandia. The original movements are as follows. *Preludium: Andante (ma non troppo) *Tableau 1: The Song of *Tableau 2: The Finns are Baptized by Bishop Henry *Tableau 3: Scene from Duke Johan’s Court *Tableau 4: The Finns in the Thirty Years’ War *Tableau 5: The Great Hostility *Tableau 6: Finland Awakes

Finlandia hymn

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Finnish national song#

After the success of the full-length symphonic poem (most of which consists of rousing and turbulent passages, evoking the national struggle of the Finnish people), Sibelius published a stand-alone version of the hymn as the last of twelve numbers in his Masonic Ritual Music, Op. 113, with a text by opera singer Wäinö Sola. The version usually heard today has lyrics written by Koskenniemi in 1940 and was first performed in 1941. Sibelius himself arranged the hymn for choral performances. Today, during modern performances of Finlandia in its entirety, a choir is sometimes involved, singing the Finnish lyrics with the hymn section. The Finlandia hymn is often proposed as an official national song or anthem of Finland.

Five Christmas Songs

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Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue, the Op. 1 songs are as follows: *"" (“Now Christmas Stands at the Snowy Gate”), Op. 1/1 (1913); text by the Finnish poet Zacharias Topelius *"" (“Now Is Christmas Coming”), Op. 1/2 (1913); text by Topelius *"" (“Outside It is Growing Dark”), Op. 1/3 (1897); text by Topelius *"" (“Give Me No Splendor, Gold or Pomp”), Op. 1/4 (1909); text by Topelius *"" (“High are the Snowdrifts”), Op. 1/5 (1901); text by the Finnish poet Wilkku Joukahainen

Five Esquisses

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History#

The Five Esquisses have a tortuous publication history. On 5 October 1928, the New York-based publisher Carl Fischer expressing an interest in publishing “works for piano, voice and piano, and violin and piano …” Sibelius responded to Fischer on 15 February 1929 that it was his “pleasure” to offer four collections of his latest miniatures: the Op. 114 Five Esquisses, as well as the Op. 115 Four Pieces for violin and piano, the Op. 116 Three Pieces for violin and piano, and the Op. 117 (later demoted from Sibelius’s opus list) Suite for Violin and String Orchestra. However, Fischer rejected all four compositions: Shortly thereafter, Sibelius sent the pieces to Leipzig’s Breitkopf & Härtel, and although they accepted the offer, Sibelius requested the manuscripts be returned to him so that he could revise ; after making the changes, however, he never mailed them back to Germany—likely due to the ever-worsening self-criticism that marred his later career. In 1945, the Helsinki-based published inquired about the Five Esquisses: as with fifteen years prior, Sibelius initially agreed but changed his mind when preparing the manuscripts for publication. Westerlund’s second attempt in 1950 was similarly unsuccessful. In the end, the pieces were published posthumously from 1973 to 1974 by .

Five Pieces, Op. 75 (Sibelius)

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No. 1: When the Rowan Blossoms#

When the Rowan Blossoms (Swedish: ; in Finnish: ) was published in 1921 by the London-based firm of . Marked Allegretto, it has a duration of about two minutes.

No. 2: The Solitary Fir Tree#

The Solitary Fir Tree (in Swedish: ; in Finnish: ) was published in 1921 by London’s . Marked Grave, it has a duration of about two minutes.

No. 3: The Aspen#

The Aspen (in Swedish: ; in Finnish: ) was published in 1922 by Edition Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen. Marked Andantino, it has a duration of about 2.5 minutes.

Five Pieces, Op. 85 (Sibelius)

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No. 1: The Daisy#

The Daisy (in French: ; in Finnish: ) was published in 1921 by the London-based firm of . Marked PrestoAllegretto, it has a duration of about 1.5 minutes.

No. 2: The Carnation#

The Carnation (in French: ; in Finnish: ) was also published in 1921 by Augener. Marked Con moto, it has a duration of about 1.5 minutes.

No. 3: The Iris#

The Iris (in French: ; in Finnish: ) was published in 1921 by London’s . Marked , it has a duration of about three minutes.

Five Songs, Op. 37 (Sibelius)

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Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 37 songs are as follows: *"" (“The First Kiss”), Op. 37/1 (1900); text by the Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg *"" (“Little Lasse”), Op. 37/2 (1902); text by the Finnish poet Zachris Topelius *"" (“Sunrise”), Op. 37/3 (1902); text by the Swedish poet Tor Hedberg *"" (“Was It a Dream?”), Op. 37/4 (1902); text by the Finnish poet Josef Julius Wecksell *"" (“The Girl Returned Home from Meeting Her Lover”), Op. 37/5 (1901); text by Runeberg The collection was first published by the Helsinki-based firm () from 1901 to 1902. The table below provides additional information about song:

Five Songs, Op. 38 (Sibelius)

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Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 38 songs are as follows: *"" (“Autumn Evening”), Op. 38/1 (1903); text by the Swedish poet Viktor Rydberg *"" (“On a Balcony by the Sea”), Op. 38/2 (1903); text by Rydberg *"" (“In the Night”), Op. 38/3 (1903); text by Rydberg *"" (“The Harper and His Son”), Op. 38/4 (1904); text by Rydberg *"" (“I Wish I Were in India”), Op. 38/5 (1904); text by the Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding The collection was first published by the Helsinki-based firm () from 1903 to 1904.

Four Pieces, Op. 115 (Sibelius)

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Structure#

The following numbers comprise the Four Pieces:

Discography#

The sortable table below lists commercially available recordings of the complete Four Pieces:

Giv mig ej glans, ej guld, ej prakt

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Publication history#

Julvisa in
Julvisa in
Finlandssvenska psalmboken as number 510 in the 1923 edition of the 1886 Finnish hymnal version under the heading “Julpsalmer”.
Finlandssvenska psalmboken 1943 as number 28 under the heading “Jul”.
Frälsningsarméns sångbok 1968 as number 591 under the heading “Högtider - Jul”.
Finlandssvenska psalmboken 1986 as number 32 under the heading “Jul”.
1986 års psalmbok i Sverige as number 645, as a bilingual song in two versions under the heading “From Finland”.
Virsikirja 1986 as number 31 in the section “Joulu” (Christmas).
Psalmer och Sånger 1987 as number 491 under the heading “Jul”.
Frälsningsarméns sångbok 1990 as number 722 under the heading “Kyrkoårets högtider, Jul”.
Several non-religious songbooks

Höstkväll

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Instrumentation#

The orchestrated version of "" is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Soprano (or baritone) *2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, and 1 contrabassoon *4 horns and 3 trombones *Snare drum *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and harp

Reception#

The British musicologist Robert Layton has praised "" as “astonishingly forward-looking” and it is routinely celebrated as being among Sibelius’s best songs.

Hymn (Sibelius)

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History#

The piece premiered on 26 May 1896 in Helsinki during a ceremony dedicating a memorial stone to , the late professor of obstetrics at the Imperial Alexander University in Finland (now the University of Helsinki) and member of Finnish Diet; Sibelius conducted a small amateur choir in the old university graveyard. The ceremony began with a performance of “”, a funereal choral song (1811) by the German composer and medical doctor , which Sibelius conducted. Following this, the university’s docent, gave a tribute that celebrated Pippingsköld’s life and accomplishments, and the memorial event concluded with the performance of Sibelius’s new choral piece. The newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet reviewed Sibelius’s Hymn as follows: “The simple opening act was brought to a particularly impressive end by a hymn Jean Sibelius had composed for the occasion in the old Italian style. This did not fail to affect those present”. In 1898, Sibelius made minor revisions to the Hymn. Helsinki’s () published the revised version in 1898, although this first edition was superseded in 1906 when the German-based firm of Breitkopf & Härtel—having bought Fazer’s Sibelius contracts and plates in 1905—issued a reprint. The original, however, is extant, and each version takes about four minutes to perform.

Hymn of the Earth

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Instrumentation#

Hymn of the Earth is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Mixed choir () *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in B), and 3 trombones *Timpani *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

History#

The cantata resulted from a commission by the Finnish choral conductor , who had founded the mixed choir in 1900 and desired from Sibelius a new work that the ensemble could perform in the spring of 1920 to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Sibelius, however, was unenthused, writing in his diary in January 1919: “And then there’s the promise I made Klemetti for a work for Suomen Laulu. He is by no means one of my ‘admirers’. It annoys me that he only wants to use my name as a decoration”. By late December 1919, however, Sibelius’s delay tactics ceased and he began work on the piece for Klemetti. Although Sibelius had planned to set by the Finnish poet Aleksis Kivi, he settled on by Eino Leino. It is a patriotic text that celebrates Finland, as well as the natural world. For example, in the third stanza, Leino writes: Sibelius completed the cantata in late January 1920; it premiered a few months later on 4 April 1920 (Easter Sunday) in Helsinki, with Klemetti—its dedicatee—conducting Suomen Laulu and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Impromptu (Sibelius)

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Instrumentation#

The revised version of the Impromptu is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Female choir (SSAA) *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons *4 horns *Timpani and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and harp The original version of the piece called for much larger orchestral forces, including 2 trumpets, cymbals, bass drum, tambourine, and castanets.

In memoriam (Sibelius)

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History#

The work was written to commemorate Eugen Schauman who had in 1904 shot Governor-General Nikolay Bobrikov and then killed himself. Sibelius mentioned on New Year’s Day of 1905 “that he intended to write a requiem in memory of Eugen Schauman and that he had already started to work on it. – I just hope it will be worthy of its subject matter! After all, it will be the only monument that we can raise for him!” Only in 1909, after his throat surgery which made him think of death, he returned to the idea. Erik Tawaststjerna assumes that he wrote it also for himself. He composed a first version in 1909, completed on 14 December 1909. His models were the funeral marches of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” and Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. The work in sonata form is introduced by the violins and violas, with a main theme developing “like the approach of a distant cortege”. He sent the work to the publisher Breitkopf. Reading the proofs, Sibelius was not satisfied, especially with the instrumentation. He revised the piece, completing the work in March 1910. Sibelius first performed it on 8 October 1910, played by the Musikforeningen, in concerts in Kristiania, Norway. was played at the funeral of Sibelius in 1957.

Jäger March

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External links#

Jääkärimarssi Lyrics
Jääkärien marssi (sound clip, 28 seconds, 488 kB, MP3) presented by Pohjanmaan Sotilassoittokunta (Pohjanmaa Military Band) in the military music homepage of Finnish Defence Forces
Pushkin Quintett: The Jäger March — new version (YouTube)
Jäger March on Youtube (Instrumental)
Jäger March on Youtube (With vocals)

Karelia Suite

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Orchestration#

The piece is orchestrated for three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), three oboes (3rd doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns in F and E, three trumpets in F and E, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, two sopranos/baritones (Tableau 1), a baritone (Tableau 5), SATB choir (Tableau 8) and strings. Ralph Wood has commented on the role of the percussion in this composition.

History#

The movements in the suite are all borrowed from the Karelia Music, which consisted of an overture and eight tableaux. Sibelius was commissioned to write it in 1893 by Wiipurilainen Osakunta (the Viipuri Students’ Association) for a lottery to aid the education of the people of the Viipuri Province. Sibelius conducted the Karelian Music at its premiere on 13 November 1893 at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland. The behaviour of the audience was, however, far from ideal. The score was at some point left in the possession of Robert Kajanus and, in 1936, Kajanus’s wife Ella returned it back to Sibelius. It is thought that Sibelius burned his eighth symphony along with most of the Karelia Music in August 1945, with only the 1st and 7th tableaux spared from the fire. The viola, cello and double bass parts are also missing from the 1st and 7th tableaux, and the flute parts are completely missing from the 7th tableau. The Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite was used on British TV from 1956 to 1978 as the theme music for the ITV weekly current affairs programme This Week.

King Christian II (Sibelius)

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Movements of the suite#

The suite consists of five movements:

Kullervo (Sibelius)

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Premiere#

Preparations for a work as massive as Sibelius’s Kullervo stretched Helsinki’s musical resources to the limit: the copyists labored to write out the parts, while organizers hired extra musicians because the Helsinki Orchestral Association then consisted of just thirty-eight permanent members. Moreover, the city had no professional chorus, and so about forty amateur vocalists were cobbled together from the University Chorus and the Helsinki Parish Clerk and Organ School’s student choir. The rehearsals were also a challenge: the musicians, the majority of whom were Germans, not only viewed Sibelius as a neophyte but also had little understanding of the national heritage upon which Kullervo drew—a few of them even laughed derisively when they saw their parts and when the soloists sang. Speaking a mix of Finnish, Swedish, and German as needed, Sibelius gradually won over his performers through the force of his personality; as one vocalist recalled, “We doubted that we could learn our parts … but the young composer himself would come and hold special rehearsals with us. This raised our self-esteem. And he came. His eyes were ablaze! It was that inspirational fire of which the poets speak”. Kullervo premiered on 28 April 1892 at a sold-out concert audience in the Ceremonial Hall of the Imperial Alexander’s University of Finland, Sibelius—initially pale and trembling—conducting. The soloists were the Finnish mezzo-soprano Emmy Achté and baritone Abraham Ojanperä. The audience—a mix of the regular concert-going public and patriots there for the nationalist spectacle—received two leaflets: first, a Swedish-language program that described Kullervo as a “symphonic poem” (""); and second, text in Finnish, (with a Swedish translation) from The Kalevala for Movements III and V, as well as a motto that helped it to contextualize the instrumental Movement IV. Notably, this was the first time in history that a concert audience had been given a Finnish-language text. Although the orchestra overpowered Ojanperä and Achté, the performance was a success: enthusiastic applause erupted after each movement and, at the end, Kajanus presented Sibelius with a blue-and-white-ribboned laurel wreath that quoted prophetically lines 615–616 of Runo L of The Kalevala: “That way now will run the future / On the new course, cleared and ready”. The next day, Kullervo received its second performance—again under Sibelius’s baton—at a matinée concert, and on 30 April, Kajanus conducted the fourth movement at a popular concert that concluded the season.

Kuolema (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Initially, Sibelius wrote six numbers for the 2 December 1903 production: # Tempo di valse lente - Poco risoluto (Act I) # Moderato (Paavali’s Song: ‘Pakkanen puhurin poika’, for solo baritone, Act II) # Moderato assai - Moderato (Elsa’s Song: ‘Eilaa, eilaa’, for solo soprano) - Poco adagio (Act II) # Andante (The Cranes, Act II) # Moderato (Act III) # Andante ma non tanto (Act III) In 1904, he revised No. 1 as Valse triste, and it was performed in Helsinki on 25 April 1904. It was published as Op. 44 in 1905 by Breitkopf & Härtel, and immediately took on a life of its own. It became an instant hit with the public, and one of Sibelius’s signature pieces. However, because of the publishing contract, Sibelius saw relatively little money in terms of royalties from the performances of Valse triste. In 1906, he combined Nos. 3 and 4 and revised the music under the title Scene with Cranes. This was performed in Vaasa on 14 December 1906. Sibelius did not ascribe an opus number to it, it was not performed again in his lifetime, and it was not published until 1973, 16 years after his death. In 1906, he wrote a Rondino der Liebenden for string orchestra, adapted from the music for Kuolema. It lay unperformed until 1911. In 1911, Järnefelt produced a revised version of the play. For this, Sibelius wrote a revised version of Rondino der Liebenden, which he now called Canzonetta; and a new piece, Valse romantique. These were first performed in Helsinki at the Finnish National Theatre on 8 March 1911, together with Valse triste. The play was not a success, however, hoping to repeat the success of Valse triste with Canzonetta and Valse romantique, Sibelius immediately published them together, as Op. 62a and Op. 62b respectively. They failed to grab the public’s attention the way Valse triste had done. In 1973, Scene with Cranes was posthumously published, as Op. 44, No. 2, and Valse triste was retrospectively renumbered as Op. 44, No. 1. Recordings and performances sometimes present Valse triste, Scene with Cranes, Canzonetta and Valse romantique as a unified suite, as it represents the totality of what is known of the incidental music for the two versions of Kuolema. However, this was not Sibelius’s intention.

Kyllikki (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In September 1904 found Sibelius beset by dual distractions. First, he worried that he was beginning to go deaf (as he wrote to his patron, , “My hearing is very bad … As far as the new works I am working on are concerned, I rely on the inner ear …”) and he even admitted himself to a private clinic). Moreover, construction on Sibelius’s new home in Järvenpää (subsequently named Ainola after his wife, Aino) was nearing completion and the family was preparing to move in at the end of the month. Nevertheless, Sibelius was in a good mood (“I have sunny thoughts”.) and experienced a creative surge: he had begun work two major projects, the Third Symphony (Op. 52, 1904–1907) and the incidental music to (JS 147/Op. 46, 1904–1905) for a production at the Swedish Theatre of Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 play. Moreover, around 22 September he finished work on a three-movement piano piece called .

Lemminkäinen Suite

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The piece was originally conceived as a mythological opera before Sibelius abandoned the idea and made it a piece consisting of four distinct movements. The first two though were withdrawn by the composer soon after its premiere and were neither performed, nor added to the published score of the suite until 1935. Sibelius changed the order of the movements when he made his final revisions in 1939, placing The Swan of Tuonela second, and Lemminkäinen in Tuonela third. Sibelius revised the score in 1897 and 1939.

Luonnotar (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

is thematically unrelated to an earlier project of Sibelius’s by the same name from 1903–1905; that ‘Luonnotar’ (for which a fragment is extant) grew out of the abandoned oratorio Marjatta (without catalogue number) and, by 1906, had evolved into the orchestral tone poem Pohjola’s Daughter (, Op. 49). In 1913, Sibelius arranged for soprano and piano.

Instrumentation#

is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Soprano *2 flutes (each doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A), 1 bass clarinet (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in B), and 3 trombones *Timpani (2 players) *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and 2 harps

Malinconia (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In late 1899 and early 1900, a typhus epidemic swept through southern Finland, near Kerava. Sibelius’s brother-in-law, the Finnish playwright Arvid Järnefelt, had just lost his infant daughter, Anna (18981899) on 28 December, and as such, Aino Sibelius (née Järnefelt) traveled to Lohja to assist the Järnefelts as they mourned; Sibelius and the couple’s three daughters—Eva, , and Kirsti—remained in Helsinki. However, the epidemic soon claimed Kirsti (18981900), as well, who died on 13 February. (Aino suspected that she had accidentally carried the deadly bacteria home with her.) Devastated, a grieving Sibelius turned to drink, while Aino and the other daughters sought to outrun the disease by relocating to Aino’s mother’s home in Lohja. In early March, Sibelius composed—purportedly in just three hours—a duo for cello and piano that he named Fantasia (later retitled ). The piece received its premiere on 12 March 1900 in Helsinki; the cellist was Georg Schnéevoigt, the dedicatee, accompanied by the pianist (the two later married in 1907).

Marjatta (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition and abandonment#

The Birth of Christ (), 64 lines # Burial (), 116 lines # Resurrection (), 85 lines Sibelius began working on the oratorio in 1905, but soon abandoned his plans the same year, likely due to a waning enthusiasm for Finne’s libretto (based on the ’s biblically inspired Runo L); the second movement (Love Song) of 1912’s (Op. 66); and, possibly, 1905’s Not with Lamentation (, JS 69), for mixed choir ; 1909’s In memoriam (Op. 59); and 1922’s Andante festivo (JS 34a).#

My Own Land

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

My Own Land is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Mixed choir () *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in B), and 3 trombones *Timpani and glockenspiel *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

History#

The cantata resulted from a commission by the “Helsinki Youth League”, a youth choir that eventually became the Finnish National Chorus (); the ensemble desired from Sibelius a new work that it could perform in 1918 to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Sibelius at the time was staying in Helsinki at Lapinlahti (the hospital at which his brother, Christian, was the medical superintendent), having abandoned Ainola as a precaution in mid-February due to risks associated with the Finnish Civil War. (On 28 January, the Soviet-aided Reds had taken the capital and established a socialist state; on 12–13 February, they had searched the home of Sibelius, who was a known White sympathizer.) The war led to food shortages and inflation, and Sibelius desperately needed money. It was in these “inauspicious circumstances” that he agreed composed the new cantata (as Sibelius’s biographer, Erik Tawaststjerna, notes: “What other course was there but to borrow or beg—and compose?”), although the National Chorus offered him a mere 1,000 Finnish marks, which the composer was to return upon selling the cantata to a publisher. (In his diary, Sibelius grumbled: “In other words, they get it for nothing. But I haven’t the heart to say no”.) Sibelius chose to set the poem (1832) by the Finnish poet Kallio (a pseudonym for Samuli Kustaa Bergh), which had become dear to him during the war. It is a patriotic text—one of “finest achievements of Finnish lyrical poetry”, pre-Kivi—that speaks of one’s longing for Finland and references Finnish mythology. For example, in the first stanza, Kallio writes: Indeed, Sibelius spoke of his composition as a “song of praise to nature and the white nights of Finland”. Sibelius completed the cantata in late March 1918, around the time that the Whites retook Helsinki. (The civil war subsequently ended in May.) The piece premiered months later on 25 October 1918 in Helsinki, with the Finnish composer conducting the National Chorus—its dedicatee—and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Sibelius was in attendance, a trip that had cost him about 5,000 marks. (As he recorded on 29 October in his daiary: “Begin to compose small pieces to refill the coffers. Can’t understand myself. Got back my old appetite and let things go”.) The critics gave the cantata mixed reviews: praised the piece as a “convincing expression for the beauty of Finland”, while Leevi Madetoja (Sibelius’s former pupil) thought that “the many-faceted orchestral texture could… have been given with greater clarity”. A few modern-day commentators, however, have found much to like in My Own Land. For example, Guy Rickards has labeled the cantata a “minor masterpiece”, although it “does not sound particularly Finnish in character”. Calling My Own Land “dignified and euphonious” in its “magical evocation of wintry nights with and the white nights of midsummer”, Robert Layton has argued that the cantata “deserves to be heard more often outside of Finland”. Vesa Sirén has described the cantata as “confident and free from the most defiant patriotism. It is as if Sibelius was already trying to lead the divided nation towards a more moderate future”. Finally, describing the late cantatas as a whole, Pierre-Yves Lascar argues that they “demonstrate more talent than genuine inspiration… rarely if ever do they equal the genius of the symphonies or the symphonic poems”; nevertheless, they “charm the listener” and are “beautiful works”.

Nightride and Sunrise

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Sibelius gave different accounts of the inspiration for this music. One, told to Karl Ekman, was that it was inspired by his first visit to the Colosseum in Rome, in 1901. Another account, given in his later years to his secretary Santeri Levas, was that the inspiration was a sleigh ride from Helsinki to Kerava “at some time around the turn of the century”, during which he saw a striking sunrise. Sibelius completed the score by November 1908 and sent the manuscript to Alexander Siloti, who conducted the first performance, in Saint Petersburg, in 1909. The reviews of the first performance were unfavorable, except for one in Novy Russ, and one reviewer called Siloti’s conducting “slack and monotonous”. A writer for Novoye Vremya asked, “Who is actually riding, and why?” Siloti had made cuts to the score.

Novellette (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Discography#

The sortable table below lists commercially available recordings of Novellette:

Overture in A minor

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Overture in A minor is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons *4 horns, 4 trumpets, 2 trombones, and 1 tuba *Timpani *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Discography#

The Estonian-American conductor Neeme Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra made the world premiere studio recording of the Overture in A minor (then still in manuscript) in 1987 for BIS. The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings:

Overture in E major and Ballet Scene

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Overture in E major is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): * 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons * 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, and tuba * timpani, cymbals, and triangle * violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses The Ballet Scene, on the other hand, is one of the most luxuriously scored orchestral works in Sibelius’s oeuvre. To the forces listed above for the Overture, it subtracts timpani from the percussion section but adds castanets; moreover, both flutes double piccolo, while one oboist and one clarinetist switch, respectively, to cor anglais and bass clarinet.

Pan and Echo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

Pan and Echo is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in F), and 3 trombones *Timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Discography#

The Finnish conductor and the Finlandia Orchestra made the world premiere studio recording of Pan and Echo for Fennica. The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings:

Pelléas et Mélisande (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Movements of the suite#

The movements were derived from the following numbers: Excluded from the suite is the prelude to act 4, scene 2, as well as the vocal version of no. 5, Mélisande’s Song. Sibelius later made a transcription of the suite for solo piano, excluding the ‘At the Seashore’ movement.

Orchestration#

The work is scored for flute (with piccolo), oboe (with English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, timpani/triangle/bass drum, and strings.

Piano Quintet in G minor (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Movements I and III of the Piano Quintet premiered in Helsinki on 5 May 1890 at the Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy); the performers included the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen (violin) and the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (piano), as well as (violin), Josef Schwartz (viola), and Otto Hutschenreuter (cello). Movements II and IV had their premieres a half-year later on 11 October the first four movements were performed in Turku; among the soloists was Sibelius’s close friend, the playwright Adolf Paul, who played piano, as well as on first violin. At neither of the two 1890 concerts was Movement V played. As a result, Sibelius rescued themes from the finale by reusing them for the Rondo in D minor (JS 162, 1893) for viola and piano duo, as well as the first of the Six Impromptus (Op. 5/1, 1893) for solo piano. In 1965, Movement V was played for the first time when the quintet in its entirety was premiered properly on 24 May at the Turku Concert Hall; the instrumentalists were as follows: (violin), (violin), (viola), (cello), and (piano).

Piano Sonata in F major (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure and music#

The sonata has three movements:

Reception#

Robert Layton displays a certain ambivalence towards the Piano Sonata. On the one hand, he dismisses the piano writing as “inept”, characterized by “immaturity and uncertainty”. On the other hand, he concedes not only that “there is nevertheless a good deal to admire in this sonata”, but also that relative to the Six Impromptus (Op. 5) from earlier in the year, the Sonata shows that Sibelius had matured as an artist in the span of just a few months: " It stands head and shoulders above most of Sibelius’s early piano music both in quality of invention and the growing mastery of form it evinces".

Piano Trio in A minor (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The A minor trio is in four movements, as follows: The Trio remains in manuscript.

Discography#

The Finnish musicians Jaakko Kuusisto (violin), Marko Yltinen (cello), and (piano) made the world premiere studio recording of the Trio in 2002 for BIS. The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings:

Piano Trio in C major (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The C major trio is in three movements, as follows: The Trio was published posthumously in 1991 by .

Discography#

The Finnish musicians (violin), (cello), and (piano)—the Tapiola Trio—made the world premiere studio recording of the Trio in 1988 for Finlandia. The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings:

Piano Trio in D major (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The D major trio is in three movements, as follows: The Trio remains in manuscript.

Discography#

Pohjola's Daughter

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

Pohjola’s Daughter is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 1 cor anglais, 2 clarinets (in B), 1 bass clarinet (in B), 2 bassoons, and 1 contrabassoon *4 horns (in F), 2 cornets (in B), 2 trumpets (in B), 3 trombones, and tuba *Timpani *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and harp

Discography#

The Finnish conductor Robert Kajanus and the London Symphony Orchestra made the world premiere studio recording of Pohjola’s Daughter in June 1932, which appeared on Volume 1 of HMV’s The Sibelius Society series (C 507, 1933). Since Kanajus’s pioneering example, many conductors have recorded the work, with Sir Colin Davis—in terms of superlatives—having made four recordings (1979, 2000, 2002, and 2005). The table below lists these and other commercially available recordings:

Rakastava

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In 1894, Sibelius completed , a cycle of four a cappella songs for men’s chorus on a Finnish text in Book 1 of the collection of Finnish folk poems, the Kanteletar. He first set it in 1894, as an entry for a local competition. He won the second prize, while the first prize went to his former teacher. Sibelius arranged the cycle for men’s chorus and string orchestra in 1894, and for mixed choir in 1898. Sibelius used the cycle as the basis for the orchestral suite for string orchestra, percussion and triangle, to which he assigned the opus number 14. He completed it in 1912, when he also wrote his Fourth Symphony. Sibelius often conducted the suite together with his symphonies because the piece “captivated audiences”.

Scaramouche (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

In the autumn of 1912, the Danish music publisher Wilhelm Hansen commissioned Sibelius to compose incidental music to accompany a new pantomime by the Danish playwright Poul Knudsen. Sibelius agreed to the proposal, a decision he came to regret: he mistakenly had believed Hansen would require from him a handful of dance movements; only later at the end of 1912, did Sibelius realize he was to provide an hour-long, full-length ballet-pantomime. Attempts to annul the contract or to amend it to his liking proved unsuccessful. Further disappointment arrived when Sibelius obtained Knudsen’s libretto, which he criticized as having “virtually plagiarized” the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Schleier der Pierrette (The Veil of Pierrette), a pantomime in three acts for which the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi had recently provided the incidental music (Op. 18, 1908–9). Sibelius’s request to Hansen that Knudsen find a different scenario went unheeded. Furthermore, and uncommonly for a pantomime, the libretto contained spoken dialogue, which Sibelius feared would undermine the effect of his music. Hansen assured the composer that the dialogue was there merely to coach the actors and would be excised for the premiere—a promise that went unfulfilled. According to passages from his diary, Sibelius found it difficult to compose the new work and worried “that his international reputation was at stake”: Despite his frustration, Sibelius completed the score in late 1913, dispatching the manuscript to Hansen on 21 December with the note: “To get it right has cost me much thought and work. In the form it now takes, I believe it will be successful”.

Scènes historiques I

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The Scènes historiques I contains three numbers, as follows:

Instrumentation#

The first number of the Scènes historiques I, All’Overtura, is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 3 trumpets (in B), and 3 trombones *Timpani *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses Scena (No. 2) expands the percussion section to include bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, and triangle, while Festivo (No. 3) adds castanets; in addition, Scena calls for each flutist to double piccolo.

Scènes historiques II

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The Scènes historiques II contains three numbers, as follows:

Instrumentation#

The first number of the Scènes historiques II, The Chase, is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F) *Timpani *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses The Love Song (No. 2) adds harp to this ensemble, while At the Drawbridge (No. 3) expands the percussion section to include triangle and tam-tam; in addition, No. 3 calls for one flutist to double piccolo.

Serenad

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The "" is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, and strings): *Baritone *2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons *4 horns *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Reception#

The British musicologist Robert Layton has praised the "" as “something of a discovery … it has the greatest delicacy and atmosphere, and its whispering pizzicato strings are wonderfully suggestive”. He concludes by labeling it as “one of Sibelius’s very greatest and most subtle songs both in its use of rhythm and color”. The Sibelius biographer Andrew Barnett characterizes the "" as a “nocturnal lament for one’s lost love”, the chromaticism of which illustrates the extent to which still in the mid-1890s, Sibelius was under Wagner’s spell.

Seven Runeberg Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 13 songs are as follows: *"" (“Under the Fir-Trees”), Op. 13/1 (1892) *"" (“The Kiss’s Hope”), Op. 13/2 (1892) *"" (“The Heart’s Morning”), Op. 13/3 (1891) *"" (“Spring is Flying”), Op. 13/4 (1891) *"" (“The Dream”), Op. 13/5 (1891) *"" (“To Frigga”), Op. 13/6 (1892) *"" (“The Young Huntsman”), Op. 13/7 (1891)

Orchestral version of No. 4#

In 1913, Sibelius arranged "" for vocalist and orchestra.

Seven Songs, Op. 17 (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 17 songs are as follows: *"" (“Since Then I Have Questioned No Further”), Op. 17/1 (1891–92); text by the Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg *"" (“Go to Sleep!”), Op. 17/2 (1891–92); text by the Finnish poet *"" (“Play of the Birds”), Op. 17/3 (1891); text by Tavaststjerna *"" (“Astray”), Op. 17/4 (1898, revised 1902); text by Tavaststjerna *"" (“A Dragonfly”), Op. 17/5 (1904); text by the Swedish poet Oscar Levertin *"" (“To Evening”), Op. 17/6 (1898); text by the Finnish poet August Valdemar Koskimies (né Forsman) *"" (“Driftwood”), Op. 17/7 (1902); text by the Finnish poet Ilmari Kianto (né Calamnius)

Six Humoresques

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Humoresque No. 1 is scored for the following instruments: *Soloist: violin *Woodwinds: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *Brass: 2 horns (in F) *Percussion: timpani *Strings: violins, violas, cellos, and double basses The Humoresque No. 2 has identical scoring, except for the omission of the entire woodwind section. The Op. 89 pieces are even more delicately scored. In addition to the soloist, Humoresques Nos. 3 and 4 utilize strings only. No. 5 adds to this scoring three woodwinds: 2 flutes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons, while No. 6 omits the clarinets but retains the flutes and bassoons.

Six Impromptus

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure and music#

;Impromptu No. 1 :The first impromptu is in G minor. Marked Moderato, it has a duration of about two minutes. ;Impromptu No. 2 :The second impromptu is also in G minor. Marked LentoVivace, it has a duration of about two minutes. ;Impromptu No. 3 :The third impromptu is in A minor. Marked Moderato (alla marcia), it has a duration of about three minutes. ;Impromptu No. 4 :The fourth impromptu is in E minor. Marked Andantino, it has a duration of about two minutes. ;Impromptu Nos. 5 and 6 :The fifth impromptu is in B minor. Marked Vivace, it has a duration of about 3.5 minutes, The sixth impromptu, on the other hand, is in E major; marked Comodo, it lasts about two minutes. In 1893, Sibelius reused themes from Nights of Jealousy (, JS 125)—an 1893 melodrama for narrator, vocalise soprano, and piano trio to poems by J. L. Runeberg–for Nos. 5–6 of the Six Impromptus. In 1894, he combined the fifth and sixth impromptus into an arrangement for string orchestra and titled the new piece Impromptu.

Six Partsongs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

No. 1: ""#

1898–1899 for male choir; arranged for mixed choir in 1898–1899
The tempo marking is: Not too slowly; .
It has a duration of about 1.5 minutes.
The text comes from poem No. LVII (57) of the Kanteletar.
Version for male choir premiered on 21 April 1899 in Helsinki by and the YL Male Voice Choir.
The male choir version was published by YL.
Dahlström does not report the premiere of the version for mixed choir.
The mixed choir version was published by in 1898 as part of music magazine, edited by

No. 2: ""#

1901 for male choir
The tempo marking is: Briskly, but solemnly; .
It has a duration of about three minutes.
The text comes from the Kalevala, Runo XLIX (49) (lines 403–422).
Premiered on 30 May 1901 by Klemetti and .
Published by in 1902.
Was not arranged for mixed choir.

No. 3: ""#

1893 for male choir; arranged for mixed choir in 1914
The tempo marking is: Briskly;
It has a duration of about two minutes.
The text comes from the Kalevala, Runo XL (40) (lines 1–16).
Version for male choir premiered on 4 April 1893 in Helsinki by and the YL Male Voice Choir.
The male choir version was published by in 1895.

No. 4: ""#

Op. 18/4 (1895; arranged for mixed choir in 1898)
The text is the Kanteletar
for SATB

No. 5: ""#

Op. 18/5 (1899)
The tempo marking is: Alla marcia
The text is from Seven Brothers

No. 6: ""#

Op. 18/6 (1898; arranged for mixed choir in 1904)
The tempo marking is: Lento assai
The text is from Seven Brothers

The following three partsongs were at one time listed by Sibelius under the Op. 18 catalogue number but were removed subsequently. The deprecated title of Nine Partsongs, then, refers to their inclusion: * "" (“To the Fatherland”), JS 98 (1899; revised and arranged for mixed choir 1900; revised version arranged for male choir in 1908) … text by Paavo Cajander * "" (“My Brothers Abroad”), JS 217 (1904) … text by Juhani Aho * "" (“Busy as a Thrush”), JS 129 (1898) … for mixed choir only … text from the Kanteletar

Six Runeberg Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 90 songs are as follows: *"" (“The North”), Op. 90/1 *"" (“Her Message”), Op. 90/2 *"" (“The Morning”), Op. 90/3 *"" (“The Bird Catcher”), Op. 90/4 *"" (“Summer Night”), Op. 90/5 *"" (“Who Brought You Hither?”), Op. 90/6 The songs were first published in 1920 by the Helsinki-based firm of . The table below provides additional information about each song:

Six Songs, Op. 36 (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 36 songs are as follows: *"" (“Black Roses”), Op. 36/1 (1899); text by the Swedish poet Ernst Josephson *"" (“But My Bird is Long in Homing”), Op. 36/2 (1899); text by the Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg *"" (“Tennis at Trianon”), Op. 36/3 (1899); text by the Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding *"" (“Sigh, Sigh, Sedges”), Op. 36/4 (1900); text by Fröding *"" (“The March Snow”), Op. 36/5 (1900); text by the Finnish poet Josef Julius Wecksell *"" (“The Diamond on the March Snow”), Op. 36/6 (1900); text by Wecksell The collection was first published piecemeal by two Helsinki-based firms: () printed Nos. 1–4 from 1900 to 1901, while Axel E. Lindgren printed Nos. 5–6 in 1901. The table below provides additional information about each song:

Six Songs, Op. 50 (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 50 songs are as follows: *"" (“Spring Song”), Op. 50/1; text by the German poet Arthur Fitger *"" (“Longing”), Op. 50/2; text by the German poet Emil Rudolf Weiß *"" (“In the Field a Maid Sings”), Op. 50/3; text by the German-Jewish poet Margarete Susman *"" (“From Anxious Heart”), Op. 50/4; text by the German poet Richard Dehmel *"" (“The Silent City”), Op. 50/5; text by Dehmel *"" (“Song of the Roses”), Op. 50/6; text by the German poet Anna Ritter The songs were first published in 1907 by the Berlin-based firm of Robert Lienau. The table below provides additional information about each song:

Snöfrid

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Instrumentation#

is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Narrator and mixed choir () *2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 1 oboe, 1 clarinet, 1 bass clarinet, and 1 bassoon *2 horns, 3 trumpets, and 1 trombone *Timpani, glockenspiel, bass drum, and cymbals *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

History#

The poem had previously been set in full by Wilhelm Stenhammar (Op. 5) in 1891. Sibelius composed the work in the fall of 1900 on a poem by Viktor Rydberg. He later noted: “I wrote Snöfrid more or less at one sitting after I came home from three days of lively celebrations.” The plot on which it is based is inspired by old Scandinavian balladic stories. A female protagonist appeals to her compatriots, in particular a hero, to fight for freedom as a higher goal than fortune, fame, and pleasure. Sibelius was inspired by several works by Rydberg, including solo songs and Skogsrået (The Wood Nymph). He liked Rydberg’s free verse, expressing both erotic and political ideas. The heroic element possibly appealed to his battles “with everybody and everything”. Sibelius chose dramatic scenes from the poem, such as Snöfrid’s “If you choose me, then you choose the tempest.” The instrumental prelude depicts a storm at night, with whining strings, howling brass, thundering percussion, but “dominated by melodic and harmonic elements”. The work was first performed in Helsinki on 20 October 1900, with the Orchestra of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society, conducted by Sibelius. The occasion was a lottery to finance a tour of the orchestra to Paris. An unsigned review in the newspaper Päivälehti noted: Later, Sibelius composed the last movement on a different text, Volter Kilpi’s Ylistys taiteelle. This version was first performed on 9 April 1902.

Song of the Athenians (Sibelius)

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Background#

Sibelius wrote the song based on Viktor Rydberg’s War Song of Tyrtaeus, a poem that describes an Athenian victory over the Persians in 267 A.D. Finished in 1899, the Song of the Athenians was premiered the same year in Helenski, Finland along with Sibelius’ First Symphony. The work was written in the immediate aftermath and in direct opposition to the February Manifesto which restricted the autonomy of the Duchy of Finland. The work never mentions Finland and Russia directly, but the song was interpreted to replace Athens with Finland and Persia with Russia.

Song of the Earth (Sibelius)

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Instrumentation#

Song of the Earth is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Mixed choir () *2 flutes, 4 clarinets (or 2 oboes and 2 clarinets), and 2 bassoons *3 horns, 2 trumpets, and 2 trombones *Timpani *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

History#

In 1918, Åbo Akademi University was founded; the university commissioned Sibelius to compose a piece for its inauguration, originally scheduled for the spring of 1919.

Songs for Mixed Chorus from the 1897 Promotional Cantata

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Performance history#

The Songs for Mixed Chorus were performed for the first time in their entirety on 30 April 1904, in Viipuri, with the choral master and deputy judge Emil Forsström directing a group of thirty singers drawn from the area; the soloists were Ellen Relander and Edvard Ekström. The concert was at the Town Hall and had been organized by the Viipuri Friends of Music to raise funds for the local orchestra.

Spring Song (Sibelius)

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History#

The piece was initially composed as Improvisation for Orchestra, in the key of D major. It was premiered on 21 July 1894 at an outdoor festival in Vaasa, organized by the (). Short, lyrical, and delicately scored, Sibelius’s piece was ill-suited for the open-air concert, and the audience received it less enthusiastically than another work on the program: Korsholm, by Sibelius’s brother-in-law and friend Armas Järnefelt. Shortly therefore, Sibelius withdrew Improvisation for revision. In 1895, he recast it in F major and retitled the work Spring Song (), appending the subtitle “The Sadness of Spring” to that (unpublished) version.

String Quartet in A minor (Sibelius)

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Structure#

The A minor Quartet is in four movements, as follows: The piece was published posthumously in 1991 by . The first movement begins with an Andante in time before switching to for the Allegro. It has a duration of about nine minutes. The second movement, marked Adagio ma non tanto, is in time; it has a duration of about seven minutes. The third movement, marked Vivace, is in time; it has a duration of about five minutes. The fourth movement, marked Allegro, is in time; it has a duration of about seven minutes.

String Quartet in B-flat major (Sibelius)

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Structure#

The quartet is in four movements: The piece was published posthumously in 1991 by . The first movement, marked Allegro, is in time; it has a duration of about nine minutes. The second movement, marked Andante molto, is in time; it has a duration of about 7.5 minutes. The third movement, marked Presto, is in time; it has a duration of about six minutes. The fourth movement, marked Allegro, is in time; it has a duration of about nine minutes.

String Quartet in D minor (Sibelius)

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History#

As a student, Sibelius composed several works for string quartet. In 1885 he finished the String Quartet in E major, followed in 1889, after quite a few individual movements for this combination, by the String Quartet in A minor. The first string quartet to receive an opus number was in 1890: the String Quartet in B major (Op. 4). Afterwards he wrote no string quartets until in 1909. Composed between his Third and Fourth Symphony, it remained “the only major work for string quartet of Sibelius’s mature period”. Sibelius composed the quartet from December 1908, working on it in London in early 1909. The Latin title, translating to “Intimate Voices” or “Inner voices”, marks a “conversational quality” and “inwardness” of the music. The composer wrote about his work in a letter to his wife: “It turned out as something wonderful. The kind of thing that brings a smile to your lips at the hour of death. I will say no more.” Sibelius showed it to his publisher Robert Lienau on 15 April 1909. The first performance was on 25 April 1910 at the Helsinki Music Institute. A review in the Helsingin Sanomat noted: “The composition attracted a great deal of attention, and it is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant products in its field. It is not a composition for the public at large, it is so eccentric and out of the ordinary.” Sibelius later wrote about the composition: “The melodic material is good but the harmonic material could be ’lighter’, and even ‘more like a quartet.’”

String Quartet in E-flat major (Sibelius)

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Structure#

The quartet is in four movements: The piece was published posthumously in 1991 by .

Discography#

The Sibelius Academy Quartet made the world premiere studio recording of the E major quartet for Finlandia in 1988. The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings:

Suite caractéristique

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Structure#

The is in three movements, each of which lacks descriptive title and is known instead by its tempo marking. The movements are as follows:

Suite champêtre

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History#

Sibelius finished composing the on 7 February 1922; immediately, he mailed it to the London-based publishing firm Chappell & Co., which had accepted the three-movement (Op. 98a, 1921) for two flutes and strings the previous year. However, Chappell refused the new suite, and in the end, Sibelius reached an agreement in April with Copenhagen’s Edition Wilhelm Hansen.

Structure#

The contains three movements, as follows:

Suite for Violin and String Orchestra

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Recordings#

The Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra made the world premiere studio recording in April 1992 for BIS Records; the soloist was South Korean violinist Dong-Suk Kang. The sortable table below lists commercially available recordings of the Suite:

Suite mignonne

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Structure#

The contains three movements, as follows:

History#

The suite was composed, and published by Chappell & Co., in 1921; it received its premiere in Helsinki on 6 April 1922, played by the Helsinki City Orchestra conducted by Karl Ekman.

Swanwhite (Sibelius)

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Background#

Swedish actress Harriet Bosse had been impressed by one of Sibelius’ earlier works, incidental music for the play Pelléas and Mélisande, after having played the role of Mélisande in 1906. Thus, Bosse suggested to Strindberg for Sibelius to score music to his play, Swanwhite.

Original score#

Fourteen movements accompany the play. Act 1 : I. Largo :: The Duke is called to war by a two-note horn call. : II. Comodo :: The prince arrives to the castle where Swanwhite lives. The repeated flute and clarinet notes represent the calls of a peacock. : III. Adagio :: A chord plays as a swan, the symbol for Swanwhite’s dead mother, flies past. Act 2 : IV. Lento assai :: A harp is imitated by strings using pizzicato. Later on, when Sibelius compiled the Swanwhite suite, he added a part for an actual harp. : V. Adagio :: A chord plays as a swan, the symbol for Swanwhite’s dead mother, flies past. : VI. Lento - Comodo - Lento - Allegro :: The music accompanies the actions of the play, which at this point is without dialogue. A clock is depicted by a triangle, and a robin by a flute. : VII. Andantino :: Scored for strings, this movement imagines the conversation between the prince and Swanwhite, as the play is still without dialogue. : VIII. Andante :: Solemn music depicts the prince, following his quarrel with Swanwhite. : IX. Lento :: A slow waltz in E flat minor. The prince is to be married to Swanwhite’s sister, but Swanwhite takes her place at the wedding. : X. Moderato :: A violin melody accompanied by horns and cello, as the stepmother bursts into the room where Swanwhite and the prince are, and the prince goes into hiding. Act 3 : XI. Allegretto: Swanwhite :: This movement bears heavy resemblance to the second movement of Sibelius’ later 5th symphony, and depicts the prince returning to Swanwhite. : XII. Largamente :: Horns depict Swanwhite calling her father back from war. : XIII. Adagio :: This movement foreshadows the third movement of Sibelius’ later 4th symphony, and accompanies the moment when the prince’s dead body is brought to Swanwhite. It is combined with the final movement in the later suite adaptation. : XIV: Largamente molto :: The final movement has strong religious atmosphere, with all the characters praising God when the prince is revived. It is combined with the thirteenth movement in the later suite adaptation.

Symphony No. 1 (Sibelius)

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Instrumentation#

The First Symphony is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes (each doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A for Movements I and IV; in B for Movements II–III), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 3 trumpets (in F), 3 trombones, and tuba *Timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and harp

Symphony No. 2 (Sibelius)

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Background and premiere#

Baron , who gave Sibelius’ well-known tone poem Finlandia its name, wrote to the composer shortly after its successful premiere: “You have been sitting at home for quite a while, Mr. Sibelius, it is high time for you to travel. You will spend the late autumn and the winter in Italy, a country where one learns cantabile, balance and harmony, plasticity and symmetry of lines, a country where everything is beautiful – even the ugly. You remember what Italy meant for Tchaikovsky’s development and for Richard Strauss.” Although Baron Carpelan was penniless, he raised sufficient funds for Sibelius to stay in a mountain villa near Rapallo, Italy. Here, Sibelius jotted down the first notes to his second symphony. More than a year after the first motifs were penned, the second symphony was premiered by the Helsinki Orchestral Society on 8 March 1902, with the composer conducting. After three sold-out performances, Sibelius made some revisions; the revised version was given its first performance by Armas Järnefelt on 10 November 1903 in Stockholm. Oskar Merikanto exclaimed that the premiere “exceeded even the highest expectations”.

Symphony No. 3 (Sibelius)

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Composition#

The Third Symphony represents a turning point in Sibelius’s symphonic output. His First and Second symphonies are grandiose Romantic and patriotic works. The Third, however, shows a distinct, almost Classical desire to contain the largest amount of musical material in the fewest possible melodic figures, harmonies, and durations. This musical economy is most apparent in the first movement, almost reminiscent of Beethoven in its clear and cleanly developed sections. A typical performance of the whole symphony runs slightly under 30 minutes.

Symphony No. 4 (Sibelius)

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Instrumentation#

The Fourth Symphony is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A for Movements I and III–IV; in B for Movement II), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F for Movements I–II; in E for Movements III–IV), 2 trumpets (in F for Movements I–II; in E for Movements III–IV), and 3 trombones *Timpani and glockenspiel (“glocken”) *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses Some conductors have substituted tubular bells for the glockenspiel part in Movement IV, given that the score says “glocken”. However, in a 15 May 1942 letter to his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, Sibelius specified his intention: “There are some errors in the score of Symphony 4 (e.g., it should be glockenspiel, instead of bells, which is natural because of the tempo)”.

Symphony No. 5 (Sibelius)

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History#

During his creative process, Sibelius wrote in his diary: “It was as if God the Father was throwing pieces of mosaic from the edge of heaven and asking me to figure out what the pattern was.” The original version of the work was premiered by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sibelius on 8 December 1915, his 50th birthday. The second version, only part of which survives, was first performed by the Orchestra of Turun Soitannollinen Seura in Turku exactly one year later. The final version, which is the one most commonly performed today, was premiered again by the Helsinki Philharmonic, conducted by Sibelius, on 24 November 1919. The 1910s were a decade of change for the symphonic form, which had by then existed for well over a century. Meanwhile, various landmark works in other genres had presented further radical developments. In 1909, Arnold Schoenberg pushed for more and more dissonant and chromatic harmonies in his Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16. From 1910 to 1913, Igor Stravinsky premiered his innovative and revolutionary ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring. Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were at work developing and performing their impressionistic music. Though he had been in the public spotlight for nearly twenty years, Sibelius found his works receiving poor reviews for the first time with the 1911 premiere of his Symphony No. 4 and, as James Hepokoski has written, “was beginning to sense his own eclipse as a contending modernist.” These events may have brought Sibelius to a point of crisis, forcing him to choose between changing his style to fit with the radical changes in tonality and rhythmic language prevalent among younger composers around 1910, or continuing to develop the musical language he felt familiar with. The Finnish conductor and Sibelius specialist Hannu Lintu, in discussing Symphony No. 5 on television in 2018, said that Sibelius seems to have made a definite choice, a year or two after his previous symphony, to stay within the frames of harmonic language of late-19th-century romanticism; instead he would innovate in the realms of macrostructure and instrumental colouring.

Symphony No. 6 (Sibelius)

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Background#

The last three symphonies by Sibelius abandon traditional development and are more a matter of structured emotional urges; in the words of a 1912 diary entry, “I intend to let the musical thoughts and their development determine their own form in my soul.” This was echoed in his interview in the Svenska Dagbladet after a performance of the Sixth in Stockholm in March 1923: “I do not think of a symphony only as music in this or that number of bars, but rather as an expression of a spiritual creed, a phase in one’s inner life.” Although the symphony was completed only in 1923, musical ideas incorporated into it were being developed in his notebooks from 1914 onward, at the same time as he was also working on his Fifth Symphony; by 1918 it was taking more definite form, when he was working on the Seventh as well. By January 1923 his diary notes the final completion of the first three movements of the Sixth. He conducted the premiere on 19 February of that year. The symphony was dedicated to his Swedish musical advocate, the composer and conductor Wilhelm Stenhammar.

Symphony No. 7 (Sibelius)

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Composition#

The concept of a continuous, single-movement symphony was one Sibelius only reached after a long process of experimentation. His Symphony No. 3, dating from 1907, contained three movements, an earlier fourth movement having been fused into the third. The final result was successful enough for Sibelius to use the same idea in his Symphony No. 5, completed in 1915. Although his first mention of No. 7 occurred in December 1918, the source for its material has been traced back to around 1914, the time when he was working on the Fifth. In 1918 Sibelius had described his plans for this symphony as involving “joy of life and vitality with appassionato sections”. The symphony would have three movements, the last being a “Hellenic rondo”. Surviving sketches from the early 1920s show that the composer was working on a work of four, not three, movements. The overall key seems to have been G minor, while the second movement, an Adagio in C major, provided much of the material for the themes that eventually made up the Symphony. This work helped to shape the earliest parts of No. 7, those created during the composition of Nos. 5 and 6. One of the themes from Kuutar, called Tähtölä (Where the Stars Dwell), evolved into part of No. 7’s opening Adagio section.

Symphony No. 8 (Sibelius)

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Background#

Jean Sibelius was born in 1865 in Finland, since 1809 an autonomous grand duchy within the Russian Empire having earlier been under Swedish control for many centuries. The country remained divided between a culturally dominant Swedish-speaking minority, to which the Sibelius family belonged, and a more nationalistically-minded Finnish-speaking, or “Fennoman” majority. In about 1889 Sibelius met his future wife, Aino Järnefelt, who came from a staunch Fennoman family. Sibelius’s association with the Järnefelts helped to awaken and develop his own nationalism; in 1892, the year of his marriage to Aino, he completed his first overtly nationalistic work, the symphonic suite Kullervo. Through the 1890s, as Russian control over the duchy grew increasingly oppressive, Sibelius produced a series of works reflecting Finnish resistance to foreign rule, culminating in the tone poem Finlandia. Sibelius’s national stature was recognised in 1897 when he was awarded a state pension to enable him to spend more time composing. In 1904 he and Aino settled in Ainola, a country residence he built on the shores of Lake Tuusula in Järvenpää, where they lived for the remainder of their lives. Although life at Ainola was not always calm and carefree—Sibelius was often in debt and prone to bouts of heavy drinking—he managed over the following 20 years to produce a large output of orchestral works, chamber music, piano pieces and songs, as well as lighter music. His popularity spread across Europe to the United States where, during a triumphant tour in 1914, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Yale University. At home his status was such that his 50th birthday celebrations in 1915 were a national event, the centrepiece of which was the Helsinki premiere of his Fifth Symphony. By the mid-1920s Sibelius had acquired the status of a living national monument and was the principal cultural ambassador of his country, independent since 1917. According to his biographer Guy Rickards, he invested “his most crucial inspiration” into the seven symphonies he composed between 1898 and 1924. The Sibelius scholar James Hepokoski considers the compact, single-movement Seventh Symphony, which Sibelius completed in 1924, to be the composer’s most remarkable symphonic achievement, “the consummate realization of his late-style rethinking of form”.

Tapiola (Sibelius)

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History#

When asked by the publisher to clarify the work’s program, Sibelius responded with a prose explanation converted by his publisher (Breitkopf & Härtel) into a quatrain prefixed to English language editions of the score: Wide-spread they stand, the Northland’s dusky forests, Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams; Within them dwells the Forest’s mighty God, And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets. Tapiola was premiered by Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphonic Society on 26 December 1926. The original publisher was Breitkopf & Härtel, who published most of the composer’s works. Tapiola was Sibelius’s last major work, though he lived for another thirty years. He began working on an Eighth Symphony, but he is said to have burned the sketches after becoming unhappy with the work.

Ten Pieces, Op. 24 (Sibelius)

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No. 1: Impromptu#

Sibelius composed the Impromptu in G minor during the summer of 1895 while vacationing with his family in Vaania by Lake Vesijärvi, despite the fact that the cottage they had rented did not contain a piano. Marked Vivace and in time, it has a duration of about four minutes; it was first published in 1895 by Helsinki’s Axel E. Lindgren. The Sibelius biographer Andrew Barnett notes that the Impromptu “opens in a tumultuous, scherzo-like mood” before slowing into a “brooding waltz” that in some ways anticipates Sibelius’s most famous composition, Valse triste (Op. 44/1), an orchestral work that he arranged in 1904 from the incidental music to Kuolema (Death, 1903).

The Bard (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Bard is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), 1 bass clarinet (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in B), and 3 trombones *Timpani, bass drum, and tam-tam *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and harp

Discography#

The sortable table below contains this and other commercially available recordings of The Bard:

The Bells of Kallio Church

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

On 13 July 1908, construction began on a new Lutheran church in the Kallio subdistrict of Helsinki; the Finnish architect Lars Sonck designed the building, which stylistically incorporates both national romantic and Art Nouveau influences. The steeple of Kallio Church contains a carillon of seven bronze church bells (pitched D 1 to C 2 and weighing a total of 4,800 kilograms), which were commissioned from the celebrated Apolda-based, German clockmaker ; the clock and playing drum mechanism, in turn, was built by . In 1910, Sibelius broke off work on the Fourth Symphony (1911) to hold discussions with the church’s building committee, which hoped the composer would provide a melody for the mechanized carillon. Sibelius accepted the offer, and even consulted—along with the Finnish composers Oskar Merikanto and —on the make and pitching of the bells. By January 1911, however, Sibelius had still not settled on a melody, although he toyed with the idea of using the last few measures from his Second Symphony (1902). The Bells of Kallio Church premiered on Sunday, 1 September 1912. For this occasion, the Finnish choral master arranged the chorale (without Sibelius’s blessing and, thus, to his annoyance) to a poem by , the priest of the new church. Klemetti’s intrusion confused the Finnish press: some newspapers credited both men for the tune, while a few others—such as Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet—omitted Sibelius’s name entirely. “Klemetti’s attempt at the bell tune for the inauguration annoyed me”, Sibelius confided in his diary. “I was furious but, after a couple of hours, became wholly indifferent to his impudence”. Sibelius, in a move intended to reclaim sole artistic ownership of The Bells of Kallio Church, arranged the piece for solo piano a few days after the consecration; on 13 September, he supplanted Klemetti’s arrangement with his own for mixed choir . Sibelius sold both arrangements in October to the Leipzig-based music publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. According to the musicologist Sakari Ylivuori, an authority on Sibelius’s choral music, the autograph manuscript of the arrangement for mixed choir contains no text underlaid, apparently because Sibelius had disliked Engström’s “mediocre” poem and had hoped that the Finnish poet Otto Manninen would contribute a new text. In the end, Sibelius settled—ironically—for a new lyrics penned by Klemetti, which Breitkopf received on 17 December.

The Breaking of the Ice on the Oulu River

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Instrumentation#

The Breaking of the Ice on the Oulu River is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): * Narrator and male choir () * 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons * 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, and tuba * Timpani, bass drum, and cymbals * Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

History#

Sibelius composed in a political context. Most of what is now Finland had been part of Sweden until Russia won the territory in the Finnish War and ruled it as a Grand Duchy. It was first autonomous in terms of a parliament, money, and schools in Swedish and Finnish, but Nikolay Bobrikov, the Russian Governor-General, tried to limit these liberties and even proposed schooling only in Russian. Sibelius composed music as patriotic statements against the restricting censorship, in , first performed on 21October at a lottery of the Savo-Karelian Students’ Association in Helsinki, and in Finlandia, first performed as part of the Press Celebration Music two weeks later. Sibelius conducted the first performance, the premiere. He used the choral theme again for children’s choir a cappella, The Landscape Breathes (Nejden andas). After the first performance, Sibelius made a note about the composition, “should be revised”, which he later did.

The Building of the Boat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

From the 1870s to the 1890s, the politics of Finland featured a struggle between the Svecomans and the Fennomans. Whereas the former sought to preserve the privileged position of the Swedish language, the latter desired to promote Finnish as a means of inventing a distinctive national identity. High on the “agenda” for the Fennomans was to develop vernacular opera, which they “understood as a symbol of a proper nation”; to do so, they would need a permanent company with an opera house and a Finnish-language repertoire at its disposal. Swedish-speaking Helsinki already had a permanent theatre company housed at the Swedish Theatre, and thanks to Fredrik Pacius, two notable, Swedish-language operas: King Charles’s Hunt (, 1852) and The Princess of Cyprus (, 1860). Success was hard-won: in 1872, the Fennoman Kaarlo Bergbom founded the Finnish Theatre Company, and a year later it named its singing branch the Finnish Opera Company. This was a small group that, without an opera house as residence, toured the country performing “the best of the foreign repertoire”, albeit translated into Finnish. However, the Fennomans still remained without an opera written to a Finnish libretto, and in 1879 the Finnish Opera Company folded due to financial difficulties. Acting as a catalyst, in 1891 the Finnish Literature Society organized a competition that provided domestic composers with the following brief: submit before the end of 1896 a Finnish-language opera about Finland’s history or mythology; the winning composer and librettist receive 2000 and 400 markka, respectively. Sibelius had seemed an obvious candidate to inaugurate a new vernacular era, given his role in the 1890s as an artist at the center of the nationalist cause in Finland: first, he had married into an aristocratic family identified with the Finnish resistance; second, he had joined the Päivälehti circle of liberal artists and writers; and third, he had become the darling of the Fennomans with his Finnish-language masterpiece Kullervo, a setting of The Kalevala for soloists, male choir, and orchestra. The competition was the “initial impulse” for The Building of the Boat, the 1893–1894 project in which Sibelius had aspired to write a mythological, Finnish-language on the subject of Väinämöinen. But Sibelius’s opera foundered on the shoals of self-doubt and artistic evolution. In the end, the Society received no submissions, and when Sibelius finally emerged with his first opera, it was 1896’s The Maiden in the Tower to a Swedish libretto.

The Captive Queen

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Captive Queen is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Mixed choir () or male choir () *2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 1 clarinet (in B), 1 bass clarinet (in B), and 1 bassoon *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in F), and 3 trombones *Timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

The Dryad (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Dryad is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), 1 bass clarinet (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 3 trumpets (in B), 3 trombones, and tuba *Bass drum, snare drum, castanets, and tambourine *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Structure#

\relative c’ \new Staff \with \remove “Time_signature_engraver” \key d \major \time 3/4 \tempo "" >

The Language of the Birds (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

“I have no idea how much I’ll have to compose, but I’m keen to be of assistance to Paul”, he wrote to his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel. On 4 August, Sibelius completed the score for The Language of the Birds, which turned out to be merely one number: the Wedding March. " The Language of the Birds may not be stupefying," Sibelius wrote in his diary. “But it is interesting in the manner of modern commissioned stuff. It is natural and effective in its scoring—and not without poetry”.

The Lizard (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Lybeck began writing The Lizard in 1907 and completed it in 1908; published by Albert Bonnier (Stockholm), the book became available to the public on 20 November 1908. The Finnish literary critics received the play positively, praising in particular the author’s concise prose and—surprisingly, given his inexperience in the genre—sure sense for the dramatic; nevertheless, several wondered whether The Lizard could be staged successfully, given its dreamlike scenes and Lybeck’s extensive stage directions. Sibelius read the play with alacrity and wrote to Lybeck of its impact.

The Maiden in the Tower

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

On 25 April 1896 Sibelius promised the Finnish mezzo-soprano Emmy Achté that he would write a one-act stage work for a lottery soirée to benefit Robert Kajanus’s Helsinki Philharmonic Society and music school. It was a curious moment in his career for Sibelius to agree to an opera-like project: since August 1894, he had labored to convert his abandoned, Finnish-language grand opera The Building of the Boat () into the tone poems The Wood Nymph (, Op. 15) and the four-movement The Lemminkäinen Suite (Op. 22); their respective premieres on 17 April 1895 and 13 April 1896 were the culmination of his metamorphosis from Wagner acolyte to “tone painter” in the tradition of Liszt. But Sibelius probably thought the lottery soirée was a good cause, and moreover, a critical tool of the Finnish resistance. The musicologist and Sibelius biographer Glenda Dawn Goss describes these evenings as follows: Achté had earlier contracted the Finnish author Rafael Hertzberg to serve as librettist. Although little is known about Hertzberg’s writing process, he produced a Swedish-language libretto based on a popular, traditional Karelian, Finnish-language folk ballad, (In a Maiden’s Bower), which he described as “the oldest known Finnish drama—or rather an opera, because everything is sung”. Sibelius began composing in August, and met Hertzberg on 24 September—a month that found Sibelius overworked, as he had taken on teaching responsibilities at the Imperial Alexander’s University of Finland following the retirement of . According to Achté, by the time rehearsals began a fortnight before the premiere, Sibelius had not yet finished the finale: “I constantly have to … give him a very necessary reminder that we can’t guess what his music is; we need the notes on the page”.

The Oceanides

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

In August 1913, Sibelius received a message from the American composer and Yale University professor Horatio Parker: a New England patron of the arts, Carl Stoeckel, and his wife, Ellen Stoeckel née Battell, had authorized $1,000 for the commission of a new symphonic poem from Sibelius, per Parker’s recommendation. The piece, not to exceed fifteen minutes in length, was to be played at the 1914 Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut, which the Stoeckels annually hosted (and financed) at their estate in a wooden performance hall dubbed “The Music Shed”. Despite his ongoing struggles with another commission, incidental music to Poul Knudsen’s tragic ballet-pantomime Scaramouche, Sibelius accepted the Stoeckel offer, writing in his diary, “A symphonic poem, ready by April”.

The Origin of Fire

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The revised version of The Origin of Fire is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Baritone and male choir () *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons *4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, and tuba *Timpani, glockenspiel, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses The original version of the piece is scored identically, with the exception that triangle is omitted.

The Rapids-Rider's Brides

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Rapids-Rider’s Brides is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Baritone (or mezzo-soprano) *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in F), and 3 trombones *Timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

Discography#

The Finnish conductor Jorma Panula and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, joined by the Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen, made the world premiere studio recording of The Rapids-Rider’s Brides in May 1984 for BIS. The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings: In 2008, the Swedish baritone and the Finnish pianist made the world premiere studio (and, to date, only) recording of Sibelius transcription of The Rapids-Rider’s Brides for BIS. The table below contains additional details about this recording:

The Raven (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition and abandonment#

In the summer of 1909, the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté proposed to Sibelius that the two of them should together embark on a concert tour of central Europe, with stops in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and Prague. The plan also called for Sibelius to compose a new orchestral song for her to premiere in Germany. By the autumn of 1910, as Ackté and her impresario, Emil Gutmann, were finalizing arrangements for a February 1911 tour, she sought a commitment from Sibelius. In early November, the pair met in Helsinki and Sibelius, agreeing to his role, suggested a setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre narrative poem, The Raven, which he had read via the Swedish-language translation by Viktor Rydberg (1877). The Ackté commission was not without hazard, as it forced Sibelius to divert himself from the Fourth Symphony, with which he was then wrestling. Moreover, each piece was scheduled to premiere in early 1911. He began working on The Raven on 9 November, but he quickly began to have doubts, both about his ability to successfully juggle two simultaneous projects (28 November diary entry: “Struggle with God! The Raven! Happiness and pain! Will I get it finished and perfect by February?”) and the German translation of Poe’s poem (3 December: “Doubts about the text. Words are always a burden in my composing”.).

The Swan of Tuonela

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Swan of Tuonela is scored for the following instruments, organized by family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): * Soloist: cor anglais * 1 oboes, 1 bass clarinet (in B), and 2 bassoons * 4 horns (in F) and 3 trombones * Timpani and bass drum * Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, double basses, and harp The cor anglais is the voice of the swan, and its solo is one of the best known solos in the orchestral literature for that instrument. The string section is divided.

The Tempest (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Sibelius had completed his 7th Symphony, which was to be his last, in 1924. The Tempest and Tapiola were to be his last great works, and he wrote little else for the remaining 32 years of his life, which came to be known as “The Silence of Järvenpää”. The idea for music for The Tempest was first suggested to Sibelius in 1901, by his friend Axel Carpelan. In 1925, his Danish publisher Wilhelm Hansen again raised the idea, as the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen was going to stage the work the following year, directed by Adam Poulsen. Sibelius wrote it from the autumn of 1925 through to the early part of 1926, during which time he turned 60. (Although according to Sibelius’s journal, he was working on some minor additions and changes music in May 1927.) The complete music lasts for over an hour. It originally consisted of 34 pieces, for vocalists, mixed-voice choir, harmonium and orchestra. It was first performed in Copenhagen on 15 March 1926. The first night attracted international attention but Sibelius was not present. Reviews noted that “Shakespeare and Sibelius, these two geniuses, have finally found one another”, and praised in particular the part played by the music and stage sets. Only four days later Sibelius set off for an extended trip to work on new commissions in Rome. He did not hear the music for the first time until the autumn of 1927 when the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki staged the work. For this performance, he composed an alternative epilogue, bringing the number of items to 35. The overture has been described as “the single most onomatopoetic stretch of music ever composed”. Sibelius published the Overture as a separate piece, and arranged two suites from the music, comprising 19 pieces. These suites condensed and combined items from the stage music, sometimes in ways that obscure the drama. It is in the form of these suites that the music has been most frequently heard in the concert hall and on recordings. Various recordings do not stick to the formal suites but include other items. The complete incidental music was not recorded for the first time until 1992, by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Opera Chorus, and soloists under Osmo Vänskä, as part of the complete recordings of all Sibelius’s works. Recordings of the suites include those by Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Charles Groves, Horst Stein, Leif Segerstam and Michael Stern.

The Wood Nymph

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Sibelius admired Rydberg and often set his poetry to music, including the melodrama Snöfrid, Op. 29, and the War Song of Tyrtaeus. The poem Skogsrået was first published in 1882, and in 1883 Sibelius’s future friend, the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, illustrated it. In 1888 or 1889, about the time the two met, Sibelius first set Skogsrået for voice and piano. This setting is musically unrelated to Sibelius’s 1894–95 treatment. In 1894, although Sibelius was a national figure in Finland and had completed major works like Kullervo and the Karelia Suite, he was still struggling to break free of Wagnerian models and develop a truly individual style. The origin of the tone poem remains obscure but The Wood Nymph may well have gradually evolved out of music for a verismo opera that Sibelius had planned but never realized. The libretto, as related in a letter from Sibelius dated 28 July 1894, tells the story of a young, engaged student who, while travelling abroad, meets and is attracted by an exotic dancer. Upon his return, the student describes the dance and dancer so vividly that his fiancée concludes he has been unfaithful; the opera ends with a funeral procession for the student’s fiancée (the letter is unclear as to her cause of death). Furthermore, in a letter from 10 August 1894, Sibelius informs his wife, Aino, of a new composition “in the style of a march”. Murtomäki argues that Sibelius readily adapted his previous musical ideas to the plot of : the march became Björn’s theme from the first section of The Wood Nymph, the protagonist “tak ing himself off (abroad)” became the frenetic chase of the second, the unfaithfulness with the dancer became the seduction by the evil skogsrå in the third, and the opera’s funeral procession became the despair of Björn in the finale. While both tone poem and melodrama would emerge from this material, it is not clear which musical form Sibelius initially used to tackle Rydberg’s poem. In the 1930s, the composer claimed he had first composed the melodrama (premiered on 9 March 1895 at a lottery ball benefiting the Finnish Theatre where it was narrated by ), only to realize subsequently that “the material would allow a more extensive treatment” as a symphonic poem. Scholars, however, have disputed this chronology, arguing that, given the premiere of the tone poem a mere month later, it is “improbable, if not totally impossible” that Sibelius could have expanded the melodrama so quickly. He probably “compressed” the earlier tone poem, eliminating bridges and repetitions, to produce the streamlined melodrama. The manuscript of the melodrama has far fewer corrections than the manuscript of the tone poem, which supports this view. Sibelius also arranged the conclusion for solo piano.

Three Pieces, Op. 116 (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The following numbers comprise the Three Pieces:

Discography#

The sortable table below lists commercially available recordings of the complete Three Pieces:

Three Sonatinas

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In 1912 Sibelius found himself creatively at a crossroads, still searching for his next major project in the wake of the Symphony No. 4 in A minor (Op. 63), which he had premiered the previous April in Helsinki. He considered composing one to two orchestral fantasies or, alternatively, a new symphony. Moreover, he toyed with the idea of, finally, undertaking a large-scale opera (The Maiden in the Tower, JS 101, from 1896 had been a brief, one-acter), after the Finnish operatic soprano Aino Ackté and had approached him with a libretto.

Two Rondinos

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Rondino No. 1#

The First Rondino is in G-sharp minor and begins with the tempo marking Andantino.

Rondino No. 2#

The Second Rondino is in C-sharp minor and is marked Vivace.

Reception#

Robert Layton characterizes the Two Rondinos as “closely related … in character” to the Three Sonatinas for solo piano from the same year, and as such, he endorses as “highly probable” the music lexicographer and critic Eric Blom’s speculation that the rondinos might have originated as movements for an incomplete fourth sonatina, with the First Rondo serving as a central slow movement and the Second Rondino as “delightful finale.”

Two Serenades

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The Serenade No. 1 is scored for the following instruments: *Soloist: violin *Woodwinds: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A), and 2 bassoons *Brass: 4 horns (in F) *Percussion: timpani *Strings: violins, violas, cellos, and double basses The Serenade No. 2 has identical scoring, except for the addition of triangle to the percussion section; it also has the clarinetists switch to B clarinet.

Recordings#

The sortable table below lists commercially available recordings of the Two Serenades:

Two Serious Melodies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

Cantique is scored for the following instruments: *Soloist: violin (or cello) *Woodwinds: 2 flutes and 2 clarinets (in B) *Brass: 2 horns (in F) *Percussion: timpani (2 players) *Strings: violins, violas, cellos, double basses, and harp Devotion is scored for the following instruments: *Soloist: violin (or cello) *Woodwinds: 2 flutes, 2 clarinets (in A), and 2 bassoons *Brass: 4 horns (in F) and 3 trombones *Strings: violins, violas, cellos, and double basses

Two Songs, Op. 35 (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Constituent songs#

Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 35 songs are as follows: *"", Op. 35/1; text by the Swedish poet Ernst Josephson *"", Op. 35/2; text by the Finnish poet Bertel Gripenberg The songs were first published in 1910 by the German firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. The table below provides additional information about each song:

Väinämöinen's Song

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

Väinämöinen’s Song is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): *Mixed choir () *2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in B), and 2 bassoons *4 horns (in F), 3 trumpets (in B), and 3 trombones *Timpani, bass drum, triangle, and glockenspiel *Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses The cantata premiered on 26 June 1926 at a singing festival in Sortavala (then still part of Finland), with the Finnish conductor Robert Kajanus conducting.

Valse triste

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The background to the music as it functions within the original play is expanded upon by the programme notes for the production: It is night. The son, who has been watching beside the bedside of his sick mother, has fallen asleep from sheer weariness. Gradually, a ruddy light is diffused through the room: there is a sound of distant music: the glow and the music steal nearer until the strains of a valse melody float distantly to our ears. The sleeping mother awakens, rises from her bed and, in her long white garment, which takes the semblance of a ball dress, begins to move silently and slowly to and fro. She waves her hands and beckons in time to the music, as though she were summoning a crowd of invisible guests. And now they appear, these strange visionary couples, turning and gliding to an unearthly valse rhythm. The dying woman mingles with the dancers; she strives to make them look into her eyes, but the shadowy guests one and all avoid her glance. Then she seems to sink exhausted on her bed and the music breaks off. Presently she gathers all her strength and invokes the dance once more, with more energetic gestures than before. Back come the shadowy dancers, gyrating in a wild, mad rhythm. The weird gaiety reaches a climax; there is a knock at the door, which flies wide open; the mother utters a despairing cry; the spectral guests vanish; the music dies away. Death stands on the threshold.

Violin Concerto (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Sibelius originally dedicated the concerto to the noted violinist Willy Burmester, who promised to play the concerto in Berlin. For financial reasons, however, Sibelius decided to premiere it in Helsinki, and since Burmester was unavailable to travel to Finland, Sibelius engaged (1873–1914), a Hungarian violin pedagogue of Czech origin who was then teaching at the Helsinki Institute of Music (now the Sibelius Academy). The initial version of the concerto premiered on 8 February 1904, with Sibelius conducting. Sibelius had barely finished the work in time for the premiere, giving Nováček little time to prepare, and the piece was of such difficulty that it would have sorely tested even a player of much greater skill. Given these factors, it was unwise of Sibelius to choose Nováček, who was a teacher and not a recognised soloist, and it is not surprising that the premiere was a disaster. However, Nováček was not the poor player he is sometimes painted as. He was the first violinist hired by Martin Wegelius for the Helsinki Institute, and in 1910 he participated in the premiere of Sibelius’s string quartet Voces intimae, which received favourable reviews. Sibelius withheld this version from publication and made substantial revisions. He deleted much material he felt did not work. The new version premiered on 19 October 1905 with Richard Strauss conducting the Berlin Court Orchestra. Sibelius was not in attendance. Willy Burmester was again asked to be the soloist, but he was again unavailable, so the performance went ahead without him, the orchestra’s leader Karel Halíř stepping into the soloist’s shoes. Burmester was so offended that he refused ever to play the concerto, and Sibelius re-dedicated it to the Hungarian “wunderkind” Ferenc von Vecsey, who was aged 12 at the time. Vecsey championed the work, first performing it when he was only 13, The concerto was given a British premiere on 1 October 1907 at the Promenade Concerts, conducted by Henry Wood at Queen’s Hall. The initial version was noticeably more demanding on the advanced skills of the soloist. The revised version still requires a high level of technical facility on the part of the soloist. The original is somewhat longer than the revised, including themes that did not survive the revision. Certain parts, like the very beginning, most of the third movement, and parts of the second, have not changed at all. The cadenza in the first movement is exactly the same for the violin part.

Violin Sonatina (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The Violin Sonatina received its premiere in Helsinki, Finland, on 6 December 1915, on the occasion of the semi-centennial of Sibelius’s birth (during which there were many concerts celebrating the composer); the soloists were the Polish-American violinist Richard Burgin and the Finnish pianist . Also on the program was the String Quartet (Op. 4, 1890), the suite for solo piano Kyllikki (Op. 41, 1904), and the String Quartet, (Op. 56, 1909).

Water Droplets (Sibelius)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Sibelius’s father, Christian Gustaf, died of typhus on 31 July 1868, leaving behind his pregnant, 26-year old wife Maria (née Borg), as well as two young children: Jean (then two) and his older sister Linda; Christian had mismanaged his affairs, and following his death, his estate was declared bankrupt. Maria was forced to move back in with her widowed mother, Juliana Borg (née Haartman), and two unmarried sisters (Tekla and Julia); shortly thereafter, she gave birth to Sibelius’s younger brother, Christian, on 27 March 1869. Throughout his childhood, Sibelius—then called Janne—lived within this extended family circle, which moved around Hämeenlinna several times. The children typically summered in Loviisa with their paternal grandmother, Katarina (née Åkerberg), and Aunt Evelina. Sibelius’s first attempts at composition—improvisational in nature—were at the family piano, on which his Aunt Julia began teaching him at age seven. Later in life, Sibelius claimed that his first composition had been a piano piece for children’s theatre called Desert Scene (); no trace of this work has ever been found, perhaps because he never committed it to paper. Moreover, Aunt Evelina—who “very early on … grasped the exceptional nature of Sibelius’s musical talent, and watched its growth with sympathy and understanding”—was the subject of another early work, Aunt Evelina’s Life in Music (), an “embryonic Sinfonia domestica” that the boy also never bothered to write down. Scholars believe the first composition that Sibelius committed to paper is a short, 12-measure duo for violin and cello pizzicato, which he titled Water Droplets ( in his mother tongue of Swedish). The piece only survives as a copy—likely made in 1915—by the Finnish composer and scholar Erik Furuhjelm, who was then writing the first biography of Sibelius in honor of the composer’s semicentennial; to complete the book, he needed to examine Sibelius’s juvenilia and early professional works (such as the withdrawn choral symphony Kullervo). Because the autograph manuscript is lost (Erik Tawaststjerna, Sibelius’s most expansive biographer, implies Sibelius destroyed it in “the bonfires which warmed his old age”), Water Droplets cannot be dated with precision. While Tawaststjerna dates the duo to 1875 (when Sibelius would have been nine or 10 years old), other scholars—for example, , an authority on the composer’s manuscripts—posit that Water Droplets more likely dates to 1881, when he was a 15-year old. Their reasoning is that in the mid-to-late 1870s Sibelius likely did not yet know the violin and cello well enough to write Water Droplets, because he would not begin violin lessons until the autumn of 1881, when he became a pupil of the local Hämeenlinna military bandmaster, Gustaf Levander. Indeed, Sibelius may have written the piece as an exercise for himself and Christian, who played the cello.

Jean Sibelius on Music Theory Print

Andante festivo

History#

Arioso (Sibelius)

Reception#

Belshazzar's Feast (Sibelius)

History#

Cantata for the Coronation of Nicholas II

Instrumentation#

Structure#

Cantata for the University Graduation Ceremonies of 1894

Instrumentation#

Structure#

Cassazione (Sibelius)

History#

Compositions for brass septet by Jean Sibelius

Instrumentation#

Compositions for organ by Jean Sibelius

Intrada#

Danses champêtre

Structure#

Discography#

En saga

Composition#

Everyman (Sibelius)

Composition#

Finlandia

History#

Finlandia hymn

Finnish national song#

Five Christmas Songs

Constituent songs#

Five Esquisses

History#

Five Pieces, Op. 75 (Sibelius)

No. 1: When the Rowan Blossoms#

No. 2: The Solitary Fir Tree#

No. 3: The Aspen#

Five Pieces, Op. 85 (Sibelius)

No. 1: The Daisy#

No. 2: The Carnation#

No. 3: The Iris#

Five Songs, Op. 37 (Sibelius)

Constituent songs#

Five Songs, Op. 38 (Sibelius)

Constituent songs#

Four Pieces, Op. 115 (Sibelius)

Structure#

Discography#

Giv mig ej glans, ej guld, ej prakt

Publication history#

See also#

Höstkväll

Instrumentation#

Reception#

Hymn (Sibelius)

History#

Hymn of the Earth

Instrumentation#

History#

Impromptu (Sibelius)

Instrumentation#

In memoriam (Sibelius)

History#

Jäger March

External links#

Karelia Suite

Orchestration#

History#

King Christian II (Sibelius)

Movements of the suite#

Kullervo (Sibelius)

Premiere#

Kuolema (Sibelius)

Background#

Kyllikki (Sibelius)

History#

Lemminkäinen Suite

History#

Luonnotar (Sibelius)