Jean Sibelius

Description:
This book looks at the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) in its biographical context. The enigma 'Sibelius' is exposed as several chapters provide for background relating to the creative act of and influences on the composer. Other chapters show Sibelius's influence on others, discuss aspects of genre, as well as the relationship of the artist with nature and homeland. For more than 100 years Sibelius and his work has been the subject of legends, often diverting attention away from his creative output. This book, drawing on many unpublished sources, moves the focus of attention back to Sibelius as a musician and a 'poet' of universal validity. Those who knew the composer at an early age tell a story of a youthful bohemian in the midst of European decadence. This 'age of Carmen', as Eduard Munch called it in 1894, marked Sibelius's formative years and therefore requires close scrutiny of biographical detail. Sibelius's most important works, dating from a time between his third symphony and Tapiola, reflect the modernistic mainstream. The composer's last three decades, well known as the 'Silence of Ainola', have inspired the masculine cliches that this book deconstructs. Those who met the composer in the 1930s and 1940s as well as after the Second World War remember a detached gentleman mostly accompanied by his wife Aino. She was instrumental in creating the image of her husband as a Nordic icon. This book looks closely behind this popular image. Sibelius was one of the least political artists of his time who nevertheless became heavily politicized. Being the first supreme musical talent in the region, he gave his nation a genuine sound. Europeans of the late nineteenth century showed increasing affinity with Nordic culture, beside the still heavy Mediterranean influence. For English and American artists his mix of regionalism and modernity remained attractive even as these characteristics went out of fashion in continental Europe. National Socialism and Sibelius is a story of its own and carefully analyzed here. Ideas of Finland and the North vastly influenced the interpretation of meaning in Sibelius's music, a music that until this day remains enigmatic.BR TOMI MAKELA is the author of several books and essays on Finnish music, Romanticism, and Western modernism. From 1996-2008 he was professor of music in Magdeburg, since 2009 he is professor of music at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.