Johan (Jean) Julius Christian Sibelius

His Life

Sibelius was born on December 8th 1865, in Hämeenlinna, a small town about a hundred kilometres north of Helsinki. When he was two years old his father died, heavily in debt, and the family went to live with his maternal grandmother. As a child he showed exceptional musical ability, playing melodies on the piano by ear at five, and composing a piece for violin and cello at the age of ten. He took violin lessons, and fell in love with this instrument. In 1885 he started to study law at the university in Helsinki, and also studied music at the Helsinki Music Institute, which is now the Sibelius Academy. Sibelius abandoned his legal studies in favour of music. Initially he studied the violin, at one time aspiring to a career as a concert violinist, but latterly he turned to musical composition. His musical studies continued through the years 1889-91, first in Berlin, and then in Vienna. Sibelius's first masterpiece, the String Quartet in A minor, was performed publicly for the first time on the 29th of May 1889.

In the summer of 1892, Sibelius married artistic Aino Järnefelt. He had six daughters from that marriage, one of whom died shortly after birth.

At the turn of the century, Sibelius progressed from being a Finnish national figure and started to conduct his works abroad, principally in Britain and Germany, although his works were also included in concert repertoires in other countries, including the USA.

His first two symphonies were completed in 1899 and 1902, and at about that time he was also starting to write his Violin Concerto>. The premiere performance of Symphony No. 1 was in the spring of 1899. Aténarnes Sång, (the War Song of the Tyrtaeus), was also performed for the first time at that time. This song was Sibelius' patriotic comment against the harsh Russian policy of the Czarist regime, which was attempting to suppress the Finnish national identity. One of his most famous pieces, the tone poem Finlandia (1899, revised 1900), was banned by the Russian rulers of Finland because it aroused so much patriotic fervour.

In 1904, Sibelius moved to a house in the country in Järvenpää, which is about 40 km north of Helsinki. Sibelius was a lover of nature, and thought of the countryside as his sanctuary. He loved to listen to bird song and to the sounds of the natural world. The move to the country prompted a change in his compositional style. He said, "In Helsinki, the song died within me". His Concerto for Violin was completed in 1904-05. After that time he gradually moved away from the nationalistic, romantic style, a change that can be seen in Symphony No. 3 (1907).

Sibelius' music is inspired largely by nature and Finnish legends, such as the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Although folk songs do not appear directly in his compositions, Sibelius used melodic and rhythmic patterns characteristic of Finnish folk poetry and music.

In the summer of 1908, Sibelius was operated on for a tumour in the throat, and from this time his works became more introspective in character. This change can be seen in the String Quartet in D minor, and in his Symphony No. 4 (1911).

In 1914, Sibelius travelled to the USA to conduct the first performance of "The Oceanides". During that visit he received an honorary doctorate from Yale University. The start of the first world war in 1914 forced Sibelius to give up foreign concert performances, particularly because his main publisher was in Germany, which had become an enemy state. During the period of the war Sibelius composed and sold several small works to Helsinki publishers to relieve his financial troubles. Most of these were not published until after the war.

Finland declared its independence on December 6th 1917. In the spring of 1918, civil war broke out, and Sibelius took refuge in Helsinki. After the war, when international connections were reopened, he was again able to travel and he visited the Nordic countries, Britain and Italy

His continuing financial troubles, partly caused by inflation, but made worse by his poor money management, made it necessary for him to compose small works, mainly for the piano. Sibelius never became a wealthy man, despite the popularity of his works. For example, his "Valse Triste", written for the theatre, was played all over Europe, and was arranged in numerous ways. Had it been published with a proper contract, it would have made a considerable amount of money.
Towards the end of the 1920s he was still still writing pieces for the piano, as well as for violin and piano. He started work on an Eighth Symphony but it was not finished. By that time he was an internationally acknowledged composer, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. With the foundation of the Finnish Composers Copyright Bureau, in 1928, his economic situation began to improve. Sibelius stopped composing in 1929 and died on September 20, 1957, at the age of 91.

His Major Orchestral Works