Programs · Episode

Jean Sibelius

Aired: Thursday, December 7, 2017 @ 9:00 am
Hosted by Miles Hoffman

Jean Sibelius was a fascinating man.  He was born in the year the American Civil War ended and he died in the year of Sputnik. He was a prolific composer and in addition to seven symphonies and many other orchestral works, he wrote choral music, music for the stage, chamber music, and more than a hundred songs.

Full Episode:

Jean Sibelius was a fascinating man.  He was born in the year the American Civil War ended and he died in the year of Sputnik. He was a prolific composer and in addition to seven symphonies and many other orchestral works, he wrote choral music, music for the stage, chamber music, and more than a hundred songs.  But for the last 30 years of his life, he wrote virtually nothing.

He was the greatest of Finnish composers but he was a Swedish-fin.  His first language was Swedish, and in fact he didn’t learn to speak Finnish well until he was a young man. Sibelius was influenced by many of the 19^th century composers who preceded him but his style was always completely personal and impossible to pigeonhole. His second symphony, completed in 1902, was one of the last great romantic symphonies. But Sibelius’s changes in style after that pointed unmistakably toward many of the dramatic innovations of 20^th century music.

Playlist