Jean Sibelius at 150
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
“We can say that Jean Sibelius is one of the most brilliant tone poets of the present time.”
-Erik Furuhjelm, 1916
“Sibelius, the worst composer in the world”
-René Leibowitz, 1955
(Quotations from the Finnish Club of Helsinki)
For many people, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is the only Finnish composer they can name. His troubled reception history has left the composer with uneven popularity across the globe, with staunch supporters on one side but also a fair share of opponents and the unimpressed on the other. With his 150th birthday today, now is a good time to explore Finland’s national composer. Where can you start, from a musical sources point of view?
Larger collections of Sibelius’s music can be found at the Sibelius Museum in Turku/Åbo (FIN-A), which maintains a list on their website, and the National Library in Helsinki (FIN-Hy; formerly called the Helsinki University Library), for which there is a catalog available (Kari Kilpeläinen, The Jean Sibelius Musical Manuscripts at Helsinki University Library: A Complete Catalogue [Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1991]). The Harold E. Johnson Jean Sibelius Collection at Butler University (US-INbul) should also be named, which holds manuscripts, rare printed editions, early recordings, photographs, and articles. This unique collection benefits from Johnson’s research trips to Finland, particularly in the 1950s, and the trust he built with libraries and archives there as one of the few non-Finnish scholars researching Sibelius at the time. A catalog of the entire collection is available online.
Autograph manuscripts are currently on display at the National Museum of Finland, one of many events currently being held as part of the Sibelius 150 celebrations. Organizations such as the Sibelius Birthtown Foundation, the Sibelius Society of Finland, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, and numerous music festivals and competitions are taking part in celebrating the composer.
Supplementing the sources are the Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke by Fabian Dahlström (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2003; cited in RISM as SiWV) and Glenda Dawn Goss’s Jean Sibelius: A Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1998). The scholarly critical edition Jean Sibelius Works, taking into account the manuscript sources, began in 1996 and when it is completed will contain around 52 volumes. To date, 23 volumes have been issued.
The RISM online catalog only has 10 works by Sibelius that are scattered in Europe and the United States (but no Finnish sources yet). One piece of his may be viewed online, the symphonic poem Öinen ratsastus ja auringonnousu (Night ride and sunrise), op. 55, from 1908. The autograph manuscript is at the Juilliard Library (US-NYj) and is in rough shape towards the final pages, but most of the manuscript is legible. Deletions and corrections are visible throughout and some pasteovers cover earlier readings of the music. Visit the Finnish Club of Helsinki to read some interpretations and reactions to this piece.
Image: Santeri Levas, Jean Sibelius, 1940-1945, Järvenpää. From the Finnish Museum of Photography, via Flickr.
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