![]() So I had taken to scouring music stores to score used albums that looked intriguing enough to justify the fifty cents or dollar they would set me back. I’d taken a music appreciation class in college, inspired partly by my mother, who grew up around classical music in her native Hungary and had exposed me to it along with Nat King Cole and a few other stalwarts of the era. And so it was the first time I came across Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia,” on an LP I picked up used in a dusty music store in Santa Monica, California just about a half-century ago. He wrote a number of poems, travel books, and essays, but he is best known for writing the lyrics for the Finlandia hymn.The best music always crawls right under your skin, raising a few goosebumps along the way as it wends its way in short order to your heart. One of Finland’s most popular writers, he was influenced by Goethe, Runeberg, and the French Symbolists. In 1941, Sibelius’s hymn tune was texted by the Finnish poet Veikko Antero Koskenniemi. Jean Sibelius: “Finlandia-Hymn” (Hannu Jurmu, tenor Jouni Somero, piano) Nevertheless, it was swiftly adopted to become Finland’s second national anthem. But if the world wants to sing it, it can’t be helped.” For Sibelius, Finlandia was a “relatively insignificant composition,” as it eclipsed his more substantial works. It was sung around the world with such words as “Be Still My Soul,” “At the Table,” “Land of the Pine,” and “Our Farewell Song.” The composer had mixed feelings about these versions: “It is not intended to be sung… It is written for an orchestra. Often incorrectly cited as a traditional folk melody, the hymn actually sprang from the composer’s mind. For Sibelius, Finlandia was “the song of our battle, our hymn of victory.” From the very beginning, Finlandia proved hugely popular, and the magnificent closing hymn tune became an international hit. It premiered on 2 July 1900 in Helsinki with the Helsinki Philharmonic Society conducted by Robert Kajanus. In 1900, Sibelius reworked the final tableau into an independent symphonic poem and retitled his rousing patriotic essay Finlandia. The Sibelius Monument in the district of Töölö in Helsinki Jean Sibelius: “Finland Awakes” (Lahti Symphony Orchestra Osmo Vänskä, cond.) Prefaced by a prelude, Tableau 1 is titled “The Song of Väinämöinen,” 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,” and Tableau 6 “Finland Awakes.” The title of the concluding tableau attracted negative attention from Russian censors, and for a while it was known under various titles such as “Impromptu,” “Happy Feelings at the awakening of Finnish Spring,” and “A Scandinavian Choral March.” I now grasp those Finnish, purely Finnish tendencies in music less realistically but more truthfully than before.” Depicting episodes from Finnish history, Sibelius extracted six tableaux from his melodrama. As he wrote to his wife Aino, “I would not wish to tell a lie in art … But I think I am now on the right path. Sibelius wanted to create something recognizably Finnish, but without resorting to direct imitation of folk music. Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia premiere edition Sibelius was gripped by the patriotic fervor of the poem, and the lines “I was born free and free will I die” deeply resonated with the composer. For that occasion, Sibelius composed a melodrama to a highly patriotic poem titled “The Melting of the Ice on the Ulea River” by Finnish writer Zachria Topelius. However, the event was clearly a front for rallying support for a free press. In October 1899 the Finnish press organized a fund-raising gala to raise money for newspaper pension funds. ![]() Jean Sibelius passionately disagreed and wrote, “We fought 600 years for our freedom and I am part of the generation which achieved it. While its constitution was initially respected, the 1899 manifesto declared that the tsar of Russia could rule Finland by edict, and that the Finnish constitution was entirely subject to the tsar’s will. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809, and gained the status of a grand duchy. The so-called “February Manifesto,” issued on 15 February 1899 was a Russian imperial proclamation that revoked Finland’s autonomy within the Russian Empire.
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