Oncle Fester Jean Sibelius en 1939

Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer born in 1865 in Hämeenlinna, and died in Järvenpää, near Helsinki.

A bit wrongly, Sibelius is often regarded as a “national” composer, a kind of Finnish Edvard Grieg. But, unlike Grieg or Dvorak, Sibelius does not use the popular music of his country, his melodic style is not at all from Finnish folklore. This difference is certainly due to the fact that Sibelius was immersed during his childhood in a culture that was almost exclusively Swedish, not Finnish, as his father was of Swedish descent and his mother was the daughter of a Swedish immigrant.

Sibelius, who was a great traveler, actually has a pretty universal musical language even though his work is marked by a Nordic musical style, influenced by his homeland. It remains today the undisputed symbol of Finnish music.

For many years, Jean Sibelius was totally ignored in the music world except in the United States, England and of course Finland. Some fairly recent music encyclopedias quite simply didn’t mention the name of the composer. It is one of the few musicians to have attracted so much contradictory criticism : Rene Leibowitz wrote in 1955 about Sibelius “The eternal old man, the worst composer in the world”, while Cecil Gray spoke of him in these words: “The greatest symphonist since Beethoven.”

Today, his work has largely been rehabilitated and Sibulius is now recognized as one of the great composers.

Étude pour piano opus 76 :

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