Page 222 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

220

I AM A SLAVE TO MY

THEMES, AND SUBMIT

TO THEIR DEMANDS

FINLANDIA (1900), JEAN SIBELIUS

ut of all the musical For nearly 700 years, up to the early
IN CONTEXT nationalism that took 19th century, Finland had been part
O shape during the 19th of the Swedish empire, and the
FOCUS century in the four Nordic nations language of the educated and
Finnish musical resistance (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and governing classes was Swedish.
to Russian political Sweden), Finland’s was perhaps When Sibelius was born into a
domination
the most powerful. In Jean Sibelius, Swedish-speaking family, Finland
BEFORE Finland produced a composer as a nation still did not exist. Since
1848 German-born Fredrik who, even more than Norway’s 1809, it had been a Grand Duchy of
Pacius (1809–1891) composes Edvard Grieg, Sweden’s Franz Imperial Russia, which imposed a
the song Vårt land (“Our Berwald, and Denmark’s Carl
Country”), to Swedish words Nielsen, captured the essence of Sibelius captured the epic beauty
by Finnish poet Johan Ludvig his people and nation as they of Finland’s landscape, seen here in
strove to throw off the shackles
Runeberg. After Finland’s of foreign domination. a view over the taiga forest, in the
independence in 1917, a majestic string settings of Finlandia.
Finnish translation, Maamme,
is adopted as the country’s
national anthem.

1892 Sibelius becomes a
national celebrity when he
first conducts his part-choral
“symphonic poem” Kullervo,
with texts from the Finnish
national epic poem Kalevala.

AFTER
1917 Sibelius composes a
Jäger March in support of
the Finnish Jäger Batallion,
trained in Germany to fight the
Russian Empire in World War I.

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