The Classical Music Book

220

I AM A SLAVE TO MY

THEMES, AND SUBMIT

TO THEIR DEMANDS

FINLANDIA (1900), JEAN SIBELIUS

O

ut of all the musical

nationalism that took

shape during the 19th

century in the four Nordic nations

(Denmark, Finland, Norway, and

Sweden), Finland’s was perhaps

the most powerful. In Jean Sibelius,

Finland produced a composer

who, even more than Norway’s

Edvard Grieg, Sweden’s Franz

Berwald, and Denmark’s Carl

Nielsen, captured the essence of

his people and nation as they

strove to throw off the shackles

of foreign domination.

For nearly 700 years, up to the early

19th century, Finland had been part

of the Swedish empire, and the

language of the educated and

governing classes was Swedish.

When Sibelius was born into a

Swedish-speaking family, Finland

as a nation still did not exist. Since

1809, it had been a Grand Duchy of

Imperial Russia, which imposed a

Sibelius captured the epic beauty

of Finland’s landscape, seen here in

a view over the taiga forest, in the

majestic string settings of Finlandia.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Finnish musical resistance

to Russian political

domination

BEFORE

1848 German-born Fredrik

Pacius (1809 –1891) composes

the song Vårt land (“Our

Country”), to Swedish words

by Finnish poet Johan Ludvig

Runeberg. After Finland’s

independence in 1917, a

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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