Jean Sibelius

EARLY LIFE

Jean (Julius Christian) Sibelius was born on December 8, 1865, in Hameenlinna, Finland, which is 100 km north of the country's capital, Helsinki.

Sibelius in 1913

Jean was raised by his mother and grandmothers after his father, an army surgeon, died during a cholera epidemic when he was 2-years-old.

Jean's family spoke Swedish at home, but when he was eleven he went to a Finnish-speaking school.
At school his favorite studies were Greek, Latin, and Scandinavian literature. Jean enjoyed reading the Kalevala which was a long epic poem about the old Finnish legends. He also loved the Swedish-speaking poets who wrote poems about nature.

Sibelius as a schoolboy

Music was always his chief interest. When he was 9 years old, Jean studied the piano, and at 15, the violin. His ambition was to be a concert violinist.

In 1885 Sibelius went to Helsinki to study law but he soon gave up his legal education and concentrated on his violin studies and composition.

After four years at the Helsinki Conservatory, Sibelius continued his studies in Berlin and Vienna.

CAREER

A passionate nationalist, in 1892 Sibelius completed Kullervo, a series of symphonic poems based on episodes on the Finnish national epic Kalevala, which brought him instant fame.  In the same year he composed his tone poem En Saga and taught at the Helsinki Conservatory.

Portrait of Sibelius from 1892 by his brother-in-law Eero Järnefelt.

From 1897 a state grant enabled Sibelius to devote himself entirely to composition, and his seven symphonies (he destroyed his eighth), symphonic poems - notably Finlandia (1899) - and Violin Concerto won great international as well as national popularity.

In 1914 he visited the United States, where he conducted an all-Sibelius concert at the Norfolk Festival in Connecticut.

Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for The Tempest (1926) and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he stopped producing major works for the last three decades of his life.

WORKS

Sibelius used melodic and rhythmic patterns characteristic of Finnish folk poetry and music.
In 1892 he completed his symphonic poem Kullervo, based on the great Finnish epic Kalevala. It brought Sibelius instant fame.

The strong nationalist sentiment conveyed in Sibelius' music was deemed an expression of patriotism in Finland. The tone poem 'Finlandia' (1899; revised 1900), was composed when his country was under Russian domination and premiered in Helsinki on July 2, 1900 with the Helsinki Philharmonic Society conducted by Robert Kajanus. The work was banned by the Russian rulers of Finland because it aroused much patriotic fervor among the Finns. In Berlin it was played as 'Vaterland'; in Paris as 'Patrie'.

Finlandia 1st Edition

Sibelius published the first of his seven symphonies in 1899. His Fifth Symphony was inspired by the sight of 16 swans. "One of the great experiences of my life," he wrote. "God, how beautiful."

Sibelius' Violin Concerto (1904, revised 1905), the only one he ever wrote for the instrument, was the most recorded and performed violin concerto of any written in the 20th century. By the year 2000, there were more than four dozen recordings available.

Jean Sibelius described his string quartet Voces intimae as the "kind of thing that brings a smile to your lips at the hour of death"?

PERSONAL LIFE

Sibelius married 17-year-old Aino Jarnefelt, "the prettiest girl in Finland" on June 10, 1892 at Maxmo. Aino was the daughter of General Alexander Järnefelt, the governor of Vaasa, and Elisabeth Clodt von Jürgensburg, a Baltic aristocrat.

Aino Jarnefelt

They spent their honeymoon in Karelia, the home of the Kalevala. It served as an inspiration for Sibelius's tone poem En saga, the Lemminkäinen legends and the Karelia Suite.

Sibelius and Aino had six daughters: Eva (1893–1978), Ruth (1894–1976), Kirsti (who died very young of typhus 1898–1900), Katarina (1903–1984), Margareta (1908–1988) and Heidi (1911–1982).

In November 1903, Sibelius began to build his new home Ainola (Aino's Place) near Lake Tuusula some 45 km (30 miles) north of Helsinki. The family moved into the new property on September 24, 1904, making friends with the local artistic community, including the artists Eero Järnefelt and Pekka Halonen and the novelist Juhani Aho.

Ainola, photographed in 1915

Their long marriage was blighted by his addiction to alcohol. When Sibelius wrote a little salon piece for Aido in 1922, she rejected it because his "senses were sodden with champagne."

The only recorded interview with Sibelius was made on December 6, 1948. The interview was conducted by Finnish journalist Kalervo Kilpi and was broadcast on Finnish radio. It is a rare and valuable recording, as Sibelius was a notoriously private person and rarely gave interviews.

DEATH AND LEGACY 

Jean Sibelius died of a brain hemorrhage at Ainola, Järvenpää, on September 20, 1957 and is buried in a garden there.

Aino continued to live in Ainola after her husband's passing; she sorted out family papers and helped biographers of her late husband. She died at Ainola on June 8, 1969, some two months before her 98th birthday, and is buried alongside Sibelius.

Since 2011, Finland has celebrated a Flag Day on December 8th, Sibelius' birthday, also known as the "Day of Finnish Music".

Sources: Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999, Compton's Enyclopedia. Microsoft Encarta