Jean Sibelius And His World

Author : Daniel M. Grimley
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2011-08-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781400840205

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Jean Sibelius and His World by Daniel M. Grimley Pdf

New perspectives on the greatest Finnish composer of all time Perhaps no twentieth-century composer has provoked a more varied reaction among the music-loving public than Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Originally hailed as a new Beethoven by much of the Anglo-Saxon world, he was also widely disparaged by critics more receptive to newer trends in music. At the height of his popular appeal, he was revered as the embodiment of Finnish nationalism and the apostle of a new musical naturalism. Yet he seemingly chose that moment to stop composing altogether, despite living for three more decades. Providing wide cultural contexts, contesting received ideas about modernism, and interrogating notions of landscape and nature, Jean Sibelius and His World sheds new light on the critical position occupied by Sibelius in the Western musical tradition. The essays in the book explore such varied themes as the impact of Russian musical traditions on Sibelius, his compositional process, Sibelius and the theater, his understanding of music as a fluid and improvised creation, his critical reception in Great Britain and America, his "late style" in the incidental music for The Tempest, and the parallel contemporary careers of Sibelius and Richard Strauss. Documents include the draft of Sibelius's 1896 lecture on folk music, selections from a roman à clef about his student circle in Berlin at the turn of the century, Theodor Adorno's brief but controversial tirade against the composer, and the newspaper debates about the Sibelius monument unveiled in Helsinki a decade after the composer's death. The contributors are Byron Adams, Leon Botstein, Philip Ross Bullock, Glenda Dawn Goss, Daniel Grimley, Jeffrey Kallberg, Tomi Mäkelä, Sarah Menin, Max Paddison, and Timo Virtanen.

Author : Daniel M. Grimley
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10-13
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781789144666

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Jean Sibelius by Daniel M. Grimley Pdf

An illuminating investigation into the interdisciplinary impact of the beloved modern classical composer. Few composers have enjoyed such critical acclaim—or longevity—as Jean Sibelius, who died in 1957 aged ninety-one. Always more than simply a Finnish national figure, an “apparition from the woods” as he ironically described himself, Sibelius’s life spanned turbulent and tumultuous events, and his work is central to the story of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century music. This book situates Sibelius within a rich interdisciplinary environment, paying attention to his relationship with architecture, literature, politics, and the visual arts. Drawing on the latest developments in Sibelius research, it is intended as an accessible and rewarding introduction for the general reader, and it also offers a fresh and provocative interpretation for those more familiar with his music.

Author : Robert Layton
Publisher : Penguin Putnam
Page : 126 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1970
Category : Music
ISBN : UOM:39015040213988

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Sibelius and His World by Robert Layton Pdf

"Blends biography and criticism of the Finnish composer's life and work.' --

Author : Karl Ekman
Publisher : Read Books Ltd
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2013-04-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9781447485469

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Jean Sibelius by Karl Ekman Pdf

This book contains an unusual biography of the well-known Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, focusing mainly on the man behind the music. Preface: 'It is not our intention in this book to enter into competition with the numerous responsible and subtle commentators, who have analysed and described Jean Sibelius the composer and his work in an excellent way. We are attracted by a hitherto untrodden field and have devoted our interest to Jean Sibelius the man, the unique personality behind his work. Whenever we have found it necessary to discuss some of the creations of this master hand as especially typical of important stages of his life and of striking features of his personality, we have kept our analysis and characterisation on the plane of common humanity. An attempt to give a complete picture of Jean Sibelius the man calls for no excuse. Like every artist of a high order Sibelius has exerted an influence on his contemporaries far in excess of the limits of the direct effects of his art. As a proclaimer in music of the feelings and dreams of his people he has become a leading figure in the history of Finland, as a fearless combatant in the lists of universal musical art one of the great, whose struggle and purpose contributed towards forming the spiritual physiognomy of the twentieth century. What such a man experienced, how he viewed the personalities he met, how he wrestled with the problems that life set him, how he reacted to tendencies and events in various spheres of life - none of this can be a matter of indifference to his contemporaries. Most of the materials of this book are the result of personal conversations with Sibelius in a dozen sittings lasting all day in his country home at Jarvenpaa, an hours journey by train to the north of the capital of Finland. In our talks the master placed himself at our disposal with all the kindness of his generous nature without allowing his persistent questioner to notice any sign of impatience. We have endeavoured as far as possible to express Sibelius views of all that is important in his life - and even of what is less important, when this has come quite naturally in the course of easy conversationin his own words, either as we jotted them down on paper during our sittings or wrote them down immediately after, as the train steamed through the countryside of Nyland towards Helsingfors in the twilight. During our talks in Jarvenpaa we had occasion .more than once to recall that formerly Sibelius had consistently frustrated all attempts at inducing him to speak at all about himself and the reality that formed the background of his works this attitude was due on the one hand to the noli me tangere of an aristocratic and susceptible nature towards the insistent outside world, and on the other to the spontaneous revulsion of a proud artist against the mere idea of being suspected of wishing to encourage public interest by any other means than his art. We must admit that we, too, failed to ascertain all that we, and, no doubt, our readers would have liked to know.'

Author : Nils-Eric Ringbom
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1954
Category : Composers
ISBN : LCCN:54010061

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Jean Sibelius by Nils-Eric Ringbom Pdf

Author : Tomi Mäkelä
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Page : 538 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781843836889

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Jean Sibelius by Tomi Mäkelä Pdf

Mäkelä's study brings together German, Nordic and Anglo-American work on Sibelius, and synthesizes these various strands of Sibelius reception into a single coherent critical narrative. This acclaimed study, available in English for the first time, looks at the music of Jean Sibelius in its biographical context. Myths have surrounded Sibelius [1865-1957] and his work, for more than 100 years, often diverting attention away from his creative output. Drawing on many unpublished sources, Mäkelä's study leads us back to Sibelius as a musician and a 'poet' of universal validity. Chapters examine the composer's creativity, inspiration, influence, aspects of genre, as well as the relationship of the artist with nature and homeland. Those who knew Sibelius at an early age tell of a youthful bohemian in the midst of European decadence. This 'age of Carmen'[Eduard Munch] marked Sibelius's formative years. The composer's most important works, dating from a time between his third symphony and Tapiola, reflect the modernistic mainstream. Sibelius's last three decades, known asthe 'Silence of Ainola', have inspired the masculine clichés that this book deconstructs. Sibelius was one of the least political artists of his time who nevertheless became heavily politicized. The first supreme musical talent in the region, he gave his nation a genuine sound. Europeans of the late nineteenth century showed increasing affinity with Nordic culture. Aino, Sibelius's wife, was instrumental in creating the image of her husband as a Nordic icon. The book closely scrutinizes this popular image. In an Anglo-American artistic context his mix of regionalism and modernity remained attractive even when these elements went out of fashion in the art movement of continental Europe. Ideas of Finland and the North vastly influenced the interpretation of meaning in Sibelius's music, a music that until this day remains enigmatic.

Author : Erik Tawaststjerna
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2012-04-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780571287185

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Sibelius Volume III: 1914-1957 by Erik Tawaststjerna Pdf

Erik Tawaststjerna embarked on his monumental and acclaimed study of Jean Sibelius's life and music in 1960 and it occupied him for over a quarter of a century. His study differs from other work on the composer in one important respect: he had unrestricted access to the composer's papers, diaries and letters as well as the advantage of numerous conversations with the composer's widow and other members of the family. Thus his researches can justifiably claim to have thrown entirely fresh light on the great Finnish composer. Far from the remote personality of the Sibelius legend, Sibelius emerges as a highly colourful figure. This third volume traces the composer's career from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, which found him poised on the brink of the Fifth Symphony, through to his death in 1957. It traces the genesis of the Fifth Symphony and gives a vivid portrait of Finland during the early years of independence and civil war. Tawaststjerna relates in fascinating detail the composer's financial plight during these years and his struggles with his own psyche. We follow his career through to the Seventh Symphony and Tapiola, and the increasingly corrosive streak of self-criticism which blighted Sibelius's last years and resulted in the destruction of the Eighth Symphony. Translated by Robert Layton, himself a Sibelius specialist, this is a compelling and insightful account of the music of one of the twentieth century's greatest composers.

Author : Alex Ross
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2007-10-16
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781429932882

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The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross Pdf

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Author : Robert Layton
Publisher : Schirmer Trade Books
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Composers
ISBN : UCSC:32106018438421

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Sibelius by Robert Layton Pdf

"When the New York Philharmonic's radio audience was polled in 1935, the most popular composer was Jean Sibelius, whose music held a unique fascination for listeners of the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Having passed through a period of coolness on the part of the musical establishment, in the 1990s Sibelius's music again enjoys widespread critical appreciation, along with greater exposure than ever before in concert programs worldwide. Meanwhile, our knowledge of the man and the sources of his music has expanded and deepened. It is this new awareness that Robert Layton has distilled into this thoroughly revised edition of his groundbreaking biography, Sibelius." "More clearly than ever, Sibelius emerges as an artist who drew inspiration from two crucial sources: nature and mythology. He belonged to a generation of composers who could still use music to capture an emotional response to landscape, weather, the natural rhythms of the world. Even more central to his creativity was his involvement with Finnish myth, as codified in the national epic poem, the Kalevala. This haunting world of warriors and enchantments provided Sibelius with the program for a series of memorable symphonic poems, from the poignant Swan of Tuonela to the majestic Tapiola. His artistic development was intertwined with his use of mythology to an extent unparalleled since Wagner." "Christened Johan and called Janne by his relatives and friends, Sibelius took the name Jean in imitation of a seagoing uncle who used the French form of his name when abroad. It seems an odd choice for a composer who led the least cosmopolitan of lives. He took an interest in the revolutionary new directions of twentieth-century music, but for himself he pursued the development of a personal voice in the context of the traditional symphonic idiom. And because he remained true to his inner vision, his music remains radiantly alive." "Robert Layton's Sibelius is a revealing guide to the life and to the works. Above all, he provides illuminating analyses of the music, both tracing the formal means that Sibelius developed at each new phase of his career, and identifying the events and experiences that left an imprint on this extraordinary musical personality."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author : Guy Rickards
Publisher : Phaidon Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2008-04-23
Category : Music
ISBN : 0714847763

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Jean Sibelius by Guy Rickards Pdf

Music.

Author : Tim Howell,Anna Krohn,Veijo Murtomäki
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2017-08-21
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781527500877

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Jean Sibelius's Legacy by Tim Howell,Anna Krohn,Veijo Murtomäki Pdf

In 2015, at the 150th anniversary of Jean Sibelius’ birth, research about his music and personality is more active than ever. Recent discoveries about the musical, literary, artistic, political, and social life around him have decisively widened the scope of scholarly discussion. As part of the anniversary celebrations, a great number of Sibelius scholars gathered in Hämeenlinna, his birth town, for a conference leading up to his birthday on December 8. This volume draws upon the most current achievements of Sibelius research. It brings together the diverse – and sometimes even divergent – viewpoints that emerged from this international meeting. These studies cover all of the genres in Sibelius’ production: orchestral works, incidental music, piano and chamber music, and songs, including both well-known works and rarities, and even some fresh discoveries. The chapters in this book are also a welcome reminder of the manifold sources of inspiration: the music of his contemporaries, nature, literature, and visual art. The versatility of Sibelius’ output, and the richness of his creative imagination are presented here to any reader interested to learn more about the music of the Finnish master.

Author : Gustav Djupsjöbacka
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2023-12-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781783277810

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The Songs of Jean Sibelius by Gustav Djupsjöbacka Pdf

A landmark in Sibelius scholarship, this is the first book that presents all of Sibelius's solo art songs in their musical and aesthetic context. Indispensable for scholars and performers alike. This is the first book to discuss the complete solo art songs of Jean Sibelius and to locate them in their musical, literary and artistic context. The book is organized around the poets Sibelius set to music and the literary themes associated with them, thus providing invaluable information for the scholar, student and performer. The musical and aesthetic contextualisation of the songs will help to enable new interpretations on the performance stage.

Author : Byron Adams,Daniel M. Grimley
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2023-08-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226830469

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Vaughan Williams and His World by Byron Adams,Daniel M. Grimley Pdf

A biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was one of the most innovative and creative figures in twentieth-century music, whose symphonies stand alongside those of Sibelius, Nielsen, Shostakovich, and Roussel. After his death, shifting priorities in the music world led to a period of critical neglect. What could not have been foreseen is that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, a handful of Vaughan Williams’s scores would attain immense popularity worldwide. Yet the present renown of these pieces has led to misapprehension about the nature of Vaughan Williams’s cultural nationalism and a distorted view of his international cultural and musical significance. Vaughan Williams and His World traces the composer’s stylistic and aesthetic development in a broadly chronological fashion, reappraising Vaughan Williams’s music composed during and after the Second World War and affirming his status as an artist whose leftist political convictions pervaded his life and music. This volume reclaims Vaughan Williams’s deeply held progressive ethical and democratic convictions while celebrating his achievements as a composer.

Author : Glenda Dawn Goss
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 588 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2009-12-15
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226304793

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Sibelius by Glenda Dawn Goss Pdf

One of the twentieth century’s greatest composers, Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) virtually stopped writing music during the last thirty years of his life. Recasting his mysterious musical silence and his undeniably influential life against the backdrop of Finland’s national awakening, Sibelius will be the definitive biography of this creative legend for many years to come. Glenda Dawn Goss begins her sweeping narrative in the Finland of Sibelius’s youth, which remained under Russian control for the first five decades of his life. Focusing on previously unexamined events, Goss explores the composer’s formative experiences as a Russian subject and a member of the Swedish-speaking Finnish minority. She goes on to trace Sibelius’s relationships with his creative contemporaries, with whom he worked to usher in a golden age of music and art that would endow Finns with a sense of pride in their heritage and encourage their hopes for the possibilities of nationhood. Skillfully evoking this artistic climate—in which Sibelius emerged as a leader—Goss creates a dazzling portrait of the painting, sculpture, literature, and music it inspired. To solve the deepest riddles of Sibelius’s life, work, and enigmatic silence, Goss contends, we must understand the awakening in which he played so great a role. Situating this national creative tide in the context of Nordic and European cultural currents, Sibelius dramatically deepens our knowledge of a misunderstood musical giant and an important chapter in the intellectual history of Europe.

Author : Karl Ekman
Publisher : Von Elterlein Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2008-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781443723633

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Jean Sibelius - His Life and Personality by Karl Ekman Pdf

by KARL KliMAIV TRANSLATED FROM THE FINSfSH . BY EDWARD BIRSE JEAN SIBELIUS His Life and Personality WITH A FOREWORD BY ERNEST NEWMAN NEWYORK-ALFRED-A-KNOPF 1938 SSte Rfl Copyright 1935 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this boolc may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST AMERICAN EDITION First Published in Finland under the title JEAN SIBELIUS EN KONSTNARS LIV OCH PERSONLIGHET FOREWORD CHERE have been biographies of Sibelius before this of Karl Ekmans, but his is the first to pre sent us with something like the essentials of the portrait of the man. I say something like the essentials be cause we know, from previous experiences of the kind, that the first official or quasi-official biographies of great men are apt to be as remarkable for their reti cences as for their revelations. We have to resign our selves to that, for if it were not for these reticences there could be no first biographies at all. I am not, of course, suggesting that there is anything in Sibeliuss life that needs to be hushed up I doubt whether a world avid for scandal about Queen Elizabeth will ever have the thrill, blent of horror and delight, of learning that he ever robbed a bank, forged a cheque, or even committed a minor homicide. All I mean is that experience in these matters has shown us that in a first biography of any great artist a good deal that concerns his opinions of other . people and his relations with other people has to be discreetlytouched in with the FOREWORD lightest of strokes, if only because there are intimacies and susceptibilities on all sides to be considered. I am not contending, then nor, I fancy, would either the author or the subject himself do so that this book of Karl Ekmans will be the final biography of Sibelius fifty years hence. But I do contend that it is a work of high value. All first biographies should be written by someone with the entree to the inner circle of the subject able, consequently, not only to extract illu minative reminiscences and avowals from the subject himself but to tap, before it is too late, the memory of those who were intimate with him in the formative early and middle periods of his life. Ekman has had special facilities for doing this and so his book con tains a mass of hitherto inaccessible information that is of the highest interest and value to students of Sibelius. The book is interesting not only because it furnishes us with so many details, gathered at first hand, of what, for all its relative seclusion from the greater world, has been a life of immense energy, but also because it con firms at every point the impression of Sibelius the man which those of us who have been studying him for the last thirty years or so had formed from his music. We now realize better than ever the strain of independence in the mans personality that has made his music what it is. External influences upon him have always been of vi FOREWORD the slightest he has passed through other composers music, through contacts with contemporary artists, through public musical life in various European cities, calmly extracting from them all, with the unconscious sureness of an animal or a tree, just what he needed for nourishment and development in accordance with the inner law of his own being, and calmly rejecting the unassimilable remainder. His instincts have always been sound even when his procedure may not have been strictly logical. It was not strictly logical of him, for instance, to become an anti-Wagnerian at an early age on the strength of a rather limited acquaintance with Wagners works certainly long before he had seen any of them on the stage...