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Jean Sibelius: Conservative Nationalist or Modern Hero?
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. This apparent paradox forms the starting point for a new collection of essays edited by Daniel Grimley.
Jean Sibelius and his World is published by Princeton University Press, in conjunction with this year's Bard Festival (reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times). The essays in the book explore such varied themes as the impact of Russian musical traditions on Sibelius, his compositional process, Sibelius and the theatre, his critical reception in Great Britain and America, his 'late style', 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.
Jean Sibelius and his World
Jean Sibelius: Conservative Nationalist or Modern Hero?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. This apparent paradox forms the starting point for a new collection of essays edited by Daniel Grimley.
Jean Sibelius and his World is published by Princeton University Press, in conjunction with this year's Bard Festival (reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times). The essays in the book explore such varied themes as the impact of Russian musical traditions on Sibelius, his compositional process, Sibelius and the theatre, his critical reception in Great Britain and America, his 'late style', 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.