List of compositions by Jean Sibelius

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Script error: No such module "Multiple image".

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865Template:Ndash1957) wrote over 550 original works during his eight-decade artistic career.Template:Sfn This began around 1875 with a short miniature for violin and cello called Water Droplets (Script error: No such module "Lang".),Template:Sfn and ended a few months before his death at age 91 with the orchestration of two earlier songs, "Script error: No such module "Lang"." ("Come Away, Death") and "Script error: No such module "Lang"." ("Kullervo's Lament", excerpted from Movement III of Kullervo).Template:Sfn

However, the 1890s to the 1920s represent the key decades of Sibelius's production.Template:Sfn After 1926's Tapiola, Sibelius completed no new works of significance, although he infamously labored until the late-1930s or the early-1940s on his Eighth Symphony, which he never completed and probably destroyed Template:C..Template:Sfn This thirty-year creative drought—commonly referred to as the "Silence of Järvenpää",Template:Sfnm in reference to the sub-region of Helsinki in which the composer and his wife, Aino, resided—occurred at the height of his international and domestic celebrity.Template:Sfn

Today, Sibelius is remembered principally as a composer for orchestra: particularly celebrated are his symphonies, tone poems, and lone concerto, although he produced viable works in all major genres of classical music.Template:Sfn While his orchestral works meant the most to him, Sibelius refused to dismiss his miniatures (piano pieces, songs, etc.) as insignificant, seeing them instead as "represent[ative of] his innermost self".Template:Sfn

Navigating Sibelius's oeuvre

Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote". Template:Pie chart

Works with and without opus

Sibelius's final opus list dates to 1952Template:Sfn and ranges from Opp. 1 to 116, albeit with Op. 107Template:Efn unassigned and Op. 117Template:Efn holding ambiguous status.Template:Sfn Among the 115 active numbers, however, are many collections; disaggregating these multi-work numbers reveals that—counting conservatively—about 342 compositions comprise the list:

  • 77 orchestral works, spanning 59 opus numbersTemplate:Efn
  • 35 chamber works, spanning 13 opus numbersTemplate:Efn
  • 117 works for solo instrument (115 for piano, two for organ), spanning 20 opus numbersTemplate:Efn
  • 86 songs, spanning 16 opus numbersTemplate:Efn
  • 27 works for choir, spanning seven opus numbersTemplate:Efn

When ordered numerically, Sibelius's opus list is an imperfect indicator of his stylistic maturation over time. This is because Sibelius curated the collection according to his ever-changing assessment of his oeuvre (highly self-critical, he became especially ambivalent later in life towards his early period),Template:Sfn promoting works to or demoting them from the catalogue and filling the resulting vacancies without a strict regard for compositional chronology.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Among the pieces that at one point held, but later lost, a place on Sibelius's opus list are numerous large-scale works from the 1880s and 1890s, including his only opera, three cantatas, a melodrama, and several multi-movement compositions for chamber ensembles.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Sibelius also demoted his first two orchestral compositions, the Overture in E major and Ballet Scene, which were originally intended as movements in a symphony before the composer abandoned the project.Template:Sfnm

For works without opus, the convention since the late-1990s has been to follow the supplemental JS numbering system of the Finnish musicologist Template:Ill, which he finalized in 2003 with the publication of Jean Sibelius: A Thematic Bibliographic Index of His Works.Template:Sfn This list runs from JS 1 to 225 and includes not only compositions Sibelius demoted from his opus list but also those that never held an opus number at any point during his career.Template:Sfn

Sibelius and his publishers

Script error: No such module "Multiple image".

Sibelius sold his music to several publishers over the course of his career. As a relatively unknown composer in the 1890s and early 1900s, he worked with domestic firms in Helsinki, including the eponymous operations of Axel E. Lindgren and Template:Ill, as well as Template:Ill, a joint venture of Template:Ill and Template:Ill until the latter withdrew in 1904 to begin Template:Ill.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn As Sibelius's international reputation grew, the major German firms came calling, and he relished not only the prestige but also the opportunity to free himself from the cumbersome domestic publishing process. He contracted with Berlin's Robert Lienau Musikverlag from 1905 to 1909 and with Leipzig's Breitkopf & Härtel from 1910 to 1918.Template:Sfn The arrival of the First World War in 1914, however, disrupted business with Germany, and Sibelius's royalty payments had to be rerouted through neutral Denmark. Ever in debt, Sibelius churned out undistinguished, "bread-and-butter" violin duos and piano pieces for R. E. Westerlund and A. E. Lindgren,Template:Sfn each of whom lacked the means to print the works but viewed them as shrewd investments.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

The end of the war brought little relief, as famine and civil war gripped newly-sovereign Finland and reparations wrecked the German economy. Breitkopf & Härtel wrote to the composer in May 1918 to express its regret that it could not accept the Fifth Symphony due to the post-war circumstances.Template:Sfn Into the breach stepped Edition Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen, which directly contracted with Sibelius in 1920 and, over the next half decade, emerged as Sibelius's leading publisher.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn In 1926, Breitkopf & Härtel was able to resume its publishing relationship with Sibelius,Template:Sfn although it now had to share the composer with Hansen and others. At any rate, Sibelius spent the 1930s battling with the never-realized Eighth Symphony, and by the 1940s he had drifted into quasi retirement. Following his death in 1957, many compositions remained in manuscript, and the process of publishing his works posthumously began. Over the following decades, the Sibelius family agreed to allow several first editions variously by Hansen, Breitkopf & Härtel, and Template:Ill.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

Sibelius's manuscripts

Script error: No such module "Multiple image".

The largest and most comprehensive collection of Sibelius's manuscripts is owned by the National Library of Finland at the University of Helsinki. The institution began in earnest its mission to acquire the composer's literary estate in 1970, with the purchase—from the London auction house Sotheby's—of manuscripts that had once belonged to A. E. Lindgren and, thereafter, R. E. Westerlund.Template:Sfn The National Library's holdings ballooned (and the need for a supplemental catalogue became especially acute), however, in 1982, when the Sibelius family donated all papers still in its possession.Template:Sfn The gift more than doubled Sibelius's catalogue: among the nearly 2,000 manuscripts were not only drafts, thematic sketches, and page proofs related to known compositions, but also hitherto unknown juvenilia.Template:Sfn

In 1991, the Finnish musicologist Kari Kilpeläinen published The Jean Sibelius Musical Manuscripts at Helsinki University Library: A Complete Catalogue, in which each manuscript received a Helsinki University Library (HUL) identifier.Template:Sfn The JS and HUL numbering systems, moreover, are compatible; for example, Sibelius's destroyed Eighth Symphony is numbered JS 190 by Dahlström, with the surviving so-called Three Late Fragments that have been tentatively connected to the Eighth Symphony labeled as HUL 1325, HUL 1326/9, and HUL 1327/2 by Kilpeläinen.Template:Sfn A third notable acquisition occurred shortly after Kilpeläinen published his book, when in 1997 the National Library obtained manuscripts that had belonged to Edition Wilhelm Hansen.Template:Sfn Finally, in 2020, the institution purchased a 1,200-page collection from Robert Lienau Musikverlag.Template:Sfn In 2021, the UNESCO National Committee of Finland inducted the National Library's Jean Sibelius Musical Manuscripts into the country's Memory of the World Register, describing it as a "carefully nurtured national cultural treasure ... [that] has crucially expanded and shaped the image of how Sibelius composed and produced his works".Template:Sfn

Within Finland, additional manuscripts are held by the Sibelius Museum at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, the Sibelius Academy (the composer's alma mater, formerly the Helsinki Music Institute), the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (which premiered most of his orchestral works), and the National Archives of Finland.Template:Sfn It is not legally possible to export Sibelius's manuscripts from Finland without permission, which in any case the Finnish authorities would probably not give.Template:Sfn Outside of Finland, Breitkopf & Härtel possesses the most notable collection of Sibelius manuscripts.Template:Sfn

Notable surveys of the oeuvre

In addition to Dahlström's comprehensive 2003 book, two additional surveys of Sibelius's oeuvre are of note. First, an ongoing collaborative project involving the National Library, Breitkopf & Härtel, and the Sibelius Society of Finland is the publication of the Jean Sibelius Works (JSW) critical edition, the text-critical approach of which utilizes "Sibelius's autograph musical manuscripts, copies made of them, instrumental parts, as well as first editions and their proofs ... the composer's correspondence, his diary, scribes' receipts, publishers' accounts, and newspaper reviews".Template:Sfn Began in 1996, the JSW is projected at 52–60 volumes and will cover all of Sibelius's completed compositions (and arrangements), many of which remain in manuscript and, therefore, will receive first editions. The current editor-in-chief is the Finnish musicologist Timo Virtanen.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn

A second important survey is The Sibelius Edition recording project by the Swedish label BIS, for which the Sibelius biographer Andrew Barnett served as project advisor.Template:Sfn Released from 2007 to 2011, this 13-volume series, which sought to record every surviving "note [Sibelius] put down to paper", comprises 80+ hours of music over 68 discs and also includes the original versions of works the composer revised.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn

Table of compositions

Script error: No such module "Multiple image".

The table below is a complete list of works by Jean Sibelius, compiled with reference to two sources: first, Dahlström's 2003 Jean Sibelius: A Thematic Bibliographic Index of His Works; and second, the track listings for all 13 volumes of BIS's The Sibelius Edition. The table contains six sortable parameters: genre, title, year of composition, catalogue number (either Op. or JS), instrumentation, and text author (if applicable). The default ordering is, first, by genre and, second, by year of composition. Finally, to aid visualization, the table is divided into color-coded subsections, as follows:

§ Orchestral works
§ Chamber works
§ Works for solo instrument
§ Songs
§ Choral works
§ Preliminary versions, fragments

Template:Sticky header

Notes, references, and sources

Notes

Template:Notelist

References

<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />

Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

Sources

<templatestyles src="Refbegin/styles.css" />

Books
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".


Liner notes
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
Websites
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

Template:Jean Sibelius Template:Portal bar
Cite error: <ref> tags exist for a group named "lower-alpha", but no corresponding <references group="lower-alpha"/> tag was found