'Barely had we begun to till the barren soil when a mighty sound arose from the

wilderness. Away with spades and picks. Finnish music's mighty springs came bursting
forth. A mighty torrent burst forth to engulf all before it. Jean Sibelius alone showed
the way. In Kullervo he had with one stroke realised the dream of a genuine Finnish
voice.' (Robert Kajanus) To what extent can Sibelius be considered a Finnish composer?
Sibelius experienced throughout his life the final stages of Finlands development into
an independent country. At the time he was born in 1865 it was part of the Russian
Empire, however a national consciousness was awakening and a sense of Finnish
patriotism was growing. The pillars of Finnish literature had been written, and acted as
a foundation for the development of a nation. Sibelius was brought up as part of a
generation with a strong sense of national identity, and as a result nationalism
influenced his compositional output. While there are works which take their subject
from the collection of Finnish folk poetry, the Kalevala, as well as works commissioned
for nationalist events (the press celebration music, and Karelia music were both written
for the promotion of nationalist ideas), Sibelius music is often credited with having
inherently Finnish characteristics. Sibelius as a figure is now of such national
importance in Finland that his birthday is celebrated as the Day of Finnish music, and it
is an established custom for the Finnish flag to be flown.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a group of students at the
university in Turku (a city in southwest Finland, around one hundred miles west of
Helsinki) who were passionate about the history, culture and language of Finland. This
school came to be known as the Turku Romantics; intellectuals who began to question
the national identity of Finland after it had become an autonomous grand duchy as part
of the Russian Empire. The majority of the Finnish population spoke Finnish, however
the well-educated upper classes and spoke Swedish. Finnish became a vehicle for the
well-educated, Swedish-speaking, upper classes to express their newfound sense of
national identity. The promotion of the Finnish language was fundamental to this early
stage of the Finnish nationalist movement pioneered by the Turku Romantics. Johan
Ludvig Runeberg was a student at Turku in 1822 who wrote some of the most popular
and influential Finnish poetry of the nineteenth century. His Tales of Ensign Stl is a
patriotic work with themes of landscape, people, heroism and history; the opening line
of which is known throughout Finland to this day Vrt land, vrt land, vrt fosterland
(Our land, our land, our fatherland). Elias Lnnrot, another student at Turku at this time
collected folk stories from Karelia (a region located now in both Finland and Russia, it
was however considered the Finnish heartland) to form the Kalevala, first published in
1835. In the book are the stories of numerous heroes, with themes of creation, love,
conflict which constitute a Finnish mythology. While these may have been known

people throughout the region, the Kalevala provided a definitive edition of all of them in
one volume (although an extended version was published in 1849) which was available
to a new audience. It was this school of the Turku romantics that produced the works
that provided the foundations for what was considered Finnish. It is on these ideas that
Sibelius own nationalism was based, an in turn influenced to the direction of his music.

While studying in Vienna for the academic year beginning in 1890, Sibelius began work
on an instrumental symphony. The genre of the symphony at this time was rooted in
the Austro-German tradition with proponents such as Mozart and Beethoven. For the
young Finnish composer this compositional pursuit seems contrary to his growing
nationalism; the only known Finnish symphony that had been written previously was by
Axel Gabriel Ingelius completed in 1847. It is clear however from his letters that while in
Vienna Sibelius was becoming increasingly interested in Finnish culture, demonstrated
through his reading of the Kalevala and study of the Finnish language. By the end of the
nineteenth century the Kalevala had become one of the most important Finnish texts,
and central to the nationalist movement. The reason for this is that it codified the
mythology and folklore of Finnish people in their own language, providing them with a
published cultural heritage. This first attempt at writing a symphony was abandoned,
and now exists as the single-movement Overture in E major. He soon began work on
what he referred to throughout the compositional process as a symphony, which was to
become Kullervo.

Kullervo is a monumental five-movement work for soprano, baritone, male voice choir,
and large orchestra. It received its premiere on 28 th April 1892, conducted by the 27year-old composer to great acclaim. The piece depicts the tragic story of Kullervo as
described in the Kalevala in which he survives a massacre of his tribe, is sold as a
slave, unwittingly seduces his sister and upon realisation commits suicide. Only two of
the five movements include vocal parts; the Introduction (I), Kullervos Youth (II), and
Kullervos Death (V) are instrumental. Kullervo was the most ambitious composition
ever undertaken by a Finn, with its large-scale orchestration and typical performance
time of around eighty minutes. In many ways this work unites the Austro-German
tradition of symphonic writing with the Finnish language and mythology of the Kalevala.
Its reception saw this piece as the first which truly embodied the nationalist movement
and realised the dream of a genuine Finnish voice. Through a musical language
influenced heavily by foreign musical tradition Sibelius had created an artistic voice
which captured the spirit of Finnish nationalism.

While the epic proportions of Kullervo were new to Finnish music perhaps the most
remarkable and provoking element of the work was the text. The sung text for Kullervo
is in Finnish, a language which under the rule of Sweden (and afterwards) was
considered to be that of the lower classes and unlikely to be used in the presentation of
high art. By using folk story subjects in the native language of the masses for a piece
of art music rather than a simple folk song, Sibelius inevitably created a nationalist
piece. The story of Kullervo from the Kalevala is the most tragic of all the characters,
not making it the obvious choice for a work to support a national movement. Artistic
interpretations and depictions of Kullervos story did not generally focus on the act of
incest in the story, while in Sibelius work the third movement Kullvero and his Sister is
by far the longest movement lasting around thirty minutes. A year before Sibelius work
was premiered a Kalevala illustration competition took place in which Louis Sparre, a
Swedish artist submitted a painting depicting Kullervo seducing his sister, in what was a
controversial choice of subject. Sibelius, like Sparre did not shy away from the flawed
nature of the hero, but dwelled on it as it had great expressive and emotive potential.
The text alone makes Kullervo nationalistic in character, but it is less clear how
distinctively Finnish the musical setting is. While much of his tuition in the years up to
the composition of Kullervo were in Austria and Germany, the work while sounding
clearly in the European tradition does not imitate the styles of his German
contemporaries. The stories of the Kalevala had many folk melodies associated with
them however Sibelius adamantly stated that no such melodies, Finnish or otherwise,
were used in the composition of Kullervo. It is known however that during the
compositional process Sibelius sought out Larin Paraske for her vocal interpretations of
folk poetry, including that in the Kalevala. Sibelius was also familiar with Finnish folk
songs through collections such as Eemil Sivoris Folk Songs of Mntyharju (a small
province of south-east Finland) which he had during the composition of Kullervo. While
no melodies were quoted exactly the character of the melodies were similar enough
that the Finnish people believed they could identify them as Finnish, most likely is
because of Sibelius familiarity with the folk repertory. In the context of a concert
however in which Finnish texts (which the audience would recognise) are being sung,
the melodies which are used will have become Finnish through association. The critic
Oskar Merikanto summarised this in his review of Kullervo we recognise [the melodies]
as our own, even though we had never heard them before. One example of a typical
characteristic of Finnish folk songs employed in Kullervo is the 5/4 metre of the melody
introduced in the violins at the start of the third movement; this metre is inherent in the
text of the Kalevala.

Only weeks before the premiere Sibelius changed his categorisation of Kullervo from
symphony to symphonic poem. It is not known exactly what prompted this decision,

however the cause may have been that the Helsinki Orchestra Society were to perform
Beethovens Ninth Symphony the week before the premiere of Kullervo. It is easy to see
the similarities between the two works, with their vast proportions and similar
orchestrations. Sibelius was only beginning his career as a composer and presumably
did not want prompt comparisons between his and Beethovens monumental work. This
is perhaps connected to the fact that Sibelius refused to have the work published
throughout his life; he may have felt that Kullervo did not demonstrate his true capacity
as a composer. Although only a change to the verbal description of the piece, changing
it from symphony to symphonic poem meant that it did not encourage listeners to see
it as a part of the Austro-German tradition.

While Sibelius received training in the European art music tradition he is credited for
having created his own Finnish style. Without exact quotation from Finnish folk music
his style was embraced as an embodiment of the national movement. Through an
understanding of folk song texts and settings without direct quotation, as well as a firm
grasp of symphonic composition and orchestration he was able to create a distinctive
musical voice in Kullervo. To some extent Sibelius unique style became the Finnish
voice of music, rather than an attempt to revive an archetypal Finnish style. Sibelius
redefined what it was to compose in a Finnish style, as Finland itself was redefined.

MERIKANTO, O. (1892) Pivlehti