Many of his musical sketches are here, and it is remarkable how so much of the material that Sibelius was writing during this time found its place in the Sixth and Seventh symphonies, making this guide useful for fans of those as well. We follow the long course the symphony took towards completion, amply illustrated by extracts from Sibelius' diaries and correspondence. One all this is established, Hepokoski gets to the Fifth itself.

Out of this encounter Sibelius fashioned between 19 five central concepts for his music: content-based forms ('fantasias'), rotational form (varied multisectional strophes), teleological genesis ('phenomenological' reflection), Klang meditation, and the interrelation and fusion of movements. This, Hepokoski notes, was only one episode in a great encounter between 'modernists' (the generation of the 1860s) and makers of the 'new music' (the Second Viennese School and others). He realizes that he can't compete in that area and decides to blaze his own unique path. We see Sibelius, the composer of the radical Fourth symphony where dissonance is unleashed, meets the music of Schoenberg. It is a piece ingenious in its internal workings and with a great history behind it and, and James Hepokoski presents this all to us in his entry in the Cambridge Music Handbooks series.īefore even talking about the symphony itself, Hepokoski gives us a great deal of background. 5 is one of the great achievements of late Romanticism and stands as the Finnish composer's most widely loved works in that genre.

Sibelius symphony 5