Does anyone have any views on the symphonic music of this composer. I'm thinking of investing in a CD by him, having read that he carried on the Sibelius legacy. Thanks for your thoughts.

I dont have any recordings of Kokkonen apart from a radio broadcast of the Cello Concerto on tape. His music is worth exploring. Kokkonen's music falls into three phases, a neo classical style, middle period twelve-tone style and a late 'neo-romantic style. As with Sibelius, most of his early music is chamber and shows the influence of Bartok. His Opera 'The Last Temtations' is highly regarded. He completed four Symphonies, a Fifth died with him. Dont expect to find many affinities with Sibelius, for one thing Kokkonen did not believe in inspiration! and in keeping with many other composers of the period, he struggled to escape from Sibelius's enormous shadow.--kullervopete.

... which makes me ask myself ... many Romantic-period composers had to deal with Beethoven's shadow... certainly all Finnish composers after Sibelius felt our beloved master's shadow in the same way, but what about 20th Century composers from other countries? Does anyone know of other composers who knowingly acknowledged Sibelius' influence, choosing either to follow in his footsteps or purposely go another route?

With the onset of the 'silence from Ainola' composers like Hilding Rosenberg and Dag Wirren in Scandinavia, Walton and Bax in Britain and Barber and Harris in the U.S, came under the Sibelian spell.
Sibelius, unlike say Schoenberg, never established a 'school' of followers, his music was much to personal and elusive for that.
When Sibelius died in 1957, the reactions to his music were already at work in the obituaries. But now Sibelius's influence has been reborn at a much more fundamental level.
Later generations of composers, including Finns no longer feel inhibited by his huge presence. Without imitating his manerisms they draw on the deep underlying principles inherent in his music.
Sibelius acts like a catalyist in helping to shape their own music.
Sibelius was no conservative, he revealed in a number of works a progressive and modern outlook.
In works like 'Nightride and Sunrise' and the Sixth Symphony he explored 'Minimalist' music long before it became fashionable. His mastery in manipulating time and movement have left their mark on composers as diverse as Maxwell Davies and Vag Holmbo. The Seventh Symphony became a cult work for the 'Spectral' composers in France.
Today Sibelius's music no longer casts a shadow, but shines like a guiding light on composers who are searching for their own inner voice.--kullervopete.

Thanks, kullervopete, for inadvertently finding a gaping hole in my so-called university education. Until you used the term here, I had never heard of "spectral music".

According to Wikipedia (

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Spectral music (or spectralism) is a musical genre or movement originating in France in the 1970s featuring the use of sound, including timbre, pitch, and rhythm of individual sounds, as a model for composition, most often using computer analysis of sound wave components and their evolution over time, especially using FFT analysis. While other forms of computer-assisted composition predated this music, for example in Germany, it is this approach to timbre, primarily developed at IRCAM in Paris, that specifically characterizes spectral music. Tristan Murail has described Spectral music as an attitude towards composition rather than a set of techniques, an aesthetic rather than style. This attitude being that "music is ultimately sound evolving in time" [1]. However, almost every major practitioner considers the term inappropriate, misleading, and reductive.

The article names:

• Hugues Dufourt
• Horatiu Radulescu
• Iancu Dumitrescu
• Gérard Grisey
• Tristan Murail
• Michael Levinas
• Claude Vivier

as early exponents of this music.

Furthermore "among recent composers building on the spectral idea" are:

• Magnus Lindberg
• Kaija Saariaho
• Phillippe Leroux
• Phillippe Hurel
• Joshua Fineberg
• Julian Anderson

Sadly, Sibelius is not mentioned in the article, but based on the criteria therin, I agree with kullervopete mentioning the 7th Symphony and its possible infulence on this movement.

Yes, also Tapiola was another work of special interest to the 'Spectral' movement and I note that Magnus Lindberg features on the list. Lindberg is of great significance here, for he is perhaps the most distinguished Finnish composer to have come on the scene since the death of Finlands greatest son.
I t was in fact during his studies with Gerard Grisey during the early eighties that led Lindberg to rediscover the radical aspects of Sibelius's art, stripped as it were of its nationalist trappings.
In an interview that Lindberg gave in 1993 he stated that Sibelius's music had been deeply misunderstood. He went on to say that as far as form and the treatment of materials is concerned, Sibelius was ahead of his time...his harmonies have a resonant, almost 'spectral' quality. Praise indeed from one of the most 'progressive' of 21st century composers.--kullervopete.