Something to ponder.

Bach is Baroque, Mozart is Classical, Rachmaninov is Romantic, Debussy is Impressionist, Dvorak is Nationalist.
What is Sibelius?--kullervopete.

I think that with Sibelius and many other composers of the 20th Century, traditional era- or style-oriented labels don't quite apply. To call him "Neo-Classical" is a bit naive. Perhaps the label of "Post-Romantic Nationalist exhibiting pre-Neo-Classical tendencies" is a little more accurate but does not help us very much. I prefer not to label or categorize Sibelius, and let his music speak for itself.

I aggree, Sibelius is a composer who refuses to be pigeon-holed.
Though I did smile at Kurki's brave attempt. How things have changed over the last forty years or so.
In 1965 here in Manchester, Barbirolli and the Halle Orchestra celebrated the masters centenary with a complete cycle of the symphonies. Writing in the Sibelius centenary programme, respected Sibelian J.H. Elliot wrote the following : 'Where some critics went wrong, or a little too far, was in supposing that Sibelius was also opening a way to the future. It is now clear that he closed an epoch rather than began one-which , traditionally and historically, is a task to be undertaken only by a composer of considerable magnitude. Sibelius had more links with the nineteenth century than with the twentieth century, He was the last of the great nationalist composers, and he took the symphonic organism created by the classical masters [now in its decline] to the final limits-or rather one of its final limits. For Sibelius compressed and whittled down where Mahler was left to expand to the opposite extreme'.

Today fifty years after Sibelius's death James Hepokoski has argued that Sib was less of a late romantic, and more of a modern classicist. Julian Anderson has remarked in 2004 'There is general aggreement amongst contemporary composers that beneath the obviously traditional elements of his harmonic syntax, Sibelius addresses some of the most essential problems of composition in innovative and utterly original ways that are of continuing relevance to the newest music'.

So although points of aggreement can be found between Elliot in 1965 and Anderson forty years on, Sibelius is now seen not as a cul-de-sac but as a force for the future.--kullervopete.

kullervopete wrote:

Julian Anderson has remarked in 2004 'There is general aggreement amongst contemporary composers that beneath the obviously traditional elements of his harmonic syntax...

There I must disagree with Anderson in that I do not find Sibelius' harmonic syntax "traditional" in the least, I find it is one of the things that truly separate Sibelius from the 19th Century. As an early example, take En Saga, which is almost completely devoid of the Dominant chord within most of its phrases. Later examples abound, the 4th Symphony being the most obvious.

I think that Robert Layton got it spot on [Sibelius Master Musicians]

'For the simple minded critic who equates the complexity of harmonic language and a higher norm of dissonance with the idea of musical 'progress' [an essentially nineteenth-century concept], Sibelius is not as great a composer as Schonberg or Bartok, simply because he was content to leave the language of music very much as he found it. He used an already existing vocabulary as Bach did, but in so highly idiosyncratic a manner that no attempt to imitate it can succeed. The self-styled 'progressive' will dismiss him much in the same way that the contemporaries of Bach tended to relegate him to the second rank because he was 'old-fashioned'. This is to confuse language and style. There are few greater masters of musical syntax than Sibelius: what is extraordinary is his capacity for making a simple chord sound his own'.
-kullervopete.

Kurkikohtaus wrote:

I think that with Sibelius and many other composers of the 20th Century, traditional era- or style-oriented labels don't quite apply. To call him "Neo-Classical" is a bit naive. Perhaps the label of "Post-Romantic Nationalist exhibiting pre-Neo-Classical tendencies" is a little more accurate but does not help us very much. I prefer not to label or categorize Sibelius, and let his music speak for itself.

This is a very good description of Sibelius!

It is rather hard to catagorize him, I must agree.

His sound changed so much over the years. Just listen to The Wood Nymph and the 6th Symphony back to back. Can this even be the same composer? Where do you put a composer whose ealy work is certainly late-Romantic/Nationalist vs his later stuff which I would certainly classify as Neo-Classical?

Ooh, I have a novel idea... Sibelius is... Sibelian. Shocking, I know; but if there are no other composers before or since, why try to label him as something he is obviously more or less than? It just makes no sense to me.

World Violist wrote:

Sibelius is... Sibelian.

That has an almost religious ring to it...