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articles / Pop Culture

Swans Show Symphonic Grace

Pop CultureThe State of the Arts

On an ‘A-to-Z’ edition of State of the Arts, it’s Sibelius and his Symphony of Swans and Silence… The Finnish composer (and national hero) Jean Sibelius was commissioned to write a symphony to commemorate his own 50th birthday (today would have been his 152nd) – he ended up revising it several times before it came to the version we know today, but one of its most memorable themes came to him on a morning in April when he looked to the skies.

Swans Show Symphonic Grace
00:00

We know which morning, because he wrote in his diary (along with the theme that recurs in the horns throughout the final movement): “Today at ten to eleven, I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, that beauty. They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming, silver ribbon.” That was April 21st, 1915. A few days later, he would write: “The swans are always in my thoughts and give splendor to life… Strange to learn that nothing in the whole world affects me – nothing in art, literature, or music – in the same way as do these swans and canes and wild geese.”

The final movement in this performance starts at 23:14…

Pop CultureThe State of the Arts
Written by:
Jeffrey Freymann
Jeffrey Freymann
Published on 05.11.2018
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