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The link below is recommended to Sibelius fans. The article itself is about the possibility of sketches being preserved of Sibelius' long lost 8th Symphony (the score is thought to have been burned by the dissatisfied composer himself). At the end of the article is a link to a video containing performances of some of the sketches (maybe 4 minutes of music, total). The stuff certainly does sound like Sibelius. The other links are work exploring too.

--Sixtus

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Is+thi ... 5269867060

Thanks for the link. Fascinating
Peter Dyson

Well he certainly DID compose, just not very much. Plus he orchestrated, rearranged, and/or revised a few of his pieces. Andante Festivo, for instance, wasn't orchestrated until like 1939. He wrote a very catchy patriotic song in 1930. Etc. etc.

Soniashope wrote: For such a prolific composer with such wide areas or interest how could he just stop?

There has been much speculation as to why Sibelius fell nearly silent after what would normally be considered "middle period" masterpieces (Sym 7, Tapiola and music for The Tempest). But he's not the only one. Both Rossini and, closer to home, Aaron Copland had many years of good health remaining to them after they stopped writing. The grand scheme of things makes up for this (as well as the early deaths of Mozart, Schubert, Purcell, Bizet and others) by granting some composers creativity up to a very old age (Haydn and Verdi come to mind). And Elliot Carter is still with us, cranking out his cranky masterpieces at a soon-to-be 103 (Dec. 11)!

--Sixtus

The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross just happens to be a book I am reading at the moment. He discusses Sibelius' silence at length, and cites factors such as dependence on alcohol, depression, the rise of "fashionable" new composition techniques (a la Schoenberg, Stravinsky et al) that left Sibelius' music with a sort of dinosauric image, and also, interestingly, an article that championed him so much that Ross feels Sibelius might have been pressured by it to deliver the goods -- not necessarily possible when struggling with depression and alcoholism. At least one conductor was also pressurizing him to set a date for the premiere of the 8th. I think I might hide, too . . . .

Well listening to those excerpts, especially the first one, it seems he was leaning toward those "new techniques", and perhaps that's what he hated so much.

That story reminded me of something I once read about Malcom Arnold, he claimed to have seen sketches for the 8th in England during the 1930's and always regretted not copying them when he had the chance...