Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius.

Article Excerpt
The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius. Edited by Daniel M. Grimley. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. [xvii, 273 p. ISBN 0-521-81552-5. $75.] Music examples, index, bibliography.

In 1933, at the height of the British Sibelius cult, Ernest Newman wrote, "We of today are much too close to Sibelius ... to attempt anything like a picture of him as the generation of 1960 or 2000 will see him" ("Sibelius: Most Personal of Great Composers [1 October 1933]," in More Essays from the World of Music, rev. ed., selected by Felix Aprahamian [London: John Calder, 1976], 2:117). From the unmitigated adulation of the 1930s, to the critical decline of the 1960s, and the recent flurry of interest since the early 1990s, Newman predicted with keen foresight the precise turning points in Sibelius's evolving reputation over the last seventy years. Today, with the completion of Robert Layton's translation of the biography by Erik Tawaststjerna, the BIS label's superb efforts to issue the entire output of the composer's works (including original versions of some), and a long-awaited complete edition, all signs point to a Sibelius renaissance, if not another cult. Symptomatic of the renewed fascination, The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius appears as the sixth essay collection on Sibelius in a decade.

With its five other "companions," why do we need a sixth? In a way, one collection begets...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!