Max Derrickson

When Sibelius began sketches for his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies in 1915, he had ideas too for his Seventh. It took nine more years to complete his Sixth, and all the while the Seventh continued to gestate as Sibelius re-imagined of the nature of a Symphony, its structure, its harmonic path, the essence of what a Symphony should or might be. In those nine long years he was trying to rethink the form, and he was also seeking music in the world around him, a sort of Music of the Spheres, that musica universalis, first described by Pythagoras (c. 570 – 495 BC). Sibelius wanted to capture what the Universe sounded like in its deep logic and structure. Likewise, in natural settings, Sibelius searched to hear its order as well as its sound, once mystifying a group of musicians from the University of Helsinki by describing the harmonics of a mountain meadow. … When his Sixth was completed in 1923, Sibelius was fired to return to his Seventh, which he completed almost immediately by 1924. It is the culmination of his symphonic career …