Sibelius Builds a First Symphony: Modalities of National Identity

Abstract

All projects of symphonic nationalism necessitate a complicated mediation
between widely disparate cultures. Creating such a work as Sibelius’s First
Symphony, for example, involved a process of negotiation between, at the
extremes, the originary culture of the presumed “folk” (exemplified in the
recovered musical formulas of Kalevala recitation, with its own nineteenth-century,
constructed claims to authenticity) and the sophisticated expectations of the
urban-elite culture of European art music. This essay posits a model for
understanding these negotiations (as part of the “invention of tradition”) and
illustrates their analytical applicability through close looks at some passages from
the First Symphony.