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SIBELIUS Jean Sibelius. By Tomi Mäkelä. Translated by Steven Lindberg. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell Press, 2011. [xl, 496 p. ISBN 9781843836889. $90.] Music examples, illustrations, works list, bibliography, indexes.
Jean Sibelius and His World. Edited by Daniel M. Grimley. (Bard Music Festival Series.) Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. [xii, 370 p. ISBN 9780691152806 (hardcover), $75; ISBN 9780691152813 (paperback), $35.] Music examples, illustrations, index.
Tomi Mäkelä's study first appeared in German in 2007 as"Poesie in der Luft." Jean Sibelius: Studien zur Leben und Werk (Wies - baden: Breitkopf und Härtel). It is not properly a biography and is not organized in chronological order. Mäkelä compares information from all eras of Sibelius's life in each of the chapters. It includes analyses of many Sibelius works, but it is not primarily analytical. The publisher's description calls this book a "psychogram." Unfortu - nately the English translation was published simply with the title Jean Sibelius, leaving out both the title Poesie in der Luft, which refers to a 4 June 1911 entry from Sibelius's diary that captures his spirit as a creative artist, and the subtitle Studien zur Leben und Werk, which properly describes the present work.
Mäkelä writes in dense academic prose, drawing together many disparate treads to illustrate various aspects of Sibelius's life and work. Steven Lindberg's translation captures the flavor as well as the content of the original German. Mäkelä demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the Sibelius literature in every language, and in order to follow his narrative, the reader will also have to know this literature. It is not a book for undergraduates to examine for a term paper; it is a very substantial study for serious researchers.
The book is laid out in five large chapters, each with three to five subchapters. The first chapter, "Insights," describes the many problems of studying Sibelius. This has been difficult because "many authors on Sibelius have been concerned with attack or defense rather than a sober analysis and interpretation with an open mind" (p. 7). Although his music was frequently performed, he suffered public indifference and neglect. He became a strong symbol of Finnish nationalism, but "his multilingualism and his multicultural descent . . . make him . . . a challenge to cultural politics that are...