- Sibelius composed his tone poem Barden (“The Bard”) in 1913. It premiered in Helsinki on March 27, 1913, in a performance conducted by Sibelius.1
- Listen for: two sections, similar in mood, and a prominent harp part.2
- Listen for: at a climactic moment, rising figures in the trombone and trumpets. Sibelius said this passage was meant to sound like lurs, ancient brass instruments which had recently been found in archeological digs of Bronze Age Scandinavian burial mounds.3
- There is a poem entitled The Bard by J.L. Runeberg (1804-1877), a poet Sibelius admired, but Sibelius denied that his tone poem was based on Runeberg’s poem. Some scholars suggest that Sibelius was either depicting the generic idea of an ancient poet, or reflecting on his own creative thought.4
Sources
- Fabian Dahlström and James Hepokoski, “Sibelius, Jean,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 30, 2020, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000043725.
- Andrew Barnett, Sibelius(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 231.
- Daniel M. Grimley, “The Tone Poems: Genre, Landscape and Structural Perspective,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius, ed. Daniel M. Grimley (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 111.
- Ibid.
Cut IDs
40026