From his birth on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna (Tavastehus in Swedish), at that time a Russian province of the Grand Duchy of Finland, Jean Sibelius was confronted with questions of national identity. Born Johan Julius Christian, his friends affectionately referred to him as Janne; the composer then adopted the Gallicised version “Jean,” feeling it to be more appropriate for an artist. As with much of the Finnish population living in the border region, Jean was raised speaking Swedish. In 1868, when Jean was not yet three years old, his father, Christian Gustaf Sibelius, a military surgeon and town doctor, died of typhus. As a result, Jean’s mother, Maria Charlotta Sibelius (née Borg), was obliged to sell most of the family’s possessions in order to pay off the debts of her deceased husband, and the family moved in with her mother.

At the age of five, Jean Sibelius took his first piano lessons with his aunt. Showing obvious musical talent, he received a violin on his tenth birthday as a gift from his uncle and composed his first work, Vattendroppar (“Water Drops”). An amateur musician, Jean’s uncle closely followed the musical development of his nephew, who was then playing in a string quartet and a trio with his sister Linda (piano) and brother Christian (cello). In 1882, Sibelius turned more seriously to composing, having received guidance from a theory treatise he had obtained. On the basis of a musical exercise he had developed as a game to stave off boredom came a Trio comprising three movements, a Minuet in F Major and a handful of chamber works written in the Viennese classical style. He composed a String Quartet in E Major before moving from Hämeenlinna to Helsinki. A meeting with Busoni led him to temporarily abandon his ambition to become a virtuoso violinist. Soon afterwards, he dropped out of his law degree at the Imperial Alexander University, opting instead to study violin with Mitrofan Vassiliev and Hermann Csillag at the newly-opened Martin Wegelius Institute of Music (renamed the Sibelius Academy in 1939). In the Autumn of 1887, he took classes in music theory, and private lessons in composition with Martin Wegelius, a devotee of Wagner and Liszt. Sibelius’ first significant work, the Quartet in A Minor, was warmly received at its premiere. He became acquainted with Aino, the daughter of composer Armas Järnefelt, whom he later married.

With the help of Wegelius and Busoni, Sibelius obtained a grant allowing him to take private composition lessons with Albert Becker in Berlin (from September 1889 to late June 1890) and to study at the Vienna Conservatory (from October 1890 to early June 1891) with Karl Goldmark and Robert Fuchs. While in Vienna, he unsuccessfully attempted to meet Brahms, and attended a performance of Bruckner’s Third Symphony. His discovery of the “Kalevala” (a 19th-century work of epic poetry based on Finnish oral folklore and mythology) was the inspiration for Kullervo, premiered in 1892 in Helsinki. His interest in Finnish popular song gave rise to a friendship with singer Larin Paraske. Soon after his wedding in 1882, Sibelius spent the summer in the province of Karelia (now north-western Russia) in order to study and collect popular folk melodies. In the Autumn of 1892, he started teaching music theory and violin at the Helsinki Conservatory and at the Robert Kajanus Orchestral School. His first daughter, Eva, was born in 1893, and his second, Ruth, in 1894, the year in which he attended the Bayreuth Festival for the first time. Initially seduced by the music of Wagner, he would soon distance himself from it in favour of the style of Liszt, as manifest in the suite Lemminkäinen Op. 22, of which a part, The Swan of Tuonela, was immensely successful. The Finnish senate voted to award Sibelius a ten-year “National Artist” bursary, which was renewed until the composer’s death.

His third daughter, Kirsti, born in 1898, died two years later. Through a European tour with Kajanus and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, notably including a performance in the Finnish pavilion at the World Exposition, Sibelius’ music gained broad international recognition. However, the composer was beginning to experience health problems from his excessive alcohol consumption. In 1905, Sibelius annulled his contract with his Finnish publisher and signed with Robert Lienau in Berlin. In November of the same year, he travelled to Great Britain to conduct performances of his Symphony No. 1 and Finlandia. A meeting with Mahler in October 1907 in Helsinki was characterised by mutual incomprehension between the two composers. At the time of the birth of two more daughters, Margareta in 1908 and Heidi in 1911, Sibelius underwent surgery on a tumour in his throat which left him bedridden for several years and forced him to decline an offer of a composition professorship at the Vienna Imperial Conservatory.

In the Spring of 1914, he was invited by composer Horatio Parker to New York and Boston. Receiving a hero’s welcome, Sibelius was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Yale University, and premiered the final version of Oceanides in Norfolk, Connecticut. The war years were difficult for Sibelius, not least because the Russian Revolution gave rise to a declaration of independence in Finland in 1917. Upon completing revisions of his Symphony No. 5, the work was premiered in 1918. His 60th birthday saw national celebrations in his native Finland and a commission for a tone poem from the New York Philharmonic, resulting in the composition of Tapiola. Kajanus conducted the premiere of Symphony No. 7 in 1927. However, this marked the beginning of a long period of silence which lasted until his death; sketches for an Eighth Symphony were destroyed by the composer. In 1940, Goebbels created the Sibelius Society in Germany. In a radio broadcast, Sibelius thanked Germany for the honour, and declared the nation to be “the glorious land of music.” One year later, he condemned the racially-driven politics of Hitler’s regime in his diary. Following the war, his home in Ainola became a pilgrimage site for celebrity guests. Jean Sibelius died on 20 September 1957.