' (''The Lover''), Op. 14, is a suite by

Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and 20th-century classical music, early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest com ...

. He completed it in 1912, scored for

string orchestra A string orchestra is an orchestra consisting solely of a string section made up of the bowed strings used in Western Classical music. The instruments of such an orchestra are most often the following: the violin, which is divided into first ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

and

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

. He based it on his earlier composition of the same title, a song cycle of four movements for

men's chorus A men's chorus or male voice choir (MVC) (German: ''Männerchor''), is a choir consisting of men who sing with either a tenor or bass voice, and whose music is typically arranged into high and low tenors (1st and 2nd tenor), and high and low bass ...

a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...

completed in 1894. The works are based on a Finnish text in Book 1 of the ''

Kanteletar ''Kanteletar'' is a collection of Finnish folk poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot. It is considered to be a sister collection to the Finnish national epic ''Kalevala''. The poems of ''Kanteletar'' are based on the trochaic tetrameter, generally re ...

''.

History

In 1894, Sibelius completed ', a cycle of four

songs for

on a Finnish text in Book 1 of the collection of Finnish folk poems, the ''

''. He first set it in 1894, as an entry for a local competition. He won the second prize, while the first prize went to his former teacher. Sibelius arranged the cycle for men's chorus and string orchestra in 1894, and for mixed choir in 1898. Sibelius used the cycle as the basis for the orchestral suite ' for

and

, to which he assigned the

opus number In musicology, the opus number is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition, or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer's production. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among compositio ...

14. He completed it in 1912, when he also wrote his Fourth Symphony. Sibelius often conducted the suite together with his symphonies because the piece "captivated audiences".

Music

Structure of the song cycle

# ' # ' # ' # '

Structure of the suite

# ', Andante con moto (common time, D minor) # ' (The way of the lover), Allegretto (, B major) # ' (Good night, farewell), Andantino (cut time, F major & D minor) In the first movement, the strings sound light and beautiful. The choral part of the second movement was changed to "murmurs on the strings and wonderfully flexible melodic progressions." The third movement is deeply emotional as its model.

Recordings

The orchestral work was recorded along with other music by Sibelius, including '' Snöfrid'', the Cantata for the Coronation of Nicholas II, ''

Oma maa ''My Own Land'' (Finnish title: '; sometimes translated as ''Our Native Land''), Op. 92, is a single-movement cantata for mixed choir and orchestra written in 1918 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which is a setting of (a p ...

'' (My country) and '' Andante Festivo''. On volume 54 of a complete Sibelius Edition by BIS,

Osmo Vänskä Osmo Antero Vänskä (born 28 February 1953) is a Finnish conductor, clarinetist, and composer. Biography Vänskä started his musical career as an orchestral clarinetist with the Turku Philharmonic (1971–76). He then became the principal clar ...

conducts the

Lahti Symphony Orchestra The Lahti Symphony Orchestra (''Sinfonia Lahti'') is a Finnish orchestra, based in the city of Lahti. The orchestra is resident at the Sibelius Hall. The orchestra was founded in 1910, and placed under the control of the Lahti municipality in 1949 ...

. A review notes the works "ethereal polyphony" and compares it to the melancholy of the Sixth Symphony. The work was also recorded by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Literature

Tomi Mäkelä Tomi Matti Mäkelä (born 4 January 1964 in Lahti) is a Finnish musicologist and pianist, professor at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. He studied music and musicology in Lahti, Vienna, Berlin (West) and Helsinki. As a pia ...

: "Jean Sibelius und seine Zeit" (German), Laaber-Verlag, Regensburg 2013

References

External links

* {{Authority control Choral compositions Compositions for string orchestra Suites by Jean Sibelius 1894 compositions 1912 compositions