The idea of providing incidental music for Shakespeare's fairy-tale play The Tempest is thought to have been first suggested to Sibelius by an admirer of his, Baron Axel Carpelan, as early as 1901. Two decades later, as the result of a commision from the Danish Royal Theater, Sibelius produced an astonishing hour-long score comprising graceful miniatures, austere vocal settings, earthy folk-like dances, and isolated passages of raucous modernism. The work—one of the last to come from Sibelius' pen—was premiered in Copenhagen on March 15, 1926.

The 34 short pieces of Sibelius' score make varied use of a large orchestra, soloists, and choir. Along with the Fourth Symphony (1911), The Tempest represents Sibelius at his most modernistic, while at the same time it covers a wide stylistic range. In the opening movement, "The Oak Tree," a flute melody based on fragments of whole-tone and semitone scales is set against a shimmering string background. With its boisterous woodwinds, xylophone, and sudden tonal twists, "Caliban's Song" recalls contemporaneous works by Prokofiev. The tense, powerful mood painting of "The Storm" has lent it a life as an independent concert work in its own right. There is no shortage of lighter moments in the score, as in the gentle "Chorus of the Winds" and the "Dance of the Nymphs," with its gracefully twirling, pastel-tinged woodwind and string colors.

Sibelius wrote only one more major work after The Tempest, the tone poem Tapiola (1926), and lived the remainder of his life—some 30 years—in retirement. Though it may be pure coincidence, Sibelius' long compositional silence mirrors The Tempest's subject matter: Like Shakespeare's Prospero, the composer chose to abjure his art, to set aside his magic craft.

Soon after its composition Sibelius arranged two concert suites from the score, in which form the work is perhaps best known today.

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