The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote several significant groups of songs, about a hundred songs in all, most of them settings of poetry in Swedish, the language Sibelius spoke in his youth. These relatively conventional Lieder countered the more overtly Finnish-oriented settings, among them the "symphonic poem" Kullervo (1892). This and other music based on the Finnish folk epic The Kalavela solidified his stature as the most significant Finnish composer of the day, and from the perspective of later generations the father of the modern Finnish national music tradition.

Musically, though, Sibelius worked largely from the precedent of the German masters—Beethoven, Wagner, and especially Brahms; he studied for a time in Vienna around 1890. Sibelius' songs show the influence most clearly, with a late Romantic style comparable to that of his rough contemporaries Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler.

The six songs, Op. 36, are all Swedish settings, and draw on poetry using images from the nature of Scandinavia, one of Sibelius' most persistent inspirations. Sibelius wrote the set in the late 1890s, contemporary with his First Symphony. The set contains some of the composer's best-known songs, including the first song of the set, "Black roses" (Svart rosor), on a poem by Ernst Josephson. This three-verse song, a strophic setting with an active piano accompaniment, tells of a rosebush growing in the heart of the lover, with its roses and its thorns. Each verse ends with the line "For sorrow has night-black roses," set with a tone of exhaustion. The second song, "But my bird is long in homing" (Men min fägel märks dock icke) is a poem of J. L. Runeberg, one of the poets Sibelius set most often. Sibelius sets the two verses again strophically, doubling the voice throughout in the largely chordal accompaniment. The text tells of a girl observing the return of birds in spring, while winter lingers on in her heart.

"Tennis at Trianon" (Bollspelet vid Trianon) is the most lighthearted of the set, but its miniature drama calls for Sibelius to twice shift gears quickly, contrasting a lively tennis game of the nobility, and their exclamations in French, with the fleeting appearance of "Jourdan Coupe-tête," a beggar. The poem is by Gustav Fröding. "Sigh, sigh, rushes" (Säf, säf, susa), another Fröding setting, asks the rushes to mourn for Ingalill, whose good fortune, wealth, and young love inspired jealousy in her neighbors, which in turn caused the girl to succumb to despair and drown herself. Sibelius accompanies the waving of the reeds with picturesque piano music, with Wagnerian static sequences for relating the suicide, and with a darkened return to the reed-music when the poem comes full circle. "The March snow" (Marssnön) and the last song, "Diamond in the March snow" (Demanten pâ marssnön), are both settings of the poet J. J. Wecksell. The first is only eight lines, urging spring, as the snow falls, to wait awhile before returning, so it will then bloom more impressively. The song, written in 5/4 meter, begins gloomily—the poet longing for spring—but grows more hopeful over its course. "Diamond in the snow" is a charming waltz, a snowdrift's courtship with the sun illustrating the lovely prospect of giving all for the object of one's affection. This is another of Sibelius' most popular songs.

© All Music Guide