SIBELIUS, Jean (1865-1957)

SIBELIUS, Jean (1865-1957)

Autograph musical quotation signed (\'Jean Sibelius\') from The Swan of Tuonela, n.p., 17 April 1911.

Three bars on a single stave with the title \'Tuonela\', on a bifolium, 174 x 170mm. Provenance: Sotheby\'s, 1 December 1994, lot 328.



A quotation from his 1895 tone poem, The Swan of Tuonela: the quotation is from the second theme of the work. Sibelius\'s Fourth Symphony had premiered in Helsinki only two weeks previously, but its desolate tone was not warmly received by the public, and it is perhaps telling that the present quotation is from a work written 16 years earlier, at the outset of his career.