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- Sibelius, Jean
Duration: 10 minutes
Description: Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) composed In Memoriam (Trauermarsch), Op. 59 in 1909, revising it extensively in 1910, as a funeral march inspired by the memory of the Finnish nationalist Eugen Schauman, who in 1904 assassinated the Russian Governor-General Nikolay Bobrikov before taking his own life. Sibelius had contemplated writing a memorial work as early as 1905, but only returned to the project after undergoing throat surgery in 1909, an experience that deepened his own reflections on mortality. The resulting score, influenced by the funeral marches in Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, unfolds as a solemn orchestral procession whose broad melodies and restrained climaxes evoke both private grief and national remembrance. Sibelius conducted the premiere on October 8, 1910, in Kristiania (now Oslo) with the Musikforeningen after completing his revisions, and the work later assumed a deeply personal significance when it was performed at the composer’s own funeral in 1957. Today, In Memoriam (Trauermarsch), Op. 59 is recognized as one of Sibelius’s finest shorter orchestral works, performed less frequently than his symphonies and tone poems but admired for its emotional depth and powerful expression of remembrance and resilience. Instrumentation: 2.2+1(EH).2+1(BCl).2+1(CBsn): 4.3.3.1: Timp.Perc(3): Str (9.8.7.6.5 in set). Reprint edition.