Jean Sibelius

December 3, 1865 – September 20, 1957

He was born into a Swedish-speaking family in Finlaand. Although known as "Janne" to his family, during his student years he began using the French form of his name, "Jean".His family decided to send him to a Finnish language school which he attended from 1876 to 1885. Romantic Nationalism was to become a crucial element in his artistic output and his politics.

He married Aino Järnefelt on 10 June 1892. They were married for 64 years and had six daughters. Their home, built soon after their marriage and named Ainola, was to be his home for the rest of his life. In 1911, he underwent a serious operation for suspected throat cancer. The impact of this brush with death can be seen in several of the works that he composed at the time. He loved nature, and the Finnish landscape often served as material for his music. The forests surrounding Ainola are often said to have inspired his composition.

The year 1926 saw a sharp and lasting decline in Sibelius' output: after his Seventh Symphony, he only produced a few major works in the rest of his life. For nearly the last thirty years of his life, He even avoided talking about his music. He had always been quite self-critical; he remarked to his close friends, "If I cannot write a better symphony than my Seventh, then it shall be my last."

“[He] was returning from his customary morning walk. Exhilarated, he told his wife Aino that he had seen a flock of cranes approaching. ‘There they come, the birds of my youth,’ he exclaimed. Suddenly, one of the birds broke away from the formation and circled once above Ainola. It then rejoined the flock to continue its journey. Two days afterwards Sibelius died of a brain hemorrhage, at age 91.”