The Fourth Symphony a-moll op. 63 (1911) was an essential turning-point in Jean
Sibelius’s music. Since the symphony was completed, he began to be regarded as
a prominent European symphonic composer, because it was a typical example of
a great symphony style which was very original, perfect and profound in its con-
cept. The Fourth symphony came into contradiction with the creative tendencies
of that epoch but it manifested both continuation of the Viennese Late Romantic
heritage and anticipation of the great symphonies that would have been created
during the age of the World War II by Hindemith, Bartok, Honegger, Shostako-
vich. The subject matter of this paper implies traditions of the symphonies by
Anton Bruckner that establish the foundation for dramaturgy and structure of the
symphonies by Jean Sibelius, and primarily, they infl uenced the Third, Fourth
and Fifth of them which are considered here as the unity or the megacycle with
the Fourth symphony in the centre. However, there are a lot of deviations from
Bruckner’s archetype in Sibelius’s symphonies from the Fourth to the Seventh
symphonies which are analyzed in this regard too.
Keywords: archetype of the genre, dramaturgy and structure of the symphony, local colour, motto, development section of the sonata structure.
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