Sibelius & Sohy: Music Related to World War I

Charlotte Sohy and Lili Boulanger
A program featuring music composed during World War I. The centerpiece is theSymphony in C-sharp minor,“Grande Guerre,” by the French composer Charlotte Sohy, written between 1914 and 1917 and only rediscovered in 2019. Melancholic and somber, yet also grand and energetic, this symphony bears witness to the hardships of war. The work is stylistically related to the music of César Franck. Charlotte Sohy received her early musical training from Nadia Boulanger, who was also born in Paris in 1887. Her younger sister, Lili Boulanger—who, at the age of nineteen, became the first female composer to win the Prix de Rome—wroteD’un matin de printempsin 1918, a remarkably lighthearted work for someone who sensed her untimely death approaching.

Heavenly Mosaic
On his fiftieth birthday, December 8, 1915, Jean Sibelius conducted hisFifth Symphony, which he had composed specifically for the occasion at the request of the Finnish government. Sibelius continued to refine this work until 1919. Only then was he satisfied with the arrangement of the themes. ‘It is as if God the Father had scattered mosaic pieces from the floor of heaven and asked me to place them in the right spots.’ This puzzle took him years, but ultimately yielded ‘a vital climax, triumphant,’ as he himself observed.