Sibelius at 70

For half his life Composer Jean Sibelius has been treated like a national hero in his native Finland. The Finnish Government has long subsidized him so that he could give all his time to writing music. Fellow Finns cheer him whenever he appears in public, never let his birthday pass without doing him some honor. Partly because his best works seem at first forbidding, partly because he has chosen to spend most of his life quietly at home, Sibelius has been slow to gain a worldwide recognition. This week when the big, bald Finn was 70, that recognition was his in abundance. Orchestras played his music in almost every music capital. In Boston Sergei Koussevitzky conducted Swan-white, Pohjola's Daughter, the tone poem Tapiola. For Philadelphia Leopold Stokowski chose the great Fourth Symphony. The New York Philharmonic played the Second, broadcast part of it to Finland. Sibelius, at 70, lives in a rambling country house in Jarvenpaa, some 30 miles from Helsinki. There he begins each day by dousing his head in a bucket of icy water. There he entertains many a visitor, fills them with good wine, converses intelligently on a wide range of subjects, refuses admittance to his upstairs study where he makes his music.

Sibelius was so besieged by well-wishers last week that he had his telephone disconnected. He went into Helsinki for his birthday concert attended by 8,000 adoring Finns and the Premiers of Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. His surprise of the week came when he heard the result of the New York Philharmonic's recent radio poll. Sibelius attracted little attention when he visited the U. S. in 1914. Today U. S. music-lovers have voted him the most popular of all living composers.

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