Stephen Johnson, Janne’s Rhine Journey: What Sibelius Learned From Wagner

Reading through various writings on Janne, or as he preferred to call himself, Jean Sibelius, from concert programme notes and CD booklets to biographies and academic studies, one doesn’t often encounter references to Richard Wagner. Wagner is rarely listed amongst the important influences on Sibelius’s development as a composer. It is sometimes acknowledged that Sibelius did experience a brief spell of Wagnerian intoxication in his youth; but the implication is usually this was a passing phase, that the decisive step was in turning his back on Wagner and all he represented – ‘saw sense’, as particularly some of the older Anglo-Saxon commentators would have it.