Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for The Tempest (1926), and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he stopped producing major works in his last 30 years—a retirement commonly referred to as the "silence of Järvenpää" (the location of his home).

In Hämeenlinna, when he was seven, Sibelius's aunt Julia was brought in to give him piano lessons on the family's upright instrument, rapping him on the knuckles whenever he played a wrong note.

There he met and immediately fell in love with Aino, the 17-year-old daughter of General Alexander Järnefelt, the governor of Vaasa, and Elisabeth Clodt von Jürgensburg, a Baltic aristocrat.

Following the birth of Sibelius's first child Eva, in April the premiere of his choral work Väinämöinen's Boat Ride was a considerable success, receiving the support of the press.

[34] On 13 November 1893, the full version of Karelia was premiered at a student association gala at the Seurahuone in Viipuri with the collaboration of the artist Axel Gallén and the sculptor Emil Wikström who had been brought in to design the stage sets.

[36] When performed in a revised version on 17 April 1895, the composer Oskar Merikanto welcomed Vårsång (Spring Song) as "the fairest flower among Sibelius's orchestral pieces".

In contrast to Merikanto's enthusiasm for the Finnish quality of the work, the critic Karl Flodin found the cor anglais solo in The Swan of Tuonela "stupendously long and boring",[38][34] although he considered the first legend, Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island, as representing the peak of Sibelius's achievement to date.

[41] In January 1899, Sibelius embarked on his First Symphony at a time when his patriotic feelings were being enhanced by the Russian emperor Nicholas II's attempt to restrict the powers of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

The family were finally able to move into the new property on 24 September 1904, making friends with the local artistic community, including the painters Eero Järnefelt and Pekka Halonen and the novelist Juhani Aho.

[49] In 1906, after a short, rather uneventful stay in Paris at the beginning of the year, Sibelius spent several months composing in Ainola, his major work of the period being Pohjola's Daughter, yet another piece based on the Kalevala.

In March 1913, it was performed in New York but a large section of the audience left the hall between the movements while in October, after a concert conducted by Carl Muck, the Boston American labelled it "a sad failure".

The grand piano he had received as a present was about to be confiscated by the bailiffs when the singer Ida Ekman paid off a large proportion of his debt after a successful fund-raising campaign.

During the first weeks of the war, some of his acquaintances were killed in the violence, and his brother, the psychiatrist Christian Sibelius, was arrested because he refused to reserve beds for the Red soldiers who had suffered shell shock at the front.

[55] In 1920, despite a growing tremor in his hands, Sibelius composed the Hymn of the Earth to a text by the poet Eino Leino for the Suomen Laulu Choir and orchestrated his Valse lyrique, helped along by drinking wine.

[59] Sibelius enjoyed a highly successful trip to England in early 1921—conducting several concerts around the country, including the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, The Oceanides, the ever-popular Finlandia, and Valse triste.

[60] The music journalist Vesa Sirén has found evidence that Sibelius perhaps suffered from essential tremor since a young age and that he reduced the symptoms by drinking alcohol.

In addition to six more symphonies, he gained popularity at home and abroad with incidental music and more tone poems, especially En saga, The Swan of Tuonela and Valse triste.

[90][91] Sibelius progressively stripped away formal markers of sonata form in his work and, instead of contrasting multiple themes, focused on the idea of continuously evolving cells and fragments culminating in a grand statement.

From its soft opening played by the horns, the work develops into rotational repetitions of its various themes with considerable transformations, building up to the trumpeted swan hymn in the final movement.

Organizationally, it consists of four informal sections, each corresponding to one of the poem's four stanzas and evoking the mood of a particular episode: first, heroic vigour; second, frenetic activity; third, sensual love; and fourth, inconsolable grief.

Originally conceived as a mythological opera, Veneen luominen (The Building of the Boat), on a scale matching those by Richard Wagner, Sibelius later changed his musical goals and the work became an orchestral piece in four movements.

The piece, which refers to the nymphs in Greek mythology who inhabited the Mediterranean Sea, premiered on 4 June 1914 at the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut with Sibelius himself conducting.

The work (in D major), praised upon its premiere as "the finest evocation of the sea ever produced in music",[111] consists of two subjects Sibelius gradually develops in three informal stages: first, a placid ocean; second, a gathering storm; and third, a thunderous wave-crash climax.

[114] Valse triste is a short orchestral work that was originally part of the incidental music Sibelius composed for his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt's 1903 play Kuolema (Death).

[126] When these and several other major British symphonic essays were being written in and around the 1930s, Sibelius's music was very much in vogue, with conductors like Thomas Beecham and John Barbirolli championing its cause both in the concert hall and on record.

[130] In 1938 Theodor Adorno wrote a critical essay, notoriously charging that "If Sibelius is good, this invalidates the standards of musical quality that have persisted from Bach to Schoenberg: the richness of inter-connectedness, articulation, unity in diversity, the 'multi-faceted' in 'the one'.

[132] Perhaps one reason Sibelius has attracted both the praise and the ire of critics is that in each of his seven symphonies he approached the basic problems of form, tonality, and architecture in unique, individual ways.

[135] In 1990, the composer Thea Musgrave was commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra to write a piece in honour of the 125th anniversary of Sibelius's birth: Song of the Enchanter premiered on 14 February 1991.

[139] On 8 December itself, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds planned a commemorative concert featuring En Saga, Luonnotar and the Seventh Symphony.

[148] In early 2020, the current owner of the Robert Lienau collection offered for sale 1,200 pages of manuscripts, including the scores of Voces intimae, Joutsikki, and Pelléas and Mélisande, and the material was not available to scholars during negotiations.