Serenade (1888)

Den judiska flickans sång (1906)

The Serenade, which was published in an anthology of Finnish song in 1888, was the first Sibelius work to appear in print. Though engaging in its lilting melodic line and its lightly flowing accompaniment - and effective too as erotic speculation is stilled by the image of the beloved at prayer in the third stanza - it is scarcely characteristic of the Sibelius we know. On the other hand, as the first of ninety or so songs in Swedish, twenty-four of them to poems by Runeberg, it is not unprophetic.

Written eighteen years later and first performed as part of the incidental music to Hjalmar Procopé’s Belsazar’s gästabud (Belshazzar’s Feast) at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki in 1906, Den judiska flickans sång (The Jewish girl’s song) is a miniature masterpiece. The words, inspired by Psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon,” are set to a vocal line of developing expressive intensity curiously, and poignantly, accompanied by an unchanging ostinato in the piano part.