The Sibelius Museum ( Finnish: ''Sibelius-museo'', Swedish: ''Sibeliusmuseum'') is a museum of music, named after the Finnish composer

Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius (; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic music, Romantic and 20th-century classical music, early modern periods. He is widely regarded as his countr ...

. The museum is located close to

Turku Cathedral Turku Cathedral (, ) is the only medieval basilica in Finland and the Mother Church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. It is the central church of the Lutheran Archdiocese of Turku and the seat of the Lutheran Archbishop of Turku, Arch ...

in the historical city centre of

Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...

on the southwest coast of Finland. It is the only museum devoted to music in Finland. The museum houses a wide collection of historical music instruments from around the world. The archives of the museum include documents (

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed Book, books or Pamphlet, pamphlets ...

, manuscripts, recordings, photographs, concert programmes, etc.) The museum was first founded during the 1920s as a seminar for the Department of

Musicology Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, ...

Åbo Akademi University Åbo Akademi University ( , ) is the only exclusively Swedish language multi-faculty university in Finland (or anywhere outside Sweden). It is located mainly in Turku (Åbo is the Swedish name of the city) but has also activities in Vaasa. Å ...

and has later developed into its own department. The Museum is currently organised and funded by the Åbo Akademi Foundation. The current building was built and opened in 1968, and it was designed by architect Woldemar Baeckman.

General information

The museum consists of two primary exhibitions: the instrument collection and the Sibelius exhibition. The instrument collections circles around the concert hall of the museum, The Sibelius Hall, and continues to the second-floor downstairs. The Sibelius exhibition is located at the furthest left corner seen from the ticket counter. The museum also organises thematic exhibitions. In 2018, these exhibitions are "''Sibbe50"'' and ''"A cantata for the doctors – Music at academic ceremonies". "´Sibbe50"'' celebrates the architecture of Woldemar Baeckman and the 50th anniversary of the current museum building. The exhibition "''A cantata for the doctors – Music at academic" ceremonies'' covers music performed at conferment ceremonies in Finnish universities. The Sibelius Museum also organises concerts at the museum, of which the most notable is the museum's own concert series, the Wednesday series that has been organised since 1968. In addition to these concerts, there are also other concerts organised at the museum. The programme of the concert varies depending on the performer, but mostly the music played at The Sibelius Museum is focused on

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

and classical

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...

The archives of The Sibelius Museum date back to the collections of professor Otto Andersson of the Musicological Department at

. The archives contain material from several different aspects of musical life in Finland, such as manuscripts, photographs and recordings. There are additionally several special collections in the archives. These collections include an extensive collection about Jean Sibelius, the Otto Andersson archival collection and the archive of the Musical Society of

. In addition to the exhibitions and the archives, there are also a couple of auditoriums and classrooms in the premises of the museum. For instance, the auditoriums

Brahe The Brahe family (originally ''Bragde'') refers to two closely related noble families of Scanian origin that played significant roles in both Danish and Swedish history. The Danish branch became extinct in 1786, and the Swedish branch in 193 ...

and Flora that have been named after the student choirs of Åbo Akademi University,

Brahe Djäknar (), also referred to as simply , abbreviated BD, is a Swedish-speaking population of Finland, Finland-Swedish academic Male voice choir, male voice choir in Turku, Finland. Overview The choir was founded in 1937 and was directed by John Ros ...

and Florakören.

History

Time before the museum: Pehr Kalm and the botanical garden

At the site of The Sibelius Museum, the botanical garden of the

Royal Academy of Turku The Royal Academy of Turku or the Royal Academy of Åbo was the first university in Finland, and the only Finnish university that was founded when the country still was a part of Sweden. It was founded in 1640. In 1809, after Finland became a ...

( Swedish: ''Kungliga Akademien I Åbo'', Finnish: Kuninkaallinen Turun Akatemia) was located.

Pehr Kalm Pehr Kalm (6 March 1716 – 16 November 1779), also known as Peter Kalm, was a Swedish-Finnish List of explorers, explorer, botany, botanist, natural history, naturalist, and Agricultural economics, agricultural economist. He was one of the most ...

, a pupil of

Carl von Linné Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organi ...

, founded the garden in 1757. In the garden, he planted plants from his trips to North America and Russia. After the

Great Fire of Turku The Great Fire of Turku (; ; ) was a conflagration in the city of Turku in 1827. It is still the largest urban fire in the history of Finland and the Nordic countries. The city had faced several large fires before, including an especially devast ...

in 1827, the only plant that survived was an

Oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...

tree that stands between the bank of the river Aura and the current museum building. After the fire, printer Christian Ludvig Hjelt bought the site of the garden in 1831 and built a couple of wooden houses on the plot.

Åbo Akademi University

In 1923, Ellen and Magnus Dahlström donated the site of the garden to the Åbo Akademi Foundation in a will. Attempts to restore the garden to its original state were made during the 1930s, during which Justus Montell aimed at planting his collections next to the oak from Kalm's era. After he died in 1954 the attempts were ended, which lead to the decaying of the garden and demolitions of the houses built by Hjelt.

Otto Andersson as the founder of the Musicological Department and Archives

The foundations of the proper historical music museum were already made in 1926, when Otto Andersson was granted the professorship of the recently established Department of

and

Folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

. The ship-owner Robert Mattson donated the necessary funds to fund the professorship and to purchase materials for the collection and the seminar. Also, Mattson's son, Curt, had donated a notable collection of instruments from all around the world for the collections of professor Andersson. The original idea behind the collections was, however, to form a seminar for the Department of Musicology that would have as large of a library as possible.

The Museum receives its current name

Before the year 1949, The Sibelius Museum did not yet have a proper name, and it was simply known as ''"The historical music collections of Åbo Akademi University".'' In the late 1940s, an exhibition about the composer

was organised. There were several items placed in the exhibition varying from sheet music to letters and manuscripts. Some journalist miscalled the exhibition "The Sibelius Museum", which aroused controversy between Professor Andersson and the rector of Åbo Akademi University G.O. Rosenqvist. To avoid any further confusion about the exhibition, Professor Andersson sent a letter to the composer, in which he asked a formal permission to use the name of Sibelius in official contexts. The composed replied on 16 January 1949 with the following words:After the name change, the museum received its first permanent premises in the house that currently works as the restaurant Hus Lindman. In the manor at Piispankatu 15, "''The Sibelius Museum"'' had seven rooms in use, to which the collections and the administrative areas were placed. At the same time, new acquisitions were increased. For example, Andersson travelled with these purposes in America during the 1950s. The years in this building turned out to be long and hard and hopes for an exclusive building for the museum had arisen.

The planning of the current building

Towards the end of the 1950s, several discussions were made between the city of

and

to build a joint museum about

and Wäinö Aaltonen. The idea was put forward with the thought of using the site of the garden from Kalm's era as the base for the museum. This joint venture, however, dissolved and only the plans to build The Sibelius Museum advanced. Regardless of this, the city of Turku still funded the project. Architect Woldemar Baeckman was during the 1960s assigned to design the building for the museum for Åbo Akademi University. In his original plans, he had planned a separate wing for the choir activities of the university. Before the final plans, a couple of investigations were made in 1963 and 1966. The conclusion of these investigations was to give up this thought of building a separate wing and the focus was put on the main building. During the autumn of 1966, the final plans were finished and during the next year, the construction work started. The construction of the building was completed in February 1968, during which the building was put in use.

Architectural design

The building is a notable example of the

Brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the b ...

concrete architecture of its time, though Baeckman's earlier architecture was more classically modernist in style, most notably the extension to the Åbo Akademi University Library. The exterior architecture is notable for the grains of the timber

formwork Formwork is Molding (process), molds into which concrete or similar materials are either precast concrete, precast or cast-in-place concrete, cast-in-place. In the context of concrete construction, the falsework supports the shuttering mold ...

being visible in the prefabricated concrete facades. The interior is particularly notable for the large hyperbolic paraboloid-shaped concrete shell structure, said to have been influenced by the then contemporaneous architecture of the Mexican architect

Félix Candela Félix Candela Outeriño (; January 27, 1910 – December 7, 1997) was a Spanish and Mexican architect who was born in Madrid and at the age of 26, emigrated to Mexico, acquiring double nationality. He is known for his significant ...

. In the centre of the building is a hidden courtyard which originally had a garden (since demolished) designed by noted Finnish garden designer Maj-Lis Rosenbröijer.

References

* Sixten Ringbom, Akademiska gårdar. Arkitektur och miljöer kring Åbo Akademi. Åbo, 1985. *Kristofer Vesikansa, "Woldemar Baeckman – Sibelius Museum, Turku, 1968", Finnish Architectural Review, 4/2013, pp. 90–91. *Berggren, Lars & Landen, Annette: ''Väggarna talar: Åbo Akademis byggnader under hundra år,'' Turku, Åbo Akademis förlag, 2017. . *Abdersson, Matts: ''Farbror Otto: Över bygden skiner sol,'' Helsinki, Arap Group Ab, 2018. . *Laaksonen, Mikko & Nummelin, Juri: ''Turun seudun arkkitehtuuriopas,'' Porvoo, Kustantaja Laaksonen, 2013.

Notes

External links

Sibelius Museum English Pages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sibelius Museum Brutalist architecture Modernist architecture Modernist architecture in Finland Buildings and structures in Turku Museums in Turku Concrete buildings and structures 1960s architecture Music museums in Finland