ABSTRACT
Sibelius' place within the history of Finnish music is legendary, though his position within western art music as a whole is far more open to debate. All Finnish composers of the generation after Sibelius have had to come to terms with their relationship to the monumental figure and it is worth outlining some of the issues this raises. Nobody is quite certain as to who was first to coin the term 'shadow' in relation to Sibelius' influence but 'it pops up in the 1920s at the latest'. The first piece of Sibelius that Magnus Lindberg really became excited about, enough for him to undertake some detailed study, was (yet again) the Sixth Symphony. Permutations of the different kinds of 'repetition', pursuing the relative degree of variety or relatedness between successions of units, are skilfully deployed. The aspect of Sibelius' modality balances the internationalism with a correspondingly nationalistic feel.
