Jean Sibelius – Dei ghiacci e del fuoco. Vita e musica (Jean Sibelius – Of ice and fire. Life and music) by Alessandro Zignani, a new book in Italian, has been published by Zecchini Editore.

Despite accusations of post-romantic epigonism, Sibelius’s music celebrates the eternity of a primeval nature where the cycles of the seasons are renewed, transcended rather than denied, in an acceptance of Fate that smacks of stoic serenity. In Sibelius, European civilisation confronts its own origins in the energies that shape the ice, the Arctic winds capable of fixing time in perennial harmonies, crystals eternally fixed in stone. His originality is subtle, difficult to navigate, and just as complex is his musical style made of resonances emanating from the basalts of the earth, tensions far removed from the  rationality of European civilisation. In an age of transition such as ours, Sibelius returns with his enigmas to loom as a disturbing prophet. Isolating himself among lakes and forests, in his last thirty years he found the path to a silence that his music, perhaps, had evoked from the very beginning: a salvific return to nature, a benign divinity.

The prolific writer, musicologist, playwright and linguist Alessandro Zignani was born in Rimini in 1961. He is a founder member and on the board of directors of the Sibelius Society Italia.

ISBN: 978-88-6540-397-6. VIII+256 pages; 17x24cm. Price: €30.00.
Purchase link – click here: https://www.zecchini.com/jean-sibelius-dei-ghiacci-e-del-fuoco-vita-e-musica