The Six Runeberg Songs,
Op. 90,[a] is a collection of
Swedish-language
art songs for vocal soloist and piano written in 1917 by the Finnish composer
Jean Sibelius,[b] who composed them for his frequent collaborator, the Finnish
sopranoIda Ekman. Each song is a setting of a poem by the Finnish poet
Johan Ludvig Runeberg, and of the set, "Norden" ("The North") generally is considered the best.[3]
Constituent songs
Ordered by catalogue number, the Op. 90 songs are as follows:
"Vem styrde hit din väg?" ("Who Brought You Hither?"), Op. 90/6[9]
The songs were first published in 1920 by the Helsinki-based firm of R. E. Westerlund [
fi].[10] The table below provides additional information about each song:
^Because Sibelius's Op. 90 songs are sung in Swedish, this article gives preference to each song's native title, rather than the English translation.
^All but a few of Sibelius's songs are settings of Swedish-language poems (quantitatively, his favorite poets were
Ernst Josephson,
Johan Ludvig Runeberg,
Viktor Rydberg, and
Karl August Tavaststjerna [
fi])[1] and are with piano accompaniment. While many are of high quality, they largely have been neglected outside the
Nordic realm, due to the limited coverage (in terms of number of speakers) of Swedish (relative to, for example, German or French).[2]
Barnett, Andrew (2007). Sibelius. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
ISBN978-0-300-16397-1.
Dahlström, Fabian[in Swedish] (2003). Jean Sibelius: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke [Jean Sibelius: A Thematic Bibliographic Index of His Works] (in German). Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel.
ISBN3-7651-0333-0.
Layton, Robert (1993) [1965]. Sibelius. (The Master Musicians Series) (4th ed.). New York: Schirmer Books.
ISBN0028713222.