The lives and work of Jean Sibelius and Igor Stravinsky are studies in contrasting styles. Sibelius (1865–1957) was born in a land with an impoverished, if not lost, musical tradition, spoke Swedish as his mother tongue, lived in a country that was an autonomous duchy of the Tsarist empire, and looked to a German as his musical and personal model. Out of this patchwork, Sibelius created and sharply defined an entire Finnish school based on his profound identification with nature and a preoccupation with folklore and myth. By contrast, Stravinsky (1882–1971) came from a rich musical heritage but turned against much of that background, creating or reinterpreting several musical styles ranging from primitivism to an elegantly violent neoclassicism, to a muted serialism.

Yet these two original composers have common touchstones. Each was in his own way deeply religious, and each depended heavily on the motivating power of legend: for Sibelius it was the Kalevala, that great repository of Finnish folklore; for Stravinsky it was Russian folktales, Greek myth, and the Bible. Sibelius and, for the most part, Stravinsky were tonal composers: even late in life, when Stravinsky hit his stride as a serialist, he remained conservative in approach. “I am on my guard against counterfeit money,” he said, “and take care not to accept it for the true coin of the realm.” Their most obvious difference is their musical syntax: like Alkan and Shostakovich, Sibelius was at ease with musical convention, employing traditional musical language in an utterly