Word: finnish
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Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer, is an honorary member of the chorus, and has written many of his best known choral songs for the Helsinki group...
...laconic shrug: "I, Sphinx." There are grounds to suspect that he has quantities of early unpublished compositions stored about the house, that he has already outlined the movements of a Ninth Symphony in addition to those of his forthcoming Eighth. A visitor's inquisitiveness invariably brings the same Finnish shrug, the favorite, inevitable reply...
...with meticulous care, favors a double-breasted blue or grey lounge suit, a broad-brimmed felt hat; he wears specially built, handmade German shoes; on his numerous walks he stalks through the country swinging a heavy stick. And 72 or not, like all true Finns he takes his sauna (Finnish steam bath) once a week in the bathhouse that stands on the grounds near his house...
...nationalist. A large number of his early works (Kullervo, the Karelia Suite, Finlandia, et al.) were written as patriotic tributes. Though no one has succeeded in identifying any of his melodies as folk themes, considerable controversy still goes on as to whether he has been influenced by national Finnish idioms. His ancestry contains both Finnish and Swedish strains. Clergymen, doctors, merchants and small landowners, including a few intelligent musical amateurs, were his progenitors. He springs from the great ranks of the bourgeois...
...salons. But Tavasts and Karelians (all Finns are one or the other) point with greater pride to Finland's world's champion literacy record, boast that, except for 0.9% every last Finn today can read and write, exhibit Modernist Architect Eliel Saarinen as world evidence of Finnish culture. If you were to ask on the streets of a U. S. city who was the outstanding modern Finn, chances are the reply would be: Paavo Nurmi. But if you asked the same question on the streets of Helsingfors the answer would almost certainly be: Jean Julius Christian Sibelius...