Abstract
This essay is a performance guide to select a cappella choral works of Jean Sibelius that is geared towards choral musicians whose primary language is English. The introduction begins with an overview of Sibelius's early career as a composer and the socio-political climate in which he lived. This provides context for the discussion of Sibelius's Finnish language a cappella choral repertoire. The performance guide itself first gives a thorough explanation of Finnish choral diction. Rather than enumerate every single Finnish choral work by Sibelius, the author has narrowed the scope of the essay to a select group of pieces based on popularity and stylistic distinctiveness within the composer's overall choral output. Using Ron Jeffers's Translations and Annotations series as a model, each selected piece is then presented in terms of musico-poetic information, harmonic language and performance considerations, and literal translations and phonetic transcriptions of Finnish texts. Alternate editions for three of the pieces are included in the Appendix.