Swan of Tuonela
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The Swan of Tuonela is an 1895 tone poem by the Finland-Swedish composer Jean Sibelius. The story behind it is an excerpted legend from the Kalevala epic.
The tone poem is scored for strings and harp, with a notable English horn solo, one of the most famous in the orchestral literature. The music paints a gossamer, transcendental image of a mystical swan swimming around the island of the dead. Lemminkäinen, the hero of the epic, has been tasked with killing the sacred swan, but on the way he is shot with a poisoned arrow, and dies himself. In the next part of the epic he is restored to life.
The Swan of Tuonela is the second of the four sections of the Lemminkäinen Suite, also known as the Four Legends from the Kalevala, which was premiered in 1896. Sibelius revised the tone poem twice: once in 1897, and again in 1900.