Symphony No. 7  in C major, Op. 105, was the last published symphony of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The work is remarkable for being a single-movement symphony, contrary to the standard symphonic formula of four movements. The work’s outstanding originality resides in its form, its handling of tempi and treatment of key. It is believed to be “Sibelius’s most remarkable compositional achievement”

Sibelius arrived at the concept of a continuous, single-movement symphony after a long period of experimentation. His Symphony No. 3, dating from 1907, contained three movements, with an earlier fourth movement fused into the third. The final result was successful enough for Sibelius to use the same idea in his Symphony No. 5, completed in 1915. Although his first mention of No. 7 occurred in December 1918, the source for its material has been traced back to around 1914, the time when he was working on the Fifth. In 1918 Sibelius had shared his intention to create a symphony “involving joy of life and vitality with appassionato sections”. The symphony would have three movements, the last being a “Hellenic rondo”.

Surviving sketches from the early 1920s show that the composer was working on a piece of four, not three, movements. The overall key seems to have been G minor, while the second movement, an Adagio in C major, provided much of the thematic material that eventually made up the Seventh.

The earliest preserved evidence of one-movement symphony dates back to 1923 and indicate that at that time Sibelius had already decided to discard the multi-part project. Through the summer of 1923, the composer produced several further drafts, at least one of which is in a performable state: however the ending of the symphony was not yet fully completed.

At the turn of 1923 and 1924, Sibelius was distracted from his work on the symphony by a number of outside events: a substantial monetary prize obtained from a Helsinki foundation, family birthdays and the composition of a number of short piano pieces. The composer himself claimed, when he returned to the symphony, that he had to drink substantial amounts of whisky in order to “steady his hand as he wrote on the manuscript paper.”

The form of the Seventh Symphony is startlingly original. Since the time of Joseph Haydn, a movement in a symphony would typically be unified by an approximately constant tempo and would attain variety by use of contrasting themes in different keys.

Sibelius adhered to this scheme – the symphony is unified by the key of C (every significant passage in the work is in C major or C minor), and variety is achieved by an almost constantly changing tempo, as well as by contrasts of mode, articulation and texture.

Sibelius employed a similar device in the first movement of his Symphony No. 5, which combines elements of a standard symphonic first movement with a faster scherzo. However, the Seventh symphony contains much wider variety and that within one single movement. After Sibelius finished its composition on 2 March 1924, the work premiered in Stockholm on March 24 as Fantasia sinfonica No. 1, a “symphonic fantasy”.

The composer was apparently undecided as to the exact designation to attach to his piece, and after some deliberation defined it as a symphony. For its publication on 25 February 1925, the score was titled “Symphony No. 7 (in one movement)”.

Unusual in its form and duration, the symphony continues only about twenty minutes. But in its music idiom, in its intrinsic mood and imagery, one encounters that same Sibelius, whose connection with Finland’s nature is inextricable. Again we hear his dissonances, the rise of excitement, the climaxes. The fantastically beautiful conclusion ends on a perfect C Major.

Although he lived for 33 years after completing the Seventh, Sibelius never composed music again – the Seventh among his last compositions. Although some evidence exists that Sibelius had worked on a projected Eighth Symphony, it is believed that he burned whatever he had written. Apparently, Sibelius felt that it was precisely the Seventh that stood as his ‘final statement’ in the field of symphonic creation. Curiously, at the time it was created, composing in C Major was considered useless—it had “nothing more to offer”

But in response to the appearance of this symphony, British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams said that only Sibelius could make C Major sound completely fresh.

Peter Franklin, writing of the Seventh in the Segerstam–Chandos cycle of Sibelius symphonies, calls the dramatic conclusion “the grandest celebration of C major there ever was.”