A good threshold: Sibelius's words stand as a warning to commentators on his music. And they are reinforced by the current state of hermeneutics and critical theory, which would regard as naive any claim, implicit or explicit, to have objectively understood the workings of any cultural artifact, much less such a multifaceted and socio-aesthetically complex one as the Fifth Symphony. What follows here, then, reflects only the current state of my own dialogue with that work and the material and psychological conditions under which it arose – a dialogue with which I confess to having been fascinated for as long as I can remember.

Sibelius's work on the Fifth Symphony's three performed versions from summer 1914 to its eventual publication by Wilhelm Hansen in 1921 forms an enormously complex story that cannot be offered in full detail here. Merely to compare the three versions adequately would exceed the space allotted, but we are also confronted with numerous sketches, drafts, partial revisions, diary entries, letters, and the like.