gianluca

So, your point being what? Some genius composers may be (unjustly) forgotten, whereas some mediocre composers may be remembered. The fact that person X is better remembered than person Y doesn't necessarily mean that X's work was better or greater than Y's. I'm sure Britney Spears will be better remembered than most classical composers living today....

Now back to Sibelius, I stick to my belief that he is an uninteresting conventional composer of minor importance (and I'm pleased to have read an interview with Boulez in which he expressed the same view). And yes, Daniel, I did listen to his Fourth Symphony as well (I even studied the score), but for a work written in 1911, its musical language is still lightyears away from that of the more innovative pieces written around that time - e.g., Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Stravinsky's Petrushka and Rite of Spring, Debussy's Jeux, Scriabin's Prometheus, etc.

Furthermore, the one-movement form of Sibelius' Seventh isn't that innovative or unconventional. Something similar had already been done by Schoenberg in his first Chamber Symphony (written in 1906!), which also has several individual sections integrated into a single uninterrupted organic form, and which moreover has a greater structural complexity and a much more advanced harmonic language than Sibelius' 7th.