Music: Composer Jean Sibelius, Nature Boy at 90

Nature Boy at 90

Composer Jean Sibelius is a hero to all Finns, most Englishmen and many Americans. His music is heavy enough to sound profound—something like the work of a rural and obstinate Brahms. It seemed revolutionary in the 1900s, daring in the teens, peculiar in the '20s, old-fashioned in the '30s. Since then it has suffered a kind of honorable obsolescence. Sibelius' last major work was published in 1926, when he was 61. Most of today's critics, finding they have nothing new to say about...