that he had begun a new symphony with the themes derived from "Finnish folk song". An eight-year gestation ensued. Plans to complete the symphony in time for his fiftieth birthday on 17 February 1937 did not come to fruition, and in July 1937, Madetoja retired to the spa town of in Iisalmi to focus further on the symphony. As the Fourth's finish line neared in the spring of 1938, Madetoja traveled to Nice hoping that France, as it had a decade earlier with the Third Symphony, would stoke his creative fires. Misfortune quickly dashed Madetoja's hopes: while passing through Paris on his way to Southern France, his suitcase—which contained the Fourth Symphony—was stolen at a railway station in the city; the near-completed manuscript was never recovered. With his inspiration and memory in decline, Madetoja never undertook a reconstruction of the lost score, notwithstanding his (unsuccessful) 1941 application for a stipend to "finish my fourth symphony that is underway". When a student of his, , asked whether Madetoja could recreate the symphony, he replied, "Do you think that I could rewrite something that a thief has taken"? By January 1942, he was hospitalized for alcoholism. During his treatment, Madetoja occupied himself with old issues of Musiikkitieto magazine and, when he came across a story about his time in Runni, he did not recall having composed the Fourth. ("I wonder if anything has been written at all"?) Death In the 1940s, Madetoja battled poor physical health, depression, a collapsing marriage, and waning artistic inspiration; his already less-than-prolific pace declined to a crawl. During this time, Madetoja orchestrated his song cycle for soprano and piano, Autumn, Op. 68, a setting of his wife's poems he had completed eight years earlier. With its mature idiom and mournful outlook on the human experience, some sources describe Autumn as Madetoja's "testament". Otherwise, Madetoja occupied himself with smaller forms, primarily for choir a cappella; the seven Op. 81 songs for male choir were completed in 1946, as were the two Op. 82 songs for mixed choir. His final completed piece was Matkamies (Wayfarer) for female choir, written in the year of his death (sketch completed by Olavi Pesonen). Madetoja died at approximately 11:00 am on 6 October 1947 at the Konkordia Methodist hospital in Helsinki. Although some sources attribute his death to heart attack, no surviving record indicates a conclusive cause of death. The Madetoja funeral took