a large cash prize from a Helsinki foundation, family birthdays and the composition of a number of brief piano works. When he returned to the symphony, the composer drank copious amounts of whisky in order, he claimed, to steady his hand as he wrote on the manuscript paper. Along with his Symphony No. 5 and No. 6, No. 7 was Sibelius's final home for material from Kuutar, a never-completed symphonic poem whose title roughly means "Moon Spiritess". This work helped to shape the earliest parts of No. 7, those created during the composition of Nos. 5 and 6. One of the themes from Kuutar, called Tähtölä (Where the Stars Dwell), evolved into part of No. 7's opening Adagio section. Importance Although the symphony apparently first existed in embryonic form in D major, it eventually attained the home key of C major. There was a time when composing in C was considered fruitless—it had "nothing more to offer". But in response to this symphony, the 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." Sibelius lived for 33 years after finishing the Seventh, but it was one of the last works he composed. He did complete one more important orchestral work, his symphonic poem Tapiola. However, despite much evidence of work on a Symphony No. 8, it is believed that Sibelius burned whatever he had written. He left No. 7 to stand as his final statement on symphonic form. Form The form of the 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 turned this scheme on its head. 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 had done something similar in the Symphony No. 5's first movement, which combines elements of a standard symphonic first movement with a faster scherzo. However, the Seventh symphony contains much wider variety within one movement. Instrumentation 2 flutes