Glenda Dawn Goss

”Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland”

Glenda Dawn Goss is a prominent Sibelius scholar and musicologist who teaches at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She was the first LOY appointee who lives much of the year in Finland, so her availability was specific to that part of the year when she lived in the United States was at her home in the U.S.

Glenda Goss is an American southerner, who for a long time taught Renaissance culture and music at the University of Georgia. In 1989, intrigued by the Sibelius presented in the correspondence of a New York music critic, she uprooted herself and moved to Finland for a year. It was the beginning of a long immersion. She learned Swedish and Finnish, and eventually became Editor-in-Chief of the team creating the critical edition of Sibelius’ works in the 1990s.

English readers perhaps know Glenda Goss best through her 2009 book <em>Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland</em> (University of Chicago Press). This massive undertaking is the fruit of 20 years of research and writing.

As a non-Finn Glenda Goss brings what she calls an “outsider’s perspective” to the Sibelius story. She approaches it in a way that makes sense to Americans, and in a way that the FFN Board thinks will also be illuminating to Finnish Americans, whether descendants or expatriates.

Because of her special position between cultures, the Board welcomes her as an LOY partner in interpreting Finland to America.

Jon L. Saari, LOY Coordinator