Jean Sibelius’s friends according to age

Jean Sibelius’s circle of friends was large, and it extended over a long period. We can date it from his acquaintance with Walter von Konow as a young child in the early 1870s. It includes also young musicians such as Jussi Jalas and Martti Similä, in the 1920s. In the diagram below we can see a connection with the “silence of Ainola”. Most of Sibelius’s closest friends died in the 1930s at the latest.

The diagram shows Sibelius’s friends, teachers and pupils in the order of their year of birth. The change in colour marks the point of time when the person in question entered Sibelius’s circle of friends or acquaintances.