The Origin of Fire

The Origin of Fire, Op. 32, is a single-movement, patriotic cantata for baritone, male choir, and orchestra written in 1902 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which is a setting of Runo XLVII of the Kalevala, Finland's national epic, is chronologically the fourth of Sibelius's nine orchestral cantatas.
It premiered on 9 April 1902 at the opening of the Finnish National Theatre, conducted by the composer. It was later revised in 1910. Some of the sketches for the piece can be related back to 1893 to 1894.

Instrumentation

The revised version of The Origin of Fire is scored for the following instruments and voices, organized by family :

The original version of the piece is scored identically, with the exception that triangle is omitted.

The American conductor Thor Johnson and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra made the world premiere studio recording of The Origin of Fire in 1953 for Remington Records ; they were joined by the Finnish baritone and the YL Male Voice Choir. The sortable table below lists this and other commercially available recordings:

	Conductor	Orchestra	Baritone	Chorus		Time	Venue	Label
1		Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra		YL Male Voice Choir	1953	8:47	?	Varèse Sarabande
2		Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra		YL Male Voice Choir Estonian National Male Choir	1985	8:34	Kulttuuritalo	EMI
3		Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra			1985	9:54	Gothenburg Concert Hall	BIS
4		Lahti Symphony Orchestra		YL Male Voice Choir	2005	9:03	Sibelius Hall	BIS
†		Lahti Symphony Orchestra		YL Male Voice Choir	2005	11:20	Sibelius Hall	BIS

† = original version