Hymn of the Earth

Hymn of the Earth (in Finnish: Maan virsi), Op. 95, is a single-movement, patriotic cantata for mixed choir and orchestra written from 1919 to 1920 by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which is a setting of the Finnish author Eino Leino's Finnish-language poem of the same name, is chronologically the eighth of Sibelius's nine orchestral cantatas; in particular, it belongs to the series of four "little known, but beautiful" cantatas from the composer's mature period that also includes My Own Land (Op. 92, 1918), Song of the Earth (Op. 93, 1919), and Väinämöinen's Song (Op. 110, 1926). Hymn of the Earth premiered on 4 April 1920 in Helsinki, with Heikki Klemetti conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and his choir, Suomen Laulu.