# Sibelius composer of mere "film music"



## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

I was reading an article by Tom Service (about the similarities between the Bond theme and Sibelius's Cassazione) and read this:

_"it seems retroactively to confirm that old Teutonic criticism (in the pejorative sense) of Sibelius as a composer of 'film music' "_

Does anyone think this of Sibelius? I don't hear it myself though a friend once suggested as much. Does anyone know the source of such 'Teutonic criticism'? Theodor Adorno perhaps?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

The reception of Sibelius’ music in the two decades following 1945 was split along sectarian lines. The rise of serialism had a lot to do with it, so too its decline. By the time the dust of the modernist war started to settle in the late 1960’s, Sibelius’ music regained its position. There where further divisions, critics like Adorno poo-pooed Sibelius while audiences where more positive, particularly in the UK and USA. It can be said that those countries kept Sibelius torch burning whilst things where less bright on the continent.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Sid James said:


> The reception of Sibelius' music in the two decades following 1945 was split along sectarian lines. The rise of serialism had a lot to do with it, so too its decline. By the time the dust of the modernist war started to settle in the late 1960's, Sibelius' music regained its position. There where further divisions, critics like Adorno poo-pooed Sibelius while audiences where more positive, particularly in the UK and USA. It can be said that those countries kept Sibelius torch burning whilst things where less bright on the continent.


Indeed - I was aware of this. René Leibowitz even declared that Sibelius was the 'worst composer in the world'. Seems extraordinary, but I guess everyone is entitled to their view.

An internet search has not yielded any details of the specific filmic criticism of the op.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Certainly, Sibelius's music open's up visual images for me which is why I like it so much. Does this make it filmic?


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

No. Stating the obvious, but I struggle to see how Sibelius' motivic and structural procedures have anything to do with film music. Sure, some aspects of his sound world are ripe for usage in films because of their power and beauty, but what matters is the context in which he deployed his musical ideas.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

janxharris said:


> Certainly, Sibelius's music open's up visual images for me which is why I like it so much. Does this make it filmic?


No, it makes it descriptive and powerful.


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

It is obvious the perception has 0 to do with being a critic.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

...............


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_"it seems retroactively to confirm that old Teutonic criticism (in the pejorative sense) of Sibelius as a composer of 'film music' _"

Hmm. I've never heard that before, but I can imagine it being said. But as far as I know, Adorno's fashionable and hubris-filled criticism of Sibelius was not based on that:



> In 1938 Theodor Adorno wrote a critical essay, notoriously charging that "If Sibelius is good, this invalidates the standards of musical quality that have persisted from Bach to Schoenberg: the richness of inter-connectedness, articulation, unity in diversity, the 'multi-faceted' in 'the one'." Adorno sent his essay to Virgil Thomson, then music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, who was also critical of Sibelius". [unquote] They considered him irrelevant, unimportant, and not part of the lineage with its roots in Bach.
> 
> I've never thought of Sibelius as being a writer of "film music." Just because so much of his music has a narrative and visual quality to it, such as the great depiction of someone walking through a Finland winter in his 4th Symphony, doesn't render it as film music in the pejorative sense, though its visual appeal and healthy portrayal of nature are so vivid that they could be described as cinematic, but in the _positive_ sense.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Spending much of his later life as an "anachronism" certainly never helped Sibelius. The rush towards the atonal not only made him seem like a sideline, but also made him feel like one. It must have had some effect on/directly caused the silence of his last three decades or so.

Sibelius' music is highly descriptive, and indeed full of visual images. If that's filmic, then why doesn't he need actual imagery to get his point across? Actually, having said that, he did write a lot of what was effectively film music, in other words his many pieces of incidental music for various plays, where his contribution seems to have lasted longer than the plays themselves (!) The best of this music is still his best, although admittedly there are large swathes of these works that are no more than kapok stuffing.

The original criticism also suggests that his music has little or no form or structure to it. I don't think anyone needs to acknowledge what utter nonsense that is!


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

There's too much going on in Sibelius (and too much originality) for it to be film music. In any case, this article reads as intentionally fluffy, a bit of a lark etc., there's no sense in taking it so seriously.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Lisztian said:


> No. Stating the obvious, but I struggle to see how Sibelius' motivic and structural procedures have anything to do with film music. Sure, some aspects of his sound world are ripe for usage in films because of their power and beauty, but what matters is the context in which he deployed his musical ideas.


Absolutely. Sibelius was one of the more disciplined, "classical" and structured among composers of his time.

I think the criticism of him referred to in the OP derives from the view that "nationalist" composers - yes, even Dvorak - were inferior to proper composers of the Austro-Germanic symphonic tradition. When I first started listening to music (in the 1960s) there were still views around that Dvorak was a peasant composer and Sibelius even more primitive.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tom Service has become a hack. When he was on a 'celebrity' version of University Challenge (a rather difficult quiz) he answered just one of the musical questions and that was by trial-and-error after using up the same answer on three other attempts. 

Now on to the article. His first failure is in knowing that the 'vamp' that bit he identifies as the beginning of the 'James Bond Theme' was actually added by John Barry when he turned Norman's sketchy ideas into the known theme. In the court case over that theme Barry's team - including a musicologist - showed that the same idea turns up in many pieces of music and has become just a standard introduction.

So it's possible John Barry knew this, but not Monty Norman because he didn't arrange the piece. IN any case lifting from a previous composer and using it in a film doesn't make the original source a 'mere film music composer'.

Service has run out of ideas and now writes lightweight clickbait. The Guardian needs to fire him.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Whatever filmic qualities there are in Sibelius certainly are generated in my head by the many references to the various parts of the _Kalevala_ that Sibelius "illustrated" in the tone poems, plus the clearly pictorial and/or "mood-setting" pieces like _En Saga, Nightride and Sunrise, The Oceanides_ and _Tapiola_ that have no explicit link to the _Kalevala_. No reason to believe Sibelius was not both deeply involved in and quite proud of these works.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

eugeneonagain said:


> Service has run out of ideas and now writes lightweight clickbait. The Guardian needs to fire him.


I don't think he belongs to The Guardian. He may belong to the BBC or he may be freelance. Whatever, I agree he should be ditched.

I blame him for the terrible coverage CM gets on BBC TV. When they do literature or history or science or art/sculpture they don't seem to need to dumb things down but anything Service does is very dumbed down. It is like the BBC is proud of its ability to make intelligent and enjoyable (entertaining, even) art and history (and so on) programmes but embarassed about covering CM at all. They seem to fear the view that it is an elitist pursuit - and thereby project agreement that it is.

He recently ran a series of three programmes on Minimalism claiming again and again that it had saved CM. OK, some people think like that but he didn't even seem to see a need to argue the case or present alternative views.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Film music is music that follows and enhances the action of a film and derives much of its structure from that function. Used as an insult, the term implies that music lacks self-justifying formal qualities and just seems to be commenting on some invisible action or scene. This may be a valid criticism of a lot of third-rate late Romantic bombast, but applied to Sibelius it's nonsense; his symphonies are some of the most tightly constructed in the repertoire, and even his tone poems are well-structured in purely musical terms (more so, I think, than some programmatic works of Strauss).


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

janxharris said:


> Indeed - I was aware of this. René Leibowitz even declared that Sibelius was the 'worst composer in the world'. Seems extraordinary, but I guess everyone is entitled to their view.
> 
> An internet search has not yielded any details of the specific filmic criticism of the op.


This type of criticism of Sibelius started in the 1920's, he was unfavourably compared with Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Sibelius didn't align himself with any clique - and expressed admiration for Stravinsky and Bartok - but said that he wasn't interested in following the trends of the day.

This was heresy to Adorno who also heavily weighed in to Rachmaninov, and even Bartok wasn't immune to this ideological war. Liebowitz said that after the late 1920's, Bartok became compromised because he stopped incorporating elements of serialism (even when he did, his was highly individual approach, and only in a handful of works).

Having said all this, I think that the Marxist viewpoint is still relevant in some respects, chiefly in examining the role of class in music.

By the late 1960's the modernist war began to abate. It became obvious that holding composers to account for making their own choices was a blinkered way of looking at music. Morton Feldmans famous quote, spoken while whistling a Sibelius tune, speaks to this:

"The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives. The people who you think are conservative might really be radical."


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Strange Magic said:


> Whatever filmic qualities there are in Sibelius certainly are generated in my head by the many references to the various parts of the _Kalevala_ that Sibelius "illustrated" in the tone poems, plus the clearly pictorial and/or "mood-setting" pieces like _En Saga, Nightride and Sunrise, The Oceanides_ and _Tapiola_ that have no explicit link to the _Kalevala_. No reason to believe Sibelius was not both deeply involved in and quite proud of these works.


Tapiola, the forest God, is mentioned throughout the Kalevala.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I have, however, heard performances of "Finlandia" where the opening chords sound like they belong on the soundtrack of a '50s monster movie.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

MarkW said:


> I have, however, heard performances of "Finlandia" where the opening chords sound like they belong on the soundtrack of a '50s monster movie.


I can see where you are coming from. Personally, I'm not a fan of the early works.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Curiously, a lot of atonal/serial/modern pieces sound like they could work in film - especially in horror/thrillers.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)




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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

^ I don't think it's possible to make a film scary enough to do the music justice. Would work well for an episode of Tom & Jerry though.


(before anyone starts on me, I actually like this work).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Kubrick obviously concurred.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

janxharris said:


> Curiously, a lot of atonal/serial/modern pieces sound like they could work in film - especially in horror/thrillers.


Here's another one that would make for an unsettling cinematic experience. 






It's possible for a work to have cinematic possibilities without it being written with that intention in mind. But it also doesn't mean that it has to be heard with cinematic associations; it could be enjoyed without them. Nevertheless, Walt Disney exploited the cinematic qualities of using Night on Bald Moutain and The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia not originally written for movies.

I find the music of Sibelius full of mythological or other references to nature, mostly benefic ones - previously mentioned with regard to his great Symphony No.4 - the kinds of references that have the same cinematic possibilities, and I believe their narrative content was deliberate because of his own love of country and reverence for nature, but not written for movies. It seems unnatural to me when music and its possible narratives are separated from each other when it seems so readily apparent, and something like a Sibelius' wintery forest landscape comes naturally to the mind. Winter can be a symbol of something else, something human, something deeper, such as one being in 'the winter of one's life' or 'the winter of one's discontent', which can suggest personal isolation or an introspective experience in one's life.

On the other hand, there's still what's called 'absolute music' that may suggest nothing but itself, and that can be wonderful too.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

What James Bond music are we talking about?

I found this one very good. You have to let it play out.





007 THEME JOHN BARRY BY FRENCH ORCHESTRA FRANCK POURCEL


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Film's about mental institutions? (I'm not denigrating - I think this is a great piece)


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

regenmusic said:


> What James Bond music are we talking about?
> 
> I found this one very good. You have to let it play out.
> 
> ...


Listen to the strings at the beginning.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

janxharris said:


> Curiously, a lot of atonal/serial/modern pieces sound like they could work in film - especially in horror/thrillers.


Well, Penderecki's early work has certainly defined a particular approach to scoring horror movies. However, I very much doubt you could use the music of the Second Viennese School to similar effect, nor Babbitt. Certain works of Xenakis or Cerha, perhaps, but I also think that, unlike Penderecki, the moods in even the most "horror score" like works are too varied to sustain the kind of dramatic tension that is fundamental in most narrative cinema.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A lot of late Romantic and 20th-century music could be, and has been, adapted for film use. The composer most responsible for making music the articulate expression of dramatic action, in a way the greatest "film composer," without whom there would have been no Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann and so on right down to the present, was Wagner. I have no doubt that he would have appreciated immediately the artistic potential of film. Of course he would also have insisted on being the scriptwriter, director and cameraman so that everything would fit the music precisely, and King Ludwig would have had to fund the Bayreuth Cinemax.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Maybe if the film happened to be a bird documentary.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Sibelius?
Film music??
I would pay hard cash to see the movie for which his 7th Symphony was the score.

As others have pointed out, Sibelius wrote a lot of incidental music for the theatre. But that's hardly a reason to dismiss his entire oeuvre. Besides, some film music is great music.

Critics, eh. What do they know?


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Anybody remember Die Hard II ending?






Or the very Sibelius sounding score to The Dead Zone by Kamen.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

I've always thought that this section of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony is superbly graphic and cinematic:


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Still no actual quotes cited that would justify Tom Service's assertion ('that old Teutonic criticism (in the pejorative sense) of Sibelius as a composer of 'film music').


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Rachmaninov, once upon a time, made the whole Hollywood happy with his celestial melodies. They ''borough'' from him so much and too often that someone irrelevant to the composer, but cinema fan, could believe that the Russian was making film music. What happens with his 2nd concerto into the cinema and in many songs (an example) is unbelievable. I don't see the reason the Sibelius music not to be in the movies. (originally issued or, easier, in a variation form) In a love story, for example, suites very well. It's very lyrical.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

janxharris said:


> Still no actual quotes cited that would justify Tom Service's assertion ('that old Teutonic criticism (in the pejorative sense) of Sibelius as a composer of 'film music').


Replace _Teutonic _with European criticism informed by Marxist theory and _film music _with highly compromised, low grade populist music. That's near enough, in light of what happened in history and the context of that quote from the article.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

If I were to put money on it, I would bet that in 200 years we will still be playing Sibelius' music, and we won't remember those who criticized him, or wrote ugly fad music of the mid 20thC.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Why not provide the link to the entire Tom Service article? He makes other observations that might be of interest to readers but perhaps not to those who are already familiar with the composer. To me, too much is made of Sibelius and the James Bond theme. The opening chord progressions are not that unusual and carry little of the danger and suspenseful intent of the Bond theme, though it's possible that it was an influence… The feel behind each composition is very different, and yet this is translated into the belief that Sibelius sounds like film music. Too much of the brief similarity has been made of it-different key, different tempo, different feel, different intent, etc., etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/sep/20/classicalmusicandopera1

Other than the opening chord progressions that Sibelius used, the Bond theme much more resembles another work written by Monty Norman, who is credited with writing the Bond theme:


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

adrien said:


> If I were to put money on it, I would bet that in 200 years we will still be playing Sibelius' music, and we won't remember those who criticized him, or wrote ugly fad music of the mid 20thC.


As the man himself is alleged to have said: "Take no notice of critics. Nobody puts up a statue to a critic".


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Closest I could get to disprove the "nobody puts up a statue to a critic" Hanslick at University of Vienna...









:devil:


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## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

Robert Pickett said:


> Closest I could get to disprove the "nobody puts up a statue to a critic" Hanslick at University of Vienna...
> 
> View attachment 109777
> 
> ...












Perceptive and insightful criticism is rightly valued.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Resurrexit said:


> Perceptive and insightful criticism is rightly valued.


Nice to see some appreciation of my hometown's artistic landmarks.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Was the claim about his music being cinematic meant as some kind of insult against Sibelius? What is so bad about it? Sibelius, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Braga Santos, Atterberg, Korngold - the music of all these has some similarities to film music, or it might be more accurate to say that film music was inspired by these composers. It was probably meant as an insult but I guess history has shown who was right and who was wrong.


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> I don't think he belongs to The Guardian. He may belong to the BBC or he may be freelance. Whatever, I agree he should be ditched.
> 
> I blame him for the terrible coverage CM gets on BBC TV. When they do literature or history or science or art/sculpture they don't seem to need to dumb things down but anything Service does is very dumbed down. It is like the BBC is proud of its ability to make intelligent and enjoyable (entertaining, even) art and history (and so on) programmes but embarassed about covering CM at all. They seem to fear the view that it is an elitist pursuit - and thereby project agreement that it is.
> 
> He recently ran a series of three programmes on Minimalism claiming again and again that it had saved CM. OK, some people think like that but he didn't even seem to see a need to argue the case or present alternative views.





eugeneonagain said:


> Tom Service has become a hack. When he was on a 'celebrity' version of University Challenge (a rather difficult quiz) he answered just one of the musical questions and that was by trial-and-error after using up the same answer on three other attempts.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Service has run out of ideas and now writes lightweight clickbait. The Guardian needs to fire him.


The article from Service is 8 years old. He acknowledges that it is a lightweight piece. He does write for the Guardian and as a music journalist, he also does work for the BBC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Service

I like him, and his writing.

As for whether Service made it up, here's Alex Ross:



> As if pressure from music critics' mothers were not enough, Sibelius was also brooding over his music's reception in Europe. Paris had no time for him. Berlin, before Hitler came to power, viewed him with condescension bordering on contempt. In those cities, expansive symphonies and evocative tone poems had little intellectual market value. The critic Heinrich Strobel referred to Sibelius's Violin Concerto as "boring Nordic dreariness."


https://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/07/sibelius-chapte.html

And further evidence from another Service article:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2010/may/21/rattle-sibelius-berlin-philharmonic



> Shockingly, and even shamingly, the orchestra had never played [3rd Symphony] in its entire 128-year history. In fact, it's testament to the strength of Rattle's relationship with his players that he persuaded them to accept the idea of a Sibelius cycle at all: he told me that when he first arrived in 2002 and outlined his plans to play all of Sibelius's symphonies to the orchestral committee, the response was derisive laughter. They suggested he wait a few years.


Perhaps the "mere film music" criticism stems from the source for this analysis:

https://relatedrocks.com/2007/10/01/the-sibelius-problem/



> German historical criticism has not unwillingly followed Adorno's footsteps. In Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht's _Musik im Abendland_ (1996), a history of western music, Sibelius's name is not mentioned. Hermann Danuser claims in his _Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts_ (Music of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] Century, 1984) that Sibelius wrote 'the music to the film _The Unknown Soldier_ (1926)'[9]-a strange example of deficient source criticism.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Jacck said:


> Was the claim about his music being cinematic meant as some kind of insult against Sibelius? What is so bad about it? Sibelius, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Braga Santos, Atterberg, Korngold - the music of all these has some similarities to film music, or it might be more accurate to say that film music was inspired by these composers. It was probably meant as an insult* but I guess history has shown who was right and who was wrong*.


Correct. That applies also to people who think for example that Mozart is "overrated".


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