Finnish music
The indigenous music of Finland is based on the thousands of years old folk song tradition of the Finns . Since the Christianization of the country, Finnish music has taken on impulses from pan-European musical traditions and participated in their development, first in sacred music, later also in folk and art music. Finnish popular music developed in the 20th century with new media such as gramophone and radio; Today Finland has several internationally successful rock and pop bands.
Folk music
Finnish folk music comes from two sources. The older ones are represented by the vocal folk tunes, often called Kalevala music today, in which the myths of the Finns were recited in pre-Christian times . The pagan motifs were passed on orally from generation to generation and were still alive in the 19th century in eastern Finland, especially among the Karelians who were closely related to the Finns , when Elias Lönnrot and other national romantics began to collect their verses and melodies. These songs, called "runes" (Finnish runo ), were mostly sung in simple pentatonic melodies and always metrically , either by a soloist or alternately , in some cases accompanied by the kantele . According to legend, this fretboard-less box zither was invented by Väinämöinen ; it is now considered the Finnish "national instrument". There were also the non-metric lamentations ( itku ), in which the voice begins repeatedly on a high note and falls to the root note .
The second line of tradition is the instrumental pelimanni -music (Swedish spelman , " Spielmann "), which, starting in the 17th century from Central and Eastern Europe spread all over Sweden to Finland. In contrast to the runes, the pelimanni songs are tonal , the texts in the usual European stanzas and rhymes. This form of folk music is instrumented with the fiddle , later also with the accordion and clarinet , but the kantele was also partly supplemented by several strings, and thus adapted to the new tone system. Preferred forms of pelimanni music are in particular the so-called polska , as well as polonaise and mazurkas , and since the 19th century also polka , Scottish and waltz .
With the establishment of an annual summer festival in Kaustinen in 1968, the renaissance of Finnish folk music, which continues to this day, began . Musicians like Konsta Jylhä made the old Finnish musical traditions popular among the younger generation. In the 1990s folk bands like Värttinä , Loituma and JPP managed to reach an international audience as part of “ world music ”. In this context, with interpreters such as Nils-Aslak Valkeapää , Angelit and Wimme , the Sami guttural joik singing, an independent idiom that is fundamentally different from the Finnish song forms, has become known to a wider public.
A unique Finnish art form is the itkuvirsi (lamentation). These songs are performed exclusively by women, the content of which is mostly about the death of a son in the war. Lamentations are sung a cappella . Usually the singer has a handkerchief in which she sobs into. This form of music is maintained to this day, there are even competitions and research by the Sibelius Academy .
Classic
The first composers of classical music in Finland did not emerge until the end of the 18th century in urban centers such as Turku and Wiburg; Erik Tulindberg and the brothers Carl Ludvig and Fredrik Emanuel Lithander should be mentioned here . Fredrik Pacius from Hamburg is considered to be the father of the Finnish classical music. From 1835 he taught the idiom of German romanticism to Finland through his teaching activities in Helsinki and thus had a great influence on the development of the following generations. In 1848, based on a poem from Runeberg's Tales by Ensign Stål , Pacius also composed today's Finnish national anthem Maamme . His opera König Karls Jagd was premiered in Swedish in 1852; it is considered the first Finnish opera. This was followed by a first Finnish-language opera by Pohja's daughter by Oskar Merikanto , father of Aarre Merikanto , the most important composer of the 1920s. Other composers are Einar Englund , Erik Bergman , Joonas Kokkonen , Einojuhani Rautavaara , Leif Segerstam , Aulis Sallinen , Kalevi Aho .
Jean Sibelius ' early work (1865–1957) was also decisively influenced by German Romanticism and borrowings from Finnish folk music, but he became one of the most internationally acclaimed Finnish composers, particularly with his modern violin concerto and later orchestral works. With its national romantic pathos, his music is to a large extent identity-creating for the Finns and Sibelius is a kind of over-figure for the younger Finnish composers, with or against whom they define their own work. In addition to his melodramas and stage music, Sibelius, who is considered the father of Finnish music, only made one small attempt at opera, with the one-act play The Virgin in the Tower , 1986.
Over 80 operas were written from the turn of the century to the late 1920s. But only Armas Launis and Leevi Madetoja deserve special mention, as well as Aarre Merikanto's opera Juha from 1922.
More recently, following the revival of the opera festival in Savonlinna in 1967, the operas by Kalevi Aho , Aulis Sallinen and Einojuhani Rautavaara have received international attention, among the opera singers the bassists Kim Borg , Martti Talvela and Matti Salminen . Young classics are trained at the renowned Sibelius Academy , the only music academy in the country. From the academy's forge of conductors, grandees such as Leif Segerstam , Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jukka-Pekka Saraste emerged. With more than 30 symphony orchestras, Finland is likely to be the country with the greatest density of orchestras in the world.
Popular music
The Finnish hit song (iskelmä), which has enjoyed some popularity since the beginning of the 20th century, is largely unknown internationally. While the compositions in the past were still partly inspired by high artistic standards, such as the songs of Georg Malmsténs and the couplets by Reino Helismaa and Tapio Rautavaara , today's Finnish hit with its stars like Katri Helena and Annika Tähti is mostly to be seen as light entertainment music and is accordingly spurned by the younger generation. The German hit can be compared to the Finnish in musical as well as sociocultural respect, and so it is not surprising that Finland was one of the few export markets for German hit in the 1960s and 1970s; conversely, the Finn Marion Rung celebrated successes in Germany. The Finnish tango is a specialty, which had its wedding in the 1940s and 1950s with the success of the " Tango King" Olavi Virta . In particular, Unto Mononen's composition Satumaa (“Fairy Tale Land ”), which became famous in 1962 in the interpretation of Reijo Taipale , is considered the epitome of Finnish melancholy. Schlager, tango, waltz, humppa and jenkka are traditionally played for couples dancing in the numerous tanssilavat , in the dance pavilions, which are mostly located outside the cities on the lake shore.
The fact that Finnish popular music does not have a particularly good repute internationally can be seen, among other things, from the results of the Eurovision Song Contest , which has received much attention in Finland , in which the country has been in the lower ranks with some regularity since its first participation in 1961 . It was not until 2006 that the hard rock band Lordi , who appear in monster costumes, achieved their first Finnish victory in this competition. The fact that the winning title Hard Rock Hallelujah was performed in English certainly made a decisive contribution to this success . Lordi also has a certain bizarre that is characteristic of many Finnish bands. While neighboring Sweden has produced numerous broad-based pop bands in the past few decades, today Finland is best known in terms of music for performers on the margins and beyond the mainstream . This applies not least to the Leningrad Cowboys , who are at least as well known for their imposing hairdresses and shoes as for their idiosyncratic interpretations of well-known pop and rock songs, the Humppa group Eläkeläiset with their cover versions of well-known international hits and their idiosyncratic appearance, and for the screaming Mieskuoro Huutajat men's choir . In experimental electronic music, Pan Sonic , Aavikko and Jimi Tenor are among the most famous performers. Also Pepe Deluxé have established themselves internationally.
Finland is also home to numerous metal bands such as Waltari , Norther , Mokoma , Ensiferum , Korpiklaani , Eternal Tears of Sorrow , Amorphis , Sonata Arctica , Wintersun , Stratovarius , Uniklubi and Finntroll . While the success of these bands is mostly limited to the subculture, some bands with more conventional rock music have also celebrated chart successes abroad, in particular Children of Bodom , Nightwish , HIM , Sunrise Avenue , The 69 Eyes and The Rasmus . The best-known bands singing in Finnish include Teräsbetoni , Eppu Normaali and Zen Café . Since the 1990s there has been a robust hip-hop scene with acts like Fintelligens ; The Bomfunk MC’s also had an international hit in 2000 with Freestyler .
The Finnish jazz-rock band Tasavallan Presidentti around the guitarist Jukka Tolonen has been the most famous jazz-rock formation in Scandinavia since the 1970s.
literature
- Andrew Cronshaw: New Runes. In: Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, James McConnachie, Orla Duane (Eds.): The Rough Guide to World Music. Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Rough Guides, New York and London 2000, ISBN 1-85828-635-2 , pp. 91-102
- Ilkka Oramo, Ilkka Kolehmainen: Finland. In: Grove Music Online, 2001
Individual evidence
- ^ Tim Howell: After Sibelius: Studies in Finnish Music. Aldershot, Ashgate 2006, ISBN 0754651770 , p. 12
- ↑ Biography of Jukka Tolonen ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
