Yrjö Kilpinen
Yrjö Henrik Kilpinen (born February 4, 1892 in Helsinki ; † March 2, 1959 there ) was a Finnish composer .
Life
In 1908 Kilpinen began studying music in Helsinki, majoring in piano . Two years later he went to Vienna to study composition with Richard Heuberger and J. Hoffmann. From 1913 to 1914 he was a student with Otto Taubmann and Paul Juon in Berlin . He then took private lessons with Toivo Kuula in Helsinki.
Kilpinen initially earned his living as a piano teacher, accompanist, accompanist and critic. However, he was never in permanent employment, but worked as a freelancer. His compositions quickly attracted a lot of attention in Finland and led to a state scholarship from 1925, which was converted into a lifelong pension in 1935, so that Kilpinen could concentrate on his compositional work without worries about his existence.
Kilpinen was awarded the Academic Award in 1948 and in 1952 he was made an honorary member of the Tonkünstlerverband and the Composers' Association of Finland. In 1959 he died at the age of 67.
plant
Kilpinen's oeuvre includes a few instrumental compositions (including 6 piano sonatas and a cello sonata ) around 700 songs , which are often arranged in cycles based on poems by Finnish, Swedish and German poets. Christian Morgenstern deserves special mention among the German poets , of whom Kilpinen set 74 poems to music. The most famous of these are the expressive "Songs about Death" op. 62. Kilpinen also set poems by Hans Fritz von Zwehl to music .
Kilpinen's songs - he was more often referred to as "Finnish Schubert" by contemporary critics - are usually characterized by a vocal melody. The harmony, which is based on tonal ground, is often kept emphatically simple, sometimes one is even tempted to speak of "primitivisms", but if the expression requires it, Kilpinen also works with extended harmonic means. Many of the songs only gain strength and density in the cyclical context. Often they live particularly from the close closeness to nature and the strong bond to their Finnish homeland. One example of this is the “Kanteletar” cycle op. 100, which comprises 64 songs.
Web links
- Literature by and about Yrjö Kilpinen in the catalog of the German National Library
- Kilpinen at the Finnish Music Information Center
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kilpinen, Yrjö |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kilpinen, Yrjö Henrik (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Finnish composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 4, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Helsinki , Finland |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 2, 1959 |
| Place of death | Helsinki , Finland |