ERKKI SALMENHAARA IN MEMORIAM On 9 February Anders Eliasson’s new work, Sinfonia per archi, was given its fi rst ■ Composer, musicologist, Professor Erkki and it was he who did the fi nal editing of Salmenhaara died in Helsinki on 19 March volume V. His numerous essays and critiques performance in Kokkola by 2002. He was born in Helsinki on 12 March showed him to be a man of vision with an the Ostrobothnian Chamber 1941. astonishing ability to foresee the shifts of atti- Orchestra conducted by Juha Erkki Salmenhaara is one of the great tude in contemporary music. infl uential fi gures in Finnish musical life. As Erkki Salmenhaara was a lecturer in musi- Kangas. The German music a composer he began his career in the early cology at the University of Helsinki, Depart- journalist Christoph Schlüren 1960s as one of the leading young avant- ment of Musicology 1966-74, Associate Pro- was present at the premiere. gardists, but in the latter half of the decade fessor 1975-98 and Professor 1998-99. His his style took a steep, unconventional turn contribution to Finnish musicology at the in a simpler tonal direction. The big prob- University was of the utmost importance. He lem facing modernism in music was, he was for many years editor-in-chief of the jour- claimed, its lack of history. By using tonal nal published by the Finnish Musicological MUSIC elements he therefore wished to re-infuse Society and was for thirty years a member of into new music the directness and richness of the Society’s Board. He was also Chairman of signifi cation of earlier serious music. Salmen- the Association of Finnish Symphony Orches- – a Living Entity haara the composer nevertheless remained a tras 1974-78, Chairman of the Society of fi gure outside the mainstream and his fi ve Finnish Composers 1974-76 and served on symphonies, opera, four concertos and large its committee 1966-74 and 1990-96. In 1994 volume of other orchestral, chamber and he wrote a history of the Society in which he eniuses have always been rare and geni- vocal music still await reappraisal. made a general survey of the changing status ality has never been characterised by a It is, however, possibly as a music of the composer in Finland. Gneed to fi t in with the fashions of the scholar, historian and teacher that Erkki Sal- As a person, teacher and colleague Erkki times or a desire to appear as an innovative spear- menhaara will primarily be remembered. His Salmenhaara was extremely well-liked; a man head. In a time when the concept of reappraisal doctoral dissertation in 1969 addressed the who shunned ostentation, he was respected has yielded to pragmatism, when genuine interest music of the Hungarian composer György for his untiring efforts on behalf of Finnish has all but drowned in a surplus of diversity, when Ligeti and is still repeatedly read as one of music. Named Professor of the Year in 1996 access to resources and opportunities threatens the leading studies of this composer. In for his merits as a teacher and scholar, he to swamp the creative impulse, it is becoming the 1960s he also wrote much-used text- was the receiver of the major Finnish Cultural increasingly diffi cult to judge what is of true sub- books on chord analysis, harmonisation and Foundation award only three weeks before his stance. Where the music of the Swedish com- 20th century music. Meanwhile he was also death: a fi tting tribute to a life dedicated to poser Anders Eliasson is concerned it is not only employed as a music critic, and indeed, Finnish music. a question of skilful use of the material. His bril- he was one of the fi nest Finland has ever Kalevi Aho liant polyphonic treatment of structural conven- known. tions is purely a means by which to transcend From the 1970s onwards his interest them. was caught mainly by research into Finnish Anders Eliasson was born in 1947 in the music and the reassessment of forgotten province of Dalecarlia and as a ten-year-old trum- works by many composers. He was the pet-player he already led his own jazz band. After author of biographies of Leevi Madetoja a somewhat traumatic adolescence he began to and Jean Sibelius, and studied the works study Johann Sebastian Bach’s music in depth of such composers as Uuno Klami, Erkki and he also studied composition with Ingvar Melartin, Ernest Pingoud, Aarre Meri- Lidholm. He soon discovered that the prevailing kanto and Joonas Kokkonen, likewise the compositional aesthetic did not harmonise with symphonies of Brahms and the music of the waves that fl owed in his own inner world of Gustav Mahler. His contribution to the sounds – until today. History of Finnish Music project launched Eliasson, who since 1970 has explored “tri- at the very beginning of the 1980s was inval- angular tonality” (which he “has not invented, uable; covering the period from the early only discovered”, since it “is a natural phenom- 19th century right up to the Second World enon”) wrote two classic works for strings in the War, he wrote nearly two-thirds of the 1980s: Desert Point and Ostácoli. These works for pages in the four-volume work published string orchestra were followed this year by Sinfo- in 1996. The following year the History nia per archi, commissioned for the 30th anniver- was awarded the prestigious Tieto-Finlandia sary of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Prize for non-fi ction. the leading Nordic string ensemble. The work Salmenhaara also provided vital assist- is dedicated to the orchestra’s conductor Juha ance to Erik Tawaststjerna in the creation Kangas and consists of a thirty-minute-long of the latter’s great biography of Sibelius, Erkki Salmenhaara (Photo: Maarit Kytöharju) continuous movement divided into three sec-

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