Mikko Heiniö

Mikko Heiniö MIKKO HEINIÖ’S MUSIC – vitality, positive energy and rhythmic drive An element of the unexpected, and a physical sense of rhythm are fundamental features of the music of Mikko Heiniö, as are the playful and absurd, the gleeful feet-off-the- ground feeling. In composing his music, he wishes to emulate the way in which Federico Fellini the film director and An- toni Gaudí the architect approached their art. “Their work has tremendous humanity, fantasy, humour and playfulness. I couldn’t work with a frown any more than they could.” ikko Heiniö (b. 1948) has been a freelance composer since vacating the chair in musicology at the University of Turku a few years ago. As a researcher he is aware of the different Mtypes of music abroad in the world, and his widespread interest can be detected in his compositions on the topic of the human race and culture. He does not engage in playful irony with stylistic borrowings or dismiss them as ‘seen them all’. Instead, he cultivates an exultant but carefully-contrived brand of hybridism, vitality, positive energy and rhythmic drive. “I have a strong liking for characterised rhythm rooted in the spine and the pelvis. Rather than the mathematical ab- straction of serial music, I must have a physical sense of rhythm.” Heiniö wrote his first opera, The Knight and the Dragon (Riddaren och draken, 1999–2000) for performance in a multi-dimensional, echoing church. Though by nature a static mystery play, it has an in- tensive pulse that generates a strong experience of spirituality. Then came The Hour of the Serpent (Käärmeen hetki, 2002–05), a character drama for a conventional opera stage. His third opera is about King Eric XIV of Sweden and Karin Månsdotter. His symphonies so far number two. Possible Worlds (1987) in post- modern style is marked by pluralism, reflection on tradition, borrowings and stylistic adaptations. The music is a combination of the unexpected and the inevitable, leading the listener ever onwards to a new experience. The result is a unique story that spirals back to its point of departure. Mikko Heiniö 1 The second symphony, Songs of Night and Love (Yön ja rakkauden lauluja, 1997) has a baritone soloist. Heiniö describes it as a symphony with a pro- gramme that is sung. The orchestra has plenty of in- dependent things to say, and the baritone is only one voice among many. The work covers a broad span, from the nocturnal world of longing to the ecstatic- rhythm procession music of the finale. Tendency towards rhythmic drive Heiniö was using ethnic influences to give his works extra life before there was ever any talk of world music. “I don’t know how it originally came about. At school, I played rhythm music in a rock band. My teacher during my year in Berlin in 1975 was Witold Szalonek, who was interested in ethnic cultures. I chose my records and concerts on two grounds: ethnic and contemporary.” The rhythm emanating from the pelvis really goes to town in On the Rocks (1998) for orchestra. The orchestral song cycle Vuelo de alambre (1983) is based on poems by anonymous Chilean prisoners. Despite their grim background, the texts also express memories and longing. The hidden melodies of the Andies, the marching songs and Latin-Ameri- can rhythms sometimes find themselves on a collision course, but the emergent eloquence finally radiates sympathy, tenderness and opti- mism. “I have a tendency towards rhythms of African origin, even if they have travelled via South America and the Caribbean. But I avoid stuck-on effects, because they lead to postcard folklorism. I examine the deep structures from a European, analytical perspective to see what I can build on them. Pentatonicism, for example, has somehow to be chromaticised, and the overall sound ends up as European.” Vuelo de alambre uses a 12-note row from which two pentatonic scales gradually become distinguishable as the work proceeds. Expres- sive chromaticism and folk music overlap, join and part. Heiniö liberally bends types of music with a strong rhythm to suit his purpose: tango, boogie, rhythm & blues and jazz. The time he spent in Benin in West Africa is reflected in the part for five percussionists in his piano concerto Khora. 2 Mikko Heiniö Hybrids and singability In composing his music, Heiniö wishes to emulate the way in which Federico Fellini the film director and Antoni Gaudí the architect approached their art. “Their work has tremendous humanity, fantasy, humour and playfulness. I couldn’t work with a frown any more than they could.” Hybrids – unexpected and often crossover formats – are a fundamental feature of Heiniö the composer. The sixth piano concerto, Hermes (1994), and the seventh, Khora (2001), are both dance works although they can also be performed as concert versions. In the sixth the solo piano is offset by a string orchestra and soprano, in the seventh by five percussionists. Envelope (2002) for solo trumpet and orchestra was composed round the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, and to be performed without a break between the movements. The Haydn orchestra plays up on the platform, but the other instruments ‘envelop’ the audience. The soloist moves from place to place. As a young man, Heiniö dreamt of a career as a writer and phi- lologist but in the end chose music. In many of his songs and choral works he has subjected the linguistic parameters of his texts to almost systematic treatment. At one extreme are the works whose texts are broken down into their basic phonetic units devoid of any semantic content. Representing the other extreme are the vocal works in which the meaning is all-important. In Non-Stop (1995) for mixed choir the nonsense words provide flexible substance for timbres and rhythms lent im- pact by consonants. The rolling beat unfolds over a pliable harmonic background. The dialect of Western Finland also supplies colour and laid-back rhythms in the setting of poems by Heli Laaksonen in the five-movement Pikavuaro Turkku (Turku Express, 2001) for mixed choir. Heiniö gives the poems an airily tonal, folk song-like ambience over- laid with discreet layers of polyphonic rhythm. Wind Pictures (1991) for choir Mikko Heiniö 3 and orchestra is in one sense a Requiem for Heiniö’s daughter, who died when still very young, but it also expands into a broad wind met- aphor the harmony of which is fecundated by a 10-note chord dis- covered in some sketches by Skryabin. Also in the fourth movement, Tuuli Maria, is a Heiniö lullaby he sang to his daughter. Heiniö has admirably solved the problem of singability in modern music. In the Sextet (2000, for baritone and Schönbergian “Pierrot en- semble”) there are no awkward interval jumps. Diatonic cells can be detected, and there are no bulky chromatic blocks in the melodic flow. Embraced in the light, bright sound of the seven-movement work is an awareness of disappointment wounded by love, detached and numb. The falsetto singing in the skittish scherzo creates some ironic, comic dimensions. Playfulness and drama in chamber music The musicians performing Heiniö’s works are also offered a touch of physical drama, as in the Piano Quintet (1993), where they are expected to speak and hum text by Lewis Carroll. The resonances of the human body serve as a physical timbral extension that also has the ingredients for a hybrid. The playful and absurd, the gleeful feet-off- the-ground feeling are features of this composer. Wood is present in the piano quartet The Voice of the Tree (Puun ääni, 2006) inspired by the poetry of Eira Stenberg, in a very concrete manner; its feel is part of the physical aspect of the music. In addi- tion to being played in the normal way, the strings are dampened, plucked, struck, tapped and rubbed to bring out the intrinsic sound of the wood, the soulfulness of which is far from mere dry woodwork- ing. The string trio and piano together constitute a vision in which the listener may similarly detect the tree swaying in the wind, the movements of the branches and details of the foliage. Mikko Heiniö has long been a focal figure on the Finnish musical scene and continues to be so as Chairman of the Society of Finnish Composers and Vice-Chairman of Teosto, the Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society. He has been composer-in-residence of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra for more than a decade, and he was the au- thor of the volume on contemporary music in the History of Finnish Music that won the nation’s most prestigious prize for non-fiction, the Tieto-Finlandia. Jukka Isopuro Translation: Susan Sinisalo 4 Mikko Heiniö CURRICULUM VITAE ikko Heiniö (born on 18 May 1948) studied piano with Liisa Pohjola and composition with Joonas Kokkonen at the Sibelius Academy from 1971 to 1975. The two years M1975–77 were spent with the Polish teacher Witold Szalonek in Ber- lin. Heiniö also studied musicology at the University of Helsinki, fin- ishing his doctoral thesis in 1984 and working as Professor of Musi- cology at the University of Turku from 1985 to 2005. Heiniö´s repertoire contains over 80 works. The main pieces of his music are his orchestral works such as eight piano concertos, Vuelo de Alambre (cycle for voice and orchestra, 1983), two symphonies (Pos- sible Worlds, 1987 and Songs of Night and Love, 1997), Wind Pictures for choir and orchestra (1991), On the Rocks (1998), trumpet concerto Envelope (2002) and Alla Madre for violin and orchestra (2006).

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