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Leevi Madetoja
A Composer from Ostrobothnia and Paris
Leevi Madetoja (1887-1947) was by nature basically a National Romantic composer.
Equally pronounced in his music was, however, a classical
streak aiming at balance, clarity, refinement of expression
and technical polish. He also drew on a combination of the
Finnish folk melody and the new French music he heard in Paris
at the beginning of the century to produce a style that was
entirely his own.
Madetoja had absorbed the Finnish sound into his very soul
as a little boy already, while listening to the religious
melodies of his native Ostrobothnia in western Finland. But
while he was still at school he also drew inspiration from
the Finnish art music then in the process of emerging. As
a young student Madetoja also got to know the folk melodies
of Northern Ostrobothnia while on a collection tour made in
summer 1909. He later enriched the melodies collected by his
composer colleague Toivo Kuula and ingeniously integrated
them with art music in his opera The Ostrobothnians.
No less significant than this national element in his art
were, however, the international stimuli provided particularly
by French music at the beginning of the century but also by
Richard Strauss and Carl Nielsen. At the suggestion
of his friend Toivo Kuula, Madetoja chose as the destination
for his first study tour in 1910-11 the city of Paris, where
the music of Debussy and Dukas had for Kuula provided something
in the nature of an awakening. Madetoja was, however, attracted
by the more classical style of the Schola cantorum, founded
on César Franck and the French symphonic tradition,
headed by Vincent d'Indy. Madetoja's plans for studying
with d'Indy were reduced to one formal meeting, but the musical
and cultural impressions of Paris were all the more important.
Madetoja was to return to France several times in his lifetime,
to work and to seek new inspiration.
Madetoja came from a humble background. His father, a ship's
mate, died in the United States without ever seeing his son,
and Leevi and his brother were left to be brought up by their
mother. As time went by, he began to be drawn more and more
to music and became an excellent kantele player. Madetoja
must surely be the only major composer in the history of world
music who played the kantele, Finland's national instrument,
as his main instrument. He also studied the violin and piano
on his own. In 1906 he set off to study in Helsinki, where
he enrolled both at the Music Institute and the University
and graduated from both four years later.
Studying under Sibelius
Madetoja was not a wonderchild, but he did have a natural
talent and learnt to compose not from his teachers Armas
Järnefelt, Erik Furuhjelm and Jean Sibelius
but simply by composing, thus managing to acquire the means
of writing both choral and orchestral music without any apparent
effort. Even his very first publicly performed compositions,
the solo songs Yksin and Lähdettyäs
of 1908, have won themselves a permanent place in the repertoire.
He was, furthermore, obliged to write his first large-scale
work, the Piano Trio op. 1, on his own because his
teacher, Sibelius, was abroad for the whole of spring 1909.
Madetoja's first composition for string orchestra, Elegy
(1909), was an immediate hit. In spring 1910 he wrote his
first work for large orchestra, a suite to the play Chess
Game by Eino Leino. In autumn 1911 he set off on
a second study tour, this time to Vienna and Berlin. In Berlin
he met the writer L. Onerva, whom he had got to know
in connection with the performance of Leino's play. L. Onerva
and Madetoja were married in 1913. From 1912 to 1916 Madetoja
held conducting appointments in first in Helsinki and then
in Viipuri, and in autumn 1916 he returned to Helsinki to
teach at what is now the Sibelius Academy and to write music
reviews.
Naturally the music of Madetoja matured and developed, but
it is not possible to identify any clear stylistic periods.
The Piano Trio, though fluent still in general Romantic vein,
is somewhat in the nature of an academic exercise, and although
the Chess Suite and the Dance Vision (Tanssinäky)
written in Vienna in 1911 do contain certain Madetojan features,
the composer still seems to be searching for his idiom. By
contrast, the significance of the Concert Overture
written during his first winter in Paris (1910-11) appears
to have been lost both to his contemporaries and to subsequent
critics. In the reviews of a concert of his works given in
1913 it was overshadowed by Kullervo with its more
expansive, more "national" theme. The more modest
and well-proportioned Overture is, at least as regards style,
nevertheless more intrinsically Madetojan than Kullervo. Both
works are, however, clearly the works of a born orchestral
composer.
Symphonies and operas
The first symphony by Madetoja was also a considerable achievement,
proving that the 29-year-old composer was a symphonist second
only to one. For Madetoja had the qualities which, as Sibelius
wrote to him, "are the makings of a symphonist".
The second symphony (1918) lasting some forty minutes is a
great late Romantic symphony constructed in every way on a
grander scale than the concentrated first. It seems to reflect
Madetoja's tragic personal experiences and contains some of
the same melodic motifs as the piano suite The Garden of
Death (Kuoleman puutarha) composed in memory of his brother
killed in the Finnish Civil War of 1918. The best of the Madetoja
symphonies is, however, the third (1926), and it is one of
the few items in Finnish orchestral literature on a par with
the works of Sibelius. Whereas the first Madetoja symphonies
are similar in style to the early symphonies of Sibelius,
the third may be likened most closely to precisely Sibelius's
third. While it does not quite capture the sovereignty of
the first movement of Sibelius's third, the works as a whole
are of equal merit. The thing that strikes the listener is
the maturity of this composer still not in his 40th year.
There is one trait in the orchestral music of Madetoja that
has passed almost unnoticed but that runs from the Concert
Overture through the Comedy Overture (1923) and culminates
in the third symphony. Elegy and resignation are swept aside,
and so is grandiloquent romantic outpouring. The parallel
between the third symphonies of Madetoja and Sibelius lies
precisely in that they are both classical in spirit without
being neoclassical in style.
In one respect Madetoja succeeded where Sibelius did not,
and that was in composing a Finnish national opera. The
Ostrobothnians (1924) was a pioneering work, being in
every respect the first full-weight Finnish opera. What is
more, the composer compiled his own libretto and even wrote
some of the poetry in it. The Ostrobothnians immediately won
itself a permanent place in the repertoire.
The ballet pantomime Okon Fuoko (1930) marked the first
set-back in Madetoja's career as a composer, though critics
were unanimous in their praise for the music itself. Okon
Fuoko is one of the finest scores in Finnish music and possesses
an unusual clarity, translucence and richness of nuance. Unfortunately
the composer completed only one of the planned orchestral
suites from the work. Dramatically the work was, however,
declared a failure.
Most writers agree that Madetoja's second opera, Juha
(1935), is musically superior to The Ostrobothnians. The symphonic
texture of Juha is far more subtle and versatile, and the
fact that the composer no longer relied on the somewhat straightforward
effect of the folk melody, however good, was of course a decisive
step forwards and proof of maturity. Once again Juha was,
however, a disappointment to the composer, since it did not
enjoy a popular reception and was soon dropped from the repertoire.
The leading choral composer
Whilst Madetoja may be regarded as one of Finland's leading
orchestral and opera composers, he may well be claimed the
leading choral composer, considering the extent and quality
of his output. His choral works may not be as easily accessible
on first hearing as the more catchy songs of Kuula or Selim
Palmgren, but their own inherent quality is soon revealed
on subsequent hearing. Madetoja also composed a number of
cantatas and cantata-like works for various occasions.
Madetoja further produced a host of fine solo songs. Among
his chamber works the delightful Violin Sonatina and
the Lyric Suite full of atmosphere for cello and piano
also deserve mention.
The art of Leevi Madetoja, a composer who shunned all external
effects, has enjoyed a clear renaissance in the past few years.
Most of the major works have been released on disc in Finland
and abroad. The world of Madetoja opens up to those who wish
to explore it and reveals a musical thinker of independence
and originality writing in a style whose basic qualities are
audible even in the very first pieces he wrote.
The writer and critic Ralf Parland gave a sensitive
critique of the inherent nature of Madetoja's music in an
essay written in 1945 in which he said: "Because Madetoja
never makes any concessions to the listener, his music has
not gained the position it deserves in the public's awareness.
People are now beginning to open their ears to it. But that
he deserves far greater attention, and that his music is both
rare and precious and not simply a poor edition of the music
of Sibelius - that is something they have not yet learnt."
They are now beginning to learn.
Erkki Salmenhaara
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