Finland 100

The year 2017 not only marks the centenary of Finland’s independence but is also an anniversary year for Finnish music education.

Väinö Raitio was a Modernist Finnish composer whose works were received with considerable reservations in his lifetime. Today, Raitio’s music is interesting both because of the period in which it was written and because of its artistic quality. Pluralism has rehabilitated Raitio, and music historians no longer need to adhere to the dramatic martyrdom conventionally ascribed to him.

Independent Finland is 100 years old and has a classical music scene that is diverse, pluralist and multicultural. A century ago, the situation was very different: just as the nation was heavily polarised after the bitter Civil War, musical life was similarly divided. It is not too much of a simplification to identify two musical camps: official national neo-Romanticism and “left-wing” modernism.

"The Kalevala myth was a genuine source of inspiration for the fledgling Finnish nation in search of an identity. But has it been such a thing any more, really, since the Second World War?," asks Kimmo Hakola in his Kalevala day column.