FMQ 1-2/1985

The year 2020 marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of the very first issue of the Finnish Music Quarterly. We are now publishing a digital facsimile of that first issue.

In this article Einojuhani Rautavaara describes the background to his opera Thomas, and explains certain technical aspects of the opera's musical structure. Thomas had its first performance at the Joensuu Song Festival in the summer of 1985.

The main theme of the first ever FMQ magazine in 1985 was the Kalevala. In the issue composers and researchers like Pekka Lounela, Eero Tarasti, Erkki Salmenhaara, Heikki Laitinen and Olli Kortekangas approached the epic from varying points of view. Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (1930–2017) wrote in his column how the Kalevala has influenced his work.

Runes were sung by people of all ages: children and adults, old and young, men and women. They were sung on all sorts of occasions: on working days and holidays, at play and at work, as young people got together and at dances. There were also many different ways of singing them: solo, with two people or groups alternating, together in small or large groups.

Musicologist and composer Erkki Salmenhaara provides an introduction to the work of the Franco-Russo-Karelian cosmopolitan who was Uuno Klami.

“One of the greatest problems confronting Finnish culture is the relative absence of critical attitudes with any measure of influence,” says the composer Olli Kortekangas in his article from FMQ 1-2/1985.

Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala was part of a return to mythology, a desire to discover the roots of the nation's culture and history that prevailed in all the peripheral regions of Europe. In Finland the publication of the Kalevala in 1835 marked a decisive impetus towards the search for all that was inherently Finnish in practically all the arts.