FMQ 4/1999

The following article was published in an anthology of Ernest Pingoud’s writings collectively entitled “The Progress of Art” (Taiteen edistys), edited by Kalevi Aho in 1995. The articles had been translated from German, Russian and Swedish manuscripts by Seppo Heikinheimo. The essay “Musical Progress” appeared in the Montagsblatt der St. Petersburger Zeitung (Monday supplement of the St Petersburger newspaper) on April 18, 1911.

The founding of the city of St. Petersburg in 1703 meant the birth of a new orientation, a source of innovative ideas and of growth potential for the Finns. Building materials and labour were imported for the new metropolis from neighbouring Finland right from the early stages, and many of the city's bridges and palaces rest on Finnish granite.

The Russian-born composer Ernest Pingoud (1887–1942) emigrated to Finland to escape the revolution in 1918 and spent most of his working life there. He became one of the champions of musical modernism in Finland at its height in the 1920s, together with Väinö Raitio and Aarre Merikanto.

Before the great October Revolution in 1917, the cultural contacts between Helsinki and St. Petersburg were amazingly strong and lively. St. Petersburg was the political and, above all, cultural capital of the Russian Empire, to which Finland also belonged.