Society of Finnish Composers

“From the viewpoint of direct artist funding, art politics since the 1990s recession have failed. The sector’s growth has not been matched by increased public funding.” Composer Pasi Lyytikäinen reflects on the progress and future views of composers’ livelihood in Finland.

The professional profile and operating environment of Finnish composers of classical music have become increasingly international at a rapid rate in the past three decades. Back in the day, few composers spent extensive periods of time abroad, and any trips they did take were mainly for study or for inspiration and did not necessarily involve immersion in the local music scene. This started to change in the 1990s, as the Finnish music industry began to integrate into the international music industry.

Composing music is a discipline traditionally veiled in mystery. It is commonly believed that composers are born, not made, or at the very least they must discover a passionate calling for composing at an early age. Composing has also been regarded as the exclusive privilege of highly trained professional composers. Finland’s new National Core Curricula have introduced another perspective on composition. The opus1.fi databank provides teaching materials and support for the new needs of introductory teaching of composition

The cultural cold war between the superpowers that began after the Second World War played a major role in shaping the international arts and culture scene as we know it today. This series of articles discusses the impacts of cultural diplomacy, particularly that of the USA, on Finnish music from the days of the Cold War to the present. The first part focuses on the years immediately after the war. Finnish music came back to life immediately after hostilities ceased, and a new international era dawned.

Composing is acquiring an important role at Finland’s music institutes and schools. In the revised curricula, composing is identified as an activity that is – or at least should be – accessible to everyone and whose positive impacts extend far beyond the realm of music itself.

"Foreigners like me once had the idea that Finland was a difficult country in which to be a composer; so strong was Sibelius’s legacy and so dominant those famous names who succeeded him. But that idea now seems outdated," writes Andrew Mellor in his column on the Day of Finnish Music.

Composing always has a social dimension, because composers engage in it in the context created by society. Yet composers’ views on the relationship between music and society have varied a great deal over the centuries. What do today’s composers think about their work in relation to current social and political issues?

Finnish composers got together to form a society immediately after the war, in 1945. The following is a resume of the history of the first half decade of the Society of Finnish Composers, written in 1995 by Erkki Salmenhaara (1941–2002), at the time Associate Professor of Music at the University of Helsinki.