Yrjö Kilpinen

Yrjö Henrik Kilpinen ( born February 4, 1892 in Helsinki, † March 2, 1959 ) was a Finnish composer.

Life

Started in 1908 in Helsinki Kilpinen his musical studies with a major in piano. Two years later he went to Vienna to study composition with Richard Heuberger and J. Hoffmann. From 1913 to 1914 he was a pupil of Otto Taub and Paul Juon in Berlin. After that, he took private lessons with Toivo Kuula in Helsinki.

First, Kilpinen earned his living as a piano teacher, accompanist, vocal coach and critic. However, he was at no time in a stable employment relationship, but worked as a freelancer. His compositions found in Finland pretty quickly a lot of attention and led since 1925 to a state scholarship, which was in 1935 converted into a lifelong pension, so that Kilpinen could concentrate without financial worries on his compositions.

Kilpinen was awarded the distinction of academics in 1948 and 1952, he was appointed by the Musicians ' Association and the Composers' Union of Finland as an honorary member. In 1959, he died at the age of 67 years.

Work

Kilpinens overall body of work includes some instrumental compositions (among six piano sonatas, a cello sonata ) about 700 songs, which are often arranged in cycles to poems Finnish, Swedish and German poets. Among the German poets especially Christian Morgenstern is emphasized by the Kilpinen 74 poems set to music. Of these, the most famous expressive " songs about death " op 62 become. In addition Kilpinen set to music poems by Hans Fritz von Zwehl.

The songs Kilpinens - by critics, he was more often than " Finnish Schubert " means - are characterized mostly by a vocal melody. The standing on the ground tonal harmonies are often kept deliberately simple, sometimes you even tried to speak of " primitivisms ", but if the expression it requires Kilpinen also works with the extended harmonic means. Many of the songs only gain in cyclic gaining strength and density. They often live particularly close to nature and the strong binding to the Finnish home. An example is the 64 songs comprehensive " Kanteletar " cycle op 100