Operas Ratsumies (The Horseman) and Punainen viiva (The Red Line)
Aulis Heikki Sallinen (born 9 April 1935) is a Finnishcontemporaryclassical musiccomposer.[1] His music has been variously described as "remorselessly harsh", a "beautifully crafted amalgam of several 20th-century styles", and "neo-romantic".[2][3] Sallinen studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen. He has had works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and has also written seven operas, eight symphonies, concertos for violin, cello, flute, horn, and English horn, as well as several chamber works. He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1978 for his opera Ratsumies (The Horseman).
Childhood and studies
Sallinen was born in Salmi. During his childhood the family moved several times for his father's work, and during the Evacuation of Finnish Karelia in 1944 the family relocated to Uusikaupunki, where he went to school.[4]
His first instruments were the violin and the piano. He learned to play both jazz and classical music.[5] He spent much time during his teenage years improvising. After a while, he began writing his ideas down on paper and began serious composition. He attended the Sibelius Academy of Music and studied with a number of teachers such as Aarre Merikanto and Joonas Kokkonen.[6]
Early career and operas
After graduating, Sallinen took a position as composition teacher at the Sibelius Academy and continued composing. Among his pupils were Jouni Kaipainen and the Austrian-born Finnish composer Herman Rechberger.
Sallinen was appointed as the general manager of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1960 and held the position until 1969.[7] He was the chairman of the board of the Society of Finnish Composers between 1971 and 1974.[8] Though he was a known teacher and was on many boards of directors, his compositions were not particularly noted until 1976, when he was made "Artist Professor" by the Finnish government, allowing him to concentrate on composing.[9]
After he received his lifelong "artist professorship", Sallinen devoted most of his time to composing. He has received a number of commissions and has composed eight symphonies, including one using material from a proposed ballet based on The Lord of the Rings[10] and containing two mediaeval Finnish tunes from the Piae Cantiones. He has written seven operas and also composed the title track of the Kronos Quartet's album Winter Was Hard.
Suita grammaticale, for children's choir and orchestra (1971)
Songs from the Sea, Op. 33 for unaccompanied children's choir, based on Finnish folk songs and a poem by the composer's two sons
Dies Irae, for soprano, bass, male choir and orchestra, Op. 47 (1978)
Song Around a Song, Op. 50 (1980) – Four folk songs in Italian, Japanese, Finnish, and English for unaccompanied children's choir
The Iron Age Suite, Op. 55, arranged from music for Finnish TV series based on the Kalevala
The Beaufort Scale, Op. 56 (1984), humoresque for unaccompanied choir, based on the wind velocity scale
Linna vedessä (The Castle in the Water), Op. 106 (2014-16), a chronicle for a narrator, four singers and a chamber orchestra
Chamber Music IX, Nocturne, Op. 112 (2017), for voice and string orchestra
References
^Paavilainen, Ulla, ed. (2014). Kuka kukin on: Henkilötietoja nykypolven suomalaisista 2015 [Who’s Who in Finland, 2015] (in Finnish). Helsinki: Otava. pp. 800–801. ISBN978-951-1-28228-0.
^Henahan, Donal: "Music: Finnish Opera Offers Sallinen's 'Red Line.'" The New York Times. 29 April 1983.
^Parsons, Jeremy: The Musical Times. Vol. 121, No. 1653 (Nov. 1980), pp. 693–695.
^Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, Anne. "Sallinen, Aulis (1935–)". Biografiakeskus (in Finnish). Retrieved 27 October 2016.
^ ab"Biography". all music guide. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
