31 Facts About Leevi Madetoja

Leevi Madetoja is widely recognized as one of the most significant Finnish contemporaries of Jean Sibelius, under whom he studied privately from 1908 to 1910.

Leevi Madetoja's idiom is notably introverted for a national Romantic composer, a blend of Finnish melancholy, folk melodies from his native region of Ostrobothnia, and the elegance and clarity of the French symphonic tradition, founded on Cesar Franck and guided by Vincent d'Indy.

Leevi Madetoja was an influential music critic, primarily with the newspaper Helsingin sanomat, in which he reviewed the music scenes of France and Finland, praising Sibelius in particular.

Leevi Madetoja studied the violin and piano on his own and played the mouth organ as a boy.

Additionally, Leevi Madetoja became a skilled kantele player: he received a 10-string kantele on his tenth birthday, and in secondary school at the Oulu Lyceum, he upgraded to a 30-string version.

In 1906, Leevi Madetoja enrolled at the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki Music Institute, where he studied music theory, composition, and piano under Armas Jarnefelt and Erik Furuhjelm.

At the Music Institute, Leevi Madetoja's premiered his first compositions at student concerts: in December 1908, the Op.

Leevi Madetoja's interest in the Paris music scene was a result of the enthusiastic reports of his composer-friend, Toivo Kuula, who had earlier studied in the city.

Leevi Madetoja earned little as an assistant conductor and thus supplemented his income as a music critic for Uusi Suometar, becoming well known for his articles on the French music scene and his recurring travels to Paris.

Leevi Madetoja found the group in a state of devastation: he was able to piece together 19 musicians, a reality that forced him to spend much of his time finding and arranging material for such an undersized ensemble.

In 1919, Leevi Madetoja expanded the piece into a three-movement suite, renaming it The Garden of Death, Op.

When Kuula refused the opportunity, the commission fell to Leevi Madetoja, who had expressed interest in the project.

Indeed, with The Ostrobothnians, Leevi Madetoja succeeded where his teacher, Jean Sibelius, famously had failed: in the creation of a Finnish national opera, a watershed moment for a country lacking an operatic tradition of its own.

Indeed, today Juha is most associated with Merikanto, whose modernist Juha is the more enduringly popular of the two; having been displaced by Merikanto's, Leevi Madetoja's Juha is rarely performed.

Leevi Madetoja's final completed piece was Matkamies for female choir, written in the year of his death.

Leevi Madetoja left plans for a number of never-realized works, including a violin concerto, a requiem mass, a third opera, and Ikavyys, a composition for voice and piano after Aleksis Kivi.

Leevi Madetoja is buried at Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki, a national landmark and frequent tourist attraction that features the graves of famous Finnish military figures, politicians, and artists.

Later in life, during Sibelius's fiftieth birthday celebrations, Leevi Madetoja recounted the way in which he had, as a young man, reacted to the news:.

That Leevi Madetoja's own musical style shows the mark of Sibelius is a testament to the longer duration and greater depth of his instruction under Sibelius; Kuula, who only briefly studied with Sibelius, shows no such influence.

Leevi Madetoja was clearly fond of his teacher and enjoyed Sibelius's counsel and company:.

Sibelius followed Leevi Madetoja's rise with the pride of a teacher.

Certainly Leevi Madetoja's rise coincided with Sibelius's increasing sense of isolation:.

Leevi Madetoja was "scarcely aware" of Sibelius's private musings to his diary, and for his part, he continued as a critic and writer to champion actively his former teacher.

Stylistically, Leevi Madetoja belongs to the national Romantic school, along with Finnish contemporaries Armas Jarnefelt, Robert Kajanus, Toivo Kuula, Erkki Melartin, Selim Palmgren, and Jean Sibelius; with the exception of Okon Fuoko, Leevi Madetoja's music, darkly colored but tonal, is not particularly modernist in outlook, certainly not when compared directly with the outputs of Uuno Klami, Aarre Merikanto, Ernest Pingoud, and Vaino Raitio.

Finally, Leevi Madetoja wrote little for chamber ensemble after his student years, although it is unclear if this was due to insufficient skill or waning interest in the genre.

The core of Leevi Madetoja's oeuvre is his set of three symphonies, perhaps the most significant contribution to the genre of Finnish national Romantic composers, post-Sibelius.

Each of Leevi Madetoja's symphonies is "unique and distinct", a testament to his "true talent for symphonic composition".

Leevi Madetoja's Second, in E-flat major is a dramatic "war symphony" in which the composer contemplates personal loss during the Civil War.

Relative to The Ostrobothnians, with Juha Leevi Madetoja takes a "more symphonic, refined" approach, one that eschews folk tunes, despite the nationalistic themes of the libretto.

In recent decades, Leevi Madetoja has begun to enjoy the renaissance Parland foresaw, as the recording projects of numerous Nordic orchestras and conductors evidence.

Leevi Madetoja concludes, "I can't imagine anyone being thrilled by them [the symphonies] or considering Madetoja a great discovery".