Sep 3, 2024 2:30 PM
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Helvi Leiviskä (1902-1982), the Finnish Symphonist and her French Influences as a cultural and existential semiotics

Helvi Leiviskä (1902-1982), the Finnish Symphonist and her French Influences as a cultural and existential semiotics

Panel:
[PA] 40 Years of Musical Semiotics (Małgorzata Gamrat, Eero Tarasti)
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Speaker:
Eila Tarasti
University of Helsinki
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Helvi Leiviskä is one of those partly forgotten woman composers in her home country and completely ignored elsewhere. However, her output is truly outstanding, displaying high technical skill in composing and original style. With her four symphonies she continues the Sibelian tradition of symphony writing with neoclassical and expressionist influences also from Prokofiev. Nevertheless, in her early output there are works like Piano quartet op. 1 which evokes French late romanticism in the manner of Fauré and Chausson, reaching in its slow movements a visionary sublimity characteristic of Franck, as well. In her piano works later, particularly in Sonatine the neoclassical transparent texture and sense of form remind the listener of Maurice Ravel. Likewise in her vocal work Children Fantasies op. 12 to the poems written by Uuno Kailas, Finland’s leading lyrical poet of the time, she reaches effects of childlike intonation close to Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges and reciting speech like vocal style, somewhat like in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.Altogether Leiviskä’s music is now discovered and recorded as an outstanding case of music written by women composers in the middle twentieth century, and not only as a woman composer. She displays diverse cultural influences from musical semiospheres and traditions of her own country Finland and Austrian-German classical style as well as French musical ambiance. Moreover, in a closer narrative study of her work we discover certain autobiographical elements namely how her theosophical worldview manifests there in a form of a highly original musical vision.

Location:
0.110 room, WLS (Dobra 55 street)

Explore Sessions

02
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9:30
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10:30
Location:
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
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Opening Ceremony

September 2, 2024
Congress events
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
02
September
10:30
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11:30
Location:
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
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September 2, 2024
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
02
September
11:30
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12:15
Location:
Australia Hall, WLS (Dobra 55 street)
Catering
Coffee break [catering]

September 2, 2024
Catering
Australia Hall, WLS (Dobra 55 street)
Eila Tarasti