From Approaching to Astonishment

Have you heard of Toivo Kuula? Until a couple of years ago his name was completely unknown to Iris Pfeiffer. Though the a-cappella-piece is a jewel of late Romantic choral music…

Have you heard of Toivo Kuula? Until a couple of years ago his name was completely unknown to me. Our choir conductor had devised a program of unaccompanied works based around the four elements, and asked me to bring the music for Kuula’s “Auringon noustessa” (At sunrise) hot off the press from the Carus warehouse to a choir rehearsal. Before the first sing-through, a brief moment of apprehension in the choir: did we really dare to tackle the Finnish text? We decided to use the German singing text, even though this adaptation poses quite a few puzzles too, and requires thorough familiarity. (Veikko A. Koskenniemi, whose poem was set by Kuula, is one of the best-known Finnish poets; his works include the text of Sibelius’ Finlandia.) A cautious approach to the finely-drawn atmospheric picture of a sunrise in the city followed, then great astonishment about the wonderful structures of sound, and in later rehearsals we were increasingly engulfed by the passion with which Kuula set the final words: “Schau, o mein Herz, wie aus bitterer Qual ewig strahlt die Klarheit ewiger Wahrheit” (Look, o my heart, how the clarity of eternal truth shines everlastingly from bitter torment). Through singing it, “Auringon noustessa” has become a favorite piece, a jewel of late Romantic choral music which can produce goose pimples amongst singers and audiences alike. With its short duration of just four minutes, it offers a tremendous amount musically: tender pianissimo washes of sound, a short fugato, a sonorous four-part passage for male voices, the grand gesture at the end.

And now a word about Toivo Kuula. He was the first composition student of Jean Sibelius, who had a considerable influence on him, like the contemporary French composers whose music he encountered on a study trip. In Finnish music history Kuula is regarded as a tragic-romantic figure, partly because of his turbulent nature, and partly because of his early dramatic death: in May 1918, towards the end of the Finnish Civil War, he was shot by a drunken officer in an argument at the age of just 35. In his native country he received much recognition, particularly for his vocal compositions. Kuula’s Stabat Mater for chorus and orchestra, which he was working on at the time of his death, is regarded as his most important work.

“Kuula was a brilliant, tempestuous, glowing representative of Finland’s burgeoning music and his brief lifetime achieved only what can usually be called a composer’s ‘first’ or early period.” Erkki Salmenhaara