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VELJO TORMIS
TALLINN UNIVERSITY, M-649
SATURDAY, 2 JUNE
09:00-12:00
Veljo Tormis (b.1930), one of the most prominent
Estonian composers, is a master of large-scale choral
composition. Be it his monumental song cycles or
extensive dramatic choral works, Tormis’s colourful,
nearly orchestral style of writing for voices is always
remarkable.
Veljo Tormis was the firstborn son of a musicloving
farmer, who became the köster (i.e. organist
and precentor) at the parish church of Vigala, west
Estonia, when Veljo was 6 years old. His father
conducted the local choir, rehearsals took place at their home, his mother singing
among altos. This early experience of choral life, involvement with national ideas and
feelings related to the Estonian choral movement, was certainly important for the
future composer. In the age of 12 Veljo Tormis came to Tallinn to study organ at the
Conservatory. That was war-time, two years before the Soviet invasion connected
Estonia to the Soviet Union for the coming 50 years. The organ class, traditionally
related to church service, was closed, and for a year Tormis studied choral conducting.
In 1951 he continued his studies as a composer at the Moscow Conservatory with
professor Vissarion Shebalin, graduating in 1956. Shebalin supported his student’s
interest in national style based on the use of folk music. However, the breakthrough
of modern composition techniques and antiromantic attitude towards folk music took
place between 1960-1965 as a result of his acquaintance with authentic sound and
rhythm of peasant songs at some remote Estonian villages, impressions of the music
by Carl Orff in the late 1950s, and analysis of choral music by Zoltán Kodály after a
visit to Hungary in 1962. In the end of the decade Tormis finished his first great cycle
“Estonian Calendar Songs” (1967) for a male and a female chorus in which the primeval
enchanting power of ancient folk tunes used as the material for original choral songs
was fully exposed.
In Estonian culture choral music has had outstanding role as a popular movement
of amateur choruses with all-national song festivals in every five years, a movement
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