Armas Launis (1884-1959)
A Finnish composer in the context of Nice and France
A man of two countries and several musical traditions, Armas Launis is one of the lesser-known figures of early 20th century Finnish music. Although Tauno Karila (in Composers of Finland, 1965) claimed that “Launis won recognition as a composer not only in Finland but also in France, where his works have also been performed,” the reality is less rosy. The scarcity of bibliographical material on the man and his work is matched only by the rarity of sound recordings. After Kaj Maasalo in 1969 and before H. I. Lampila in 1997, only Erkki Salmenhaara in 1996 in the History of Finnish Music Suomen musiikin historia vol. 2 actually used the archives that now belong to the University of Helsinki Library.
Launis was, however, the composer of the first Finnish opera to be staged in France. His musical activities were numerous, and he was also the first and only Finnish composer who, before the Second World War, came to live in France and attempted to settle there musically.
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Launis’s musical studies, in the shadow of Sibelius, were influenced by Ilmari Krohn, in whom he found a guide for what would quickly become one of his major interests: ethnomusicology, the basis of his doctorate in 1911, and for a second area of interest, teaching. But his primary focus remained composition, which he studied in 1907–1908 in Berlin at the Stern Conservatory with Wilhelm Klatte and in Weimar, with brief periods spent in Scandinavia, Russia, and Central Europe.
Having earned his doctorate in 1911 and become an Associate Professor at the University of Helsinki, he taught there from 1918 to 1922. He was also elected a member of the Kalevala Society and the Finnish Academy of Sciences in 1920, but his most significant role remains as the founder of the Finnish Folk Conservatories, which he established in 1922. These institutions, under a new name, still exist today. He palyed a key role in the creation and development of this type of music school throughout the country.
From 1904 (String Quartet in C major) until 1930, the year he settled in Nice, three essential works marked his career: three operas, beginning with The Seven Brothers (Seitsemän veljestä – 1913), based on a libretto (1911) he wrote after the work of the same name by Aleksis Kivi. In 1914, he adapted Kullervo’s story, setting it to music in 1917. The opera premiered that same year, rekindling Sibelius’s regret (who did not attend the premiere) that he had never written an opera on the subject. In 1921, after composing one of the very first film scores in Finland for The Karelian Wedding (Häidenvietto Karjalan runomailla), followed by incidental music for Simoun (1928), he began work on a third libretto for an opera inspired by his travels in Lapland, Aslak Hetta, for which he would later write the music in Nice.
Launis’s life was marked by an intense curiosity and a love of travel that only diminished due to the war and his family’s settling down in Nice. His fieldwork in Karelia, Ingria, and Lapland remains relevant for contemporary researchers. After exploring the east and north of his country, he turned his attention to Estonia. From 1920 onward, his travels took him to the Basque Country, Spain, Algeria, and then Morocco.
By necessity, and although opera seems to have remained a constant preoccupation, Launis primarily wrote orchestral works in Nice, curiously neglecting the realm of chamber music, which still offered greater ease of performance and publication.
Original text in French
