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- Jouni Kaipainen
Accende Lumen Sensibus, Op. 52 (1996)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Helsinki (World)
Programme Note
I composed A.L.S. op. 52 during 1995-96, as a commission by Tapiola Sinfonietta, who gave its first performance March 29, 1996, conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow.
The title comes from the famous hymn ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ by Hrabanus Maurus Magnentius (780-856), more exactly speaking from the middle section of this prayer-like hymn, and it could be translated e.g. ‘Ignite the Light of Senses’. The fact that the most famous musical setting of this poem is the first movement of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony has no significance here. I have only been thinking of the chosen title, according to which the piece radiates a kind of longing for sensuality, especially as far as harmony and form are concerned, the music has been gently escorted close to the earth and the odour of soil. My love for the achievements of the long tradition of culture is, of course, of full weight – I suppose this can easily be heard as an attempt to understand certain phenomena created by human beings during time, as well as true laws of nature.
The subtitle ‘A Concerto for a small Symphony Orchestra’ is the result of a long period of reflection. First of all, it reveals my observation that A.L.S. is, by gesture and mood, a composition of ‘concertante’ character: it includes lots of virtuosity, it stems from the different characters of different instruments, and it proceeds “narratively”. Thus it comes closer to the type of many ‘orchestral concertos’ of our century (20th) than e.g. that of ‘symphony’ or ‘chamber symphony’ – even if quite many critics felt it to resemble a chamber symphony, after all. Secondly, the subtitle tells that here we come forth with something that has practically no history behind it: ‘orchestral concertos’ have (almost) always been composed for large, even gigantic orchestras, and A.L.S. only uses a Beethoven-size one.
A.L.S. falls in several movements, but it is played as one continuum. Thus it may be said to belong to the same genre of one-movement “supersonata” (like Liszt’s Sonata in B minor or Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, or why not Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony). More important than analytical terms, here, is anyway the idea of igniting the light of senses, of opening the vast richness of details of the world.
“He who binds to himself a joy
does the winged life destroy;
but he who kisses the joy as it flies
lives in eternity’s sun-rise.”
(W. Blake)
Jouni Kaipainen
The title comes from the famous hymn ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ by Hrabanus Maurus Magnentius (780-856), more exactly speaking from the middle section of this prayer-like hymn, and it could be translated e.g. ‘Ignite the Light of Senses’. The fact that the most famous musical setting of this poem is the first movement of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony has no significance here. I have only been thinking of the chosen title, according to which the piece radiates a kind of longing for sensuality, especially as far as harmony and form are concerned, the music has been gently escorted close to the earth and the odour of soil. My love for the achievements of the long tradition of culture is, of course, of full weight – I suppose this can easily be heard as an attempt to understand certain phenomena created by human beings during time, as well as true laws of nature.
The subtitle ‘A Concerto for a small Symphony Orchestra’ is the result of a long period of reflection. First of all, it reveals my observation that A.L.S. is, by gesture and mood, a composition of ‘concertante’ character: it includes lots of virtuosity, it stems from the different characters of different instruments, and it proceeds “narratively”. Thus it comes closer to the type of many ‘orchestral concertos’ of our century (20th) than e.g. that of ‘symphony’ or ‘chamber symphony’ – even if quite many critics felt it to resemble a chamber symphony, after all. Secondly, the subtitle tells that here we come forth with something that has practically no history behind it: ‘orchestral concertos’ have (almost) always been composed for large, even gigantic orchestras, and A.L.S. only uses a Beethoven-size one.
A.L.S. falls in several movements, but it is played as one continuum. Thus it may be said to belong to the same genre of one-movement “supersonata” (like Liszt’s Sonata in B minor or Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, or why not Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony). More important than analytical terms, here, is anyway the idea of igniting the light of senses, of opening the vast richness of details of the world.
“He who binds to himself a joy
does the winged life destroy;
but he who kisses the joy as it flies
lives in eternity’s sun-rise.”
(W. Blake)
Jouni Kaipainen