Meeting in Music: Melartin Erkki

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Following the guide below you will be able to create the ultimate HQ rip and upload for sharing here at the Meeting in Music Internet Community or on your own blog if you have one.

RIPPING A CD USING EXACT AUDIO COPY (EAC)

1. Start Exact Audio Copy and load the clean and scratchless CD into you drive.
2. Pressing ALT+G will pull track and album info from the FreeDB database if this feature is set up properly.
3. If no info is found the CD is not registered in the database and you will have to type in the info manually.
4. Adjust the Drive Settings according to the model of your drive and enable the ”Create Log-file” option.
5. Adjust the Compression Settings to rip in Flac format at 768 kBit/s. Alternatively rip in the Ape fomat.
6. Rip the CD by pressing Action -> Test & Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet -> Compressed...
7. Check the log-file to see if any ripping errors or AccurateRip inaccuracies were registered.

SCANNING THE COVERS OF THE ALBUM

1. Scans of the front and back covers should be included if available as should the booklet. 300dpi is standard.

COMPRESSING THE FOLDER USING WINRAR

1. Wrap the audio files and images in a folder marked the composer and album name etc.
2. Set Compression method to ”Store” and the volume size to 200000000. Add a 3% recovery record.
3. Compress the folder using a not-too-obvious filename.

UPLOADING TO A FILEHOST AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD

Now all you need to do is to upload the rar-files to a filehost of your choice. Mega.nz is the standard and most stable option but there are many others and some services even feature upload to multiple filehosts. Finally the download links are ready to be presented on your blog.

THE MEDIEVAL ERA (600 - 1450)

At around 500 AD, western civilization began to emerge from the period known as “The Dark Ages”, the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths overran Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating “Holy” Crusades against the East, establishing universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art and literature

During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.

Secular music was sung all over Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France, and it was during the Middle Ages that western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guilliame de Machaut.

THE RENAISSANCE ERA (1450 - 1600)

Generally considered to be from c.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means “rebirth”) was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe.

With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.

The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

THE BAROQUE ERA (1600 - 1750)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (c.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.

THE CLASSICAL ERA (1750 - 1820)

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.

At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical centre of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next several decades. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.

THE ROMANTIC ERA (1820 - 1910)

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

Composers like Antonin Dvorak began looking for ways in which they could express the musical soul of their homelands. Legends were therefore used as plots for operas, and folk melodies and dance rhythms were frequently used as inspiration for symphonies and instrumental music.

With the continued enhancement of instruments, plus the invention of new ones, the late Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ERA (1910 - 1960)

In the early part of the twentieth century music became either outwardly expressive (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, the huge symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or more introverted (as in the so-called “impressionist” music of Claude Debussy). The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Béla Bartók.

In a time of deepening psychological awareness, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time.

Twentieth-century music has seen a great coming and going of various movements, among them post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism in the earlier years of the century, all of which were practiced at one time or another by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Many of the greatest and best-known composers of the century, including Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich along with British composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten were those who wrote music directly descended from the approved models of the past, while investing these forms with a style and modernistic tone of their own.

THE LATE 20TH CENTURY ERA (1940 - 2000)

Composers of this era sought to free music from its rigidity, placing the performance above the composition. Similarly, many composers sought to break from traditional performance rituals by incorporating theatre and multimedia into their compositions, going beyond sound itself to achieve their artistic goals. In some cases the line is difficult to draw between genres. Composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. As early as the 1940s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as well.

The musique concrète of the late 1940s and ’50s was produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds. Steve Reich created music by manipulating tape recordings of people speaking, and later went on to compose process music for traditional instruments based on such recordings. Other notable pioneers of electronic music include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

As more electronic technology matured, so did the music. In the 1950s aleatoric music was first championed by American composer John Cage. Early minimalist compositions of the 1960s such as those by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass stemmed from aleatoric and electronic music.

THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (from 1975)

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, with composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the more popular “mystic minimalism” variant.

Recently there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools of composition to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

1/02/2009

Erkki Melartin (1875-1937)-A symphonic composer of international stature?

In my search for unknown neglected music I found this name Melartin and then I listen to his symphonies and discover six gems probably oversadowed by his great contemporain Sibelius. I post this article to share with you and let us know more of this great composer..

Horacio

A symphonic Composer of International Stature?
by Osmo Tapio Räihälä

It is finally time for Erkki Melartin to emerge from "the shadow of Sibelius", nearly 63 years after his death. Is Melartin a symphonic composer of international stature or merely one of those "harlots and their pimps", as Gustav Mahler termed the "national geniuses" in music?

The shadow of Sibelius is an utterly fascinating phenomenon. In the normal course of things, the Björn Borg phenomenon is the rule: one supremely talented figure attracts potential talent that is not only noticed but actively searched for. What happened in Finnish music in the wake of Sibelius was the exact opposite.
Sibelius was creating a fantastic international career before the First World War and attained a permanent standing in concert repertoires throughout the Western world - so much so that he is widely regarded as the most significant 19th-century composer of the 20th century. Regardless of this, it was difficult for other Finnish composers, however talented, to gain any kind of international recognition after him. Any ground won was soon lost. It was not until the past two decades or so that some few Finnish composers have achieved genuine international recognition, such as Sallinen, Rautavaara or Lindberg.

Why was this? Since the music of Sibelius cannot be decisively ranked as "better" on any unambiguous scale than the music of Leevi Madetoja, Aarre Merikanto or Erkki Melartin, for instance, must we be content with the explanation that Sibelius just had better timing, or perhaps even just better luck?
It is true that the music of Sibelius was championed by influential music writers and vociferous conductors, and the Violin Concerto was a real hit. Still, Erkki Melartin had a composition concert in Berlin in November 1923, with the composer himself conducting the Berlin Philharmonic - an achievement as fantastic for a Finnish composer then as it would be now.
Melartin was well known in Scandinavia and in Central and Western Europe too, at least in professional circles. He had no lack of good contacts. He spoke numerous languages, and thus did not even qualify as a typical backwoods Finn who is unable to market himself.

Symphonies without proponents

Melartin considered himself primarily a symphonic composer, and he had no difficulties in getting his works performed. It is thus astonishing that Melartin's symphonies have not been published. Only the last one, the Sixth, has appeared in print, and even this was due to his Danish friends Nanni and Frits Jarl, who donated the printing to Melartin for his 60th birthday and to whom the symphony is also dedicated. Is this an explanation for why, after Melartin's death in 1937, his symphonies have been seldom performed in Finland and abroad scarcely ever - Melartin's symphonies had no proponents? The symphonies were revived in the 1990s in a series of recordings made by the Tampere City Orchestra under Leonid Grin for the Ondine label. The Violin Concerto has now been recorded too, also by the Tampere City Orchestra, which has shown an admirable amount of interest in supposedly obscure Finnish composers. The orchestra's symphonic repertoire has included names like Erkki Aaltonen and Truvor Svento, who are nowhere near as significant as Melartin.
It is utterly amazing that publishers have not been interested in Melartin's symphonies. One would have imagined that even before his composition concert in Berlin it would have crossed the minds of Central European publishers that there must be other cash cows in Scandinavia besides Sibelius - after all, the music business was a grim struggle in those days too.
Prof. Erkki Salmenhaara wrote in Suomen musiikin historia (History of Finnish music) that the symphonies of Melartin are well up to international standards. Proving this has been another thing altogether, since the scores exist only as scruffy photocopies of Melartin's ancient scrawls and of manuscript copies made by heaven knows who. Significant symphonies, indeed!
The Björn Borg phenomenon did manifest itself once when Sibelius refused a chair at Rochester University. Selim Palmgren was eventually appointed instead. Never mind which composer, as long as he is Finnish

The healing effect of work

Erkki Melartin was born in the rural parish of Käkisalmi in Karelia in 1875. In the Second World War, the area was ceded to the Soviet Union. Although Melartin moved to Helsinki to study at an early age and stayed there permanently apart from a few years in Viipuri, he remained a fundamentally Karelian composer. He emphasized this by using Karelian motifs in his works. His output was extensive; although it has only 189 opus numbers, these represent a total of nearly 1,000 compositions. This is a lot, especially considering Melartin's weak health. It seems that sanatoriums did him little good - the composer evidently felt better only when he was working at full tilt.
Apart from the six symphonies, Melartin wrote a post-Wagnerian opera, Aino (1909), countless choral and solo songs, incidental music and chamber music and the magnificent Violin Concerto recently resurrected by violinist and conductor John Storgårds. Apparently it was Melartin's dream to reach the magic total of nine symphonies, but he never completed more than a few sketches for the Seventh and the Eighth, and the Ninth existed only as an entry in his composition plan at the moment of his death.
Melartin's prolific and multi-faceted output was also a liab ility: he has often been dismissed as a salon composer, perhaps because of his light-hearted miniatures. This is a gross injustice to him, since all of his work displays a solid command of technique, regardless of form or expression.
Melartin was a tireless seeker who gathered influences from hither and yon: his music betrays the influence of Bruckner and Mahler as well as the turbulent Impressionism of Debussy. The Modernism of the 1920s also left its mark on Melartin: his later works contain Expressionist features, questioning the late Romantic tonal environment of his earlier works. However, classical counterpoint and folk music remained essential features of his work throughout his career.
Apart from his composing, Melartin held the post of director at the Helsinki Conservatory - later the Sibelius Academy - for 25 years and taught nearly all emerging Finnish composers of any significance in the 1920s and '30s. Melartin was also an amateur painter and even held two solo exhibitions.

You can download the six symphonies of Melartin from here
Melartin Symphonies READ MORE...