The Composer
Armas Launis was mainly an opera composer. He wrote 10 operas (both libretto and music). Several were performed:
- In Finland: "The Seven Brothers" (1913), the first Finnish opera comique, and "Kullervo" (1917), both in full stage performance, and a concert performance of "Aslak Hetta" in 2004 at Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, directed by Sakari Oramo.
- In France: stage performance of Kullervo (1940, Nice, Palais de la Méditerranée) with radio broadcasts on Paris-Inter and Radio Monte-Carlo (1938–1940). A short version of "Jehudith" was also broadcast in 1954 (Paris-Inter)
Armas Launis also wrote chamber music pieces, cantatas, choruses, suites for orchestra and the music of the first Finnish ethnographic film "A wedding in Karelia, the land of poetry" (1921).
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Famous quotes containing the word composer:
“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.”
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“Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”
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