Armas Otto Aapo Väisänen (9 April 1890 – 18 July 1969) fi, was an eminent Finnish scholar of

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

, an

ethnographer Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

and

ethnomusicologist Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...

. Väisänen was born in

Savonranta Savonranta is a former municipality of Finland. It became part of Savonlinna in early 2009. It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Southern Savonia region. The municipality had a population of 1,263 (2003) and cov ...

. In the early twentieth century he documented, in recordings and photographs, traditional Finnish and

Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...

music and musicians. With a scholarship from the

Finno-Ugrian Society Finno-Ugrian Society (french: Société Finno-Ougrienne, fi, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura) is a Finnish learned society, dedicated to the study of Uralic and Altaic languages. It was founded in Helsinki in 1883 by the proposal of professor Otto D ...

Väisänen traveled to Russia in 1914 to collect Finno-Ugric folk melodies. He made field trips to

Mordovia The Republic of Mordovia (russian: Респу́блика Мордо́вия, r=Respublika Mordoviya, p=rʲɪsˈpublʲɪkə mɐrˈdovʲɪjə; mdf, Мордовия Республиксь, ''Mordovija Respublikś''; myv, Мордовия Рес ...

Ingria Ingria is a historical region in what is now northwestern European Russia. It lies along the southeastern shore of the Gulf of Finland, bordered by Lake Ladoga on the Karelian Isthmus in the north and by the River Narva on the border with Est ...

, Veps, Russian

Karelia Karelia ( Karelian and fi, Karjala, ; rus, Каре́лия, links=y, r=Karélija, p=kɐˈrʲelʲɪjə, historically ''Korjela''; sv, Karelen), the land of the Karelian people, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for ...

. His activities also marked the a new stage in the history of collecting

Seto Seto may refer to: Places *Seto, Aichi, production place of Japanese pottery and venue of Expo 2005 *Seto, Ehime, facing the Seto Inland Sea *Seto, Okayama, adjacent to Okayama, in Okayama Prefecture *Seto Inland Sea of Japan *Setomaa (''Seto la ...

folk songs in Southern

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

. After the first trip in 1912 he made 6 fieldtrips to Estonia between 1912 and 1923. A. O. Väisänen's dissertation was presented in 1939 on Ob-Ugrian folk music in german: Untersuchungen über die Ob-ugrischen Melodien: eine vergleichende Studien nebst methodischer Einleitung. Between 1926 and 1957 Väisänen hold the position of the head of the folk music department at the

Sibelius Academy The Sibelius Academy ( fi, Taideyliopiston Sibelius-Akatemia, sv, Sibelius-Akademin vid Konstuniversitetet) is part of the University of the Arts Helsinki and a university-level music school which operates in Helsinki and Kuopio, Finland. It als ...

, Helsinki, Finland. He was the professor of musicology at

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

from 1956 to 1959. He died in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

, aged 79.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaisanen, Armas Otto 1890 births 1969 deaths People from Savonlinna People from Mikkeli Province (Grand Duchy of Finland) Finnish ethnographers University of Helsinki alumni Academic staff of the University of Helsinki