Yrjö Henrik Kilpinen (4 February 18922 March 1959) was a Finnish

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

. He was born in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

, and in 1907 he started his studies in the Helsingin Musiikkiopisto (later named Sibelius Academy). In 1910 Kilpinen moved to

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

to continue his studies and from 1913 to 1914 he studied in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. He travelled extensively in Scandinavia and central Europe, especially Germany. He became an honorary professor in 1942 and was elected to the Finnish Academy in 1948. Kilpinen is most famous for composing 790 works in the

Lieder In the Western classical music tradition, ( , ; , ; ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German and Dutch, but among English and French speakers, is often used interchangea ...

style. Among his other works were six

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement (Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with two movemen ...

s, a

violin sonata A violin sonata is a musical composition for violin, often accompanied by a keyboard instrument and in earlier periods with a bass instrument doubling the keyboard bass line. The violin sonata developed from a simple Baroque music, baroque form wi ...

and a

cello sonata A cello sonata is piece written sonata form, often with the instrumentation of a cello taking solo role with piano accompaniment. Some of the earliest cello sonatas were composed in the 18th century by Francesco Geminiani and Antonio Vivaldi, and ...

. During the 1930s and 1940s he was internationally the most well-known Finnish composer after

Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius (; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic music, Romantic and 20th-century classical music, early modern periods. He is widely regarded as his countr ...

. Kilpinen's friendship with the German national-socialistic leaders brought him a bad name after the war, after which he was more or less a "persona non grata" in Finland. Kilpinen remains a controversial figure to this very day despite the continuous popularity of his music — him being a Nazi-sympathiser still casts a dark shadow upon his reputation as well as his extensive history of pedophilia; which included him impregnating underage girls. In April 1999, the North American Yrjö Kilpinen Society came into existence. The

Sousa Archives and Center for American Music The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music (SACAM) documents Music of the United States, American music through historical artifacts and Archive, archival records in multiple formats. The center is part of the University of Illinois at Urb ...

at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

holds the Jeffrey Sandborg Collection of Yrjo Kilpinen Music, 1920–1940, which consists of published scores, manuscripts (originals and facsimiles), newspaper and journal articles, concert programs, photographs, phonograph and reel-to-reel recordings.

Literature

External links

Kimmo Korhonen: Inventing Finnish Music – Contemporary Composers from Medieval to Modern
retrieved October 4, 2006

References

1892 births 1959 deaths Neoclassical composers Finnish Nazis Finnish male classical composers 20th-century Finnish male musicians Controversies in Finland Child sexual abuse in Finland 20th-century Finnish composers {{finland-composer-stub