Finnish Tango: Sallinen’s Language of Love, Fantasy, and Fatalism

P irjo Kukkonen suggests that tango lyrics reflect ‘the personality, mentality and identity of the Finnish people in the same way as folk poetry does.’ The central themes of Finnish tango lyrics are love, sorrow, nature and the countryside. Many tangos express a longing for the old homestead, or a distant land of happiness... Many critics see Satumaa as a prototype of the Finnish tango. Satumaa (Fairytale Land) is about a distant land across the wide ocean. But only birds can fly to this land of happiness; wingless man must remain chained to the soil.”
  —  Pekka Gronow, Yleisradio Finland.

S atumaa is the quintessential Finnish tango. It was written by Unto Mononen, published in 1955. The most famous recording is probably the one made by Reijo Taipale in 1962. The song has been recorded countless times, mainly by male Finnish tango singers. The most unlikely artist performing it is perhaps Frank Zappa, who played it as a request at a live show recorded in Helsinki in 1974. It was released on ‘You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2’.”
  —  Wikipedia.

    [50-sec clip, Aulis Sallinen, Introduction & Tango Overture, Op. 74b, Virtuosi di Kuhmo, 1.8MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Aulis Sallinen, Introduction & Tango Overture, Op. 74b, Virtuosi di Kuhmo, 1.5MB MP3]


Autumn drizzle and winter sunsets: symbols of hopes dashed. A world devoid of people; lilypads that stretch as far as the eye can see: symbols of a vegetal supremacy that will triumph over humankind when we have finally destroyed civilization. A wandering piano traipses through uncertain minor keys: symbol of life’s vicissitudes. There’s a fado-like, saudades-like feel to this beautiful, troubling piece—concertino, concerto-like. The boundary between small chamber ensemble writing and chamber orchestral or symphonic writing is blurred.

This piece was originally composed in 1997 for piano quintet, commissioned by the Kitakyushu International Music Festival in Japan. Subsequent versions came to have larger orchestrations—the one on this CD, for example.


Sallinen’s notations on the score say that the Introduction is derived from a theme from the end of his 7th Symphony—the three-note piano figure that sprouts and pervades this whole piece. Six minutes in, we get an indication in the piano left-hand of what is to come: a change from 3/4 to 4/4 time (or, really, a polyrhythm 8/8 insidiously beat as 3-3-2 by some of the parts, against the majority in 4/4).

The lyricism persists—now with more vigor than before. And then we reach the end. The unresolved chord drifts off—these characters in the Introduction & Tango Overture were itinerants who’ve moved on? In any case, it is not a death or a real end; there is no conclusion here, only an implacable regard. Life! Stuff happens! Sometimes cinematically.

Or maybe it’s a sort of fatalism. This life will be lived by each of us one time only, and therefore Epicureanism and Exoticism are ways of asserting our cultural uniqueness and also ways of defying our eventual losses and mortality. Carpe diem! Exotisk Finnish Tango!

A avan meren tuolla puolen jossakin on maa,
Missä onnen kaukorantaan laine liplattaa—
Missä kukat kauneimmat luo aina loistettaan;
Siellä huolet huomisen voi jäädä unholaan.

Oi jospa kerran sinne satumaahan käydä vois,
Niin sieltä koskaan lähtisi en linnun lailla pois.
Vaan siivetönnä en voi lentää vanki olen maan;
Vain aatoksin mi kauas entää sinne käydä saan.

[There’s a land beyond the vast sea
 Where waves lap the shores of happiness—
 Where beautiful flowers always bloom;
 Where worries of tomorrow can be forgotten.

 Oh, if I could but go to Satumaa, that fairytale land,
 Never would I leave it like the birds.
 But without wings I cannot fly—I’m a prisoner, earthbound;
 Only in far-reaching thoughts can I ever go there.]”
  — Satumaa, Unto Mononen

• Virtuosi di Kuhmo. Aulis Sallinen: Chamber Musics III, IV, V. (CPO, 2007.)
  
• Grigera D, Monteleone G. ¿Qué dice el Tango? Aguilar-Galella, 2004.
  
• Kukkonen P. Tango Nostalgia: The Language of Love and Longing. Helsinki Univ, 1996. ISBN 951-570-286-0.
  
• Sallinen page at Chester Novello
  
• Sallinen page at FIMIC
  
• Virtuosi di Kuhmo website
  
• Kuhmo Arts Centre
  
• Finnish Music Information Centre (FIMIC) website
  
• Hakasalo I. The melancholy Finnish tango. FIMIC essay.
  
• Jaakkola J. The Finnish Tango: Its history and characteristics. FIMIC essay.
  
• Pirjo Kukkonen page at Univ Helsinki
  
• DSM. Kuhmo: Festivalism in the Finnish Forest. CMT blog, 05-JAN-2007.
  
• DSM. Portuguese Baroque: A não perder! CMT blog, 12-JAN-2008.

Portuguese Baroque: A não perder!

E mbora condicionado pelo idioma cravístico italiano, Seixas exibe em algumas sonatas uma técnica idiossincrática plenamente desenvolvida e extremamente exigente, de características paralelas à técnica desenvolvida mais tarde por Domenico Scarlatti. A sua inspiração canaliza-se frequentemente para o domínio da invenção melódica, em especial nos andamentos lentos e em certos minuetes, onde não raras vezes perpassa um característico afecto melancólico ou, talvez, saudoso.
[Although conditioned by the Italian vernacular, Seixas shows in some of his harpsichord sonatas a technical idiosyncrasy, a fully developed virtuosity on a par with the one developed later by Domenico Scarlatti. Seixas’s muse often channels itself in the service of melodic invention, especially in the slow movements and in minuets, where it evokes a characteristic melancholy or, perhaps, a saudades-type wistfulness for what once was—for what we are as human beings, in light of what we once were or have the possibility yet to become.]”
  —  João Pedro D’Alvarenga, 2003.

    [50-sec clip, Carlos Seixas, Piano Sonata No. 18, Largo, Débora Halász, 1.5MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Carlos Seixas, Piano Sonata No. 18, Allegro, Débora Halász, 1.7MB MP3]

    [30-sec clip, Carlos Seixas, Piano Sonata No. 18, Adagio, Débora Halász, 0.8MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Carlos Seixas, Piano Sonata No. 18, Allegro, Débora Halász, 1.5MB MP3]

Carlos Seixas’s works reveal a surprisingly original and international sensibility, and this is evident in Débora Halász’s recent recordings and performances. How ‘new’ these Seixas compositions must’ve sounded when they were new! Seixas succeeded in transmuting contemporary influences of the Italian and French baroque with a saudades-like, fado-style nostalgia. Débora Halász’s performances have a forthrightness, a directness—an angularity!—that is consonant with the characteristic cosmopolitan-realist Lusitanian outlook. She is Brasilian, but she plays with this consummate Portuguese feeling—presença do temperamento lusitano.

E que dizer das brutalmente honestas e francas Allegros; do enigmaticamente desalentado e desanimado Largo; ou da liberdade agónica e tragica do Adagio? Deve dizer que são distintamente portugueses! [And what can one say of the brutally honest Allegros (the MP3 clips above); or of the enigmatically despondent Largo; or of the tragic, unabashed impulsiveness of the Adagio? One must say they are, at bottom, Portuguese!]


Carlos Seixas (1704-1742) was born in Coimbra, the son of organist Francisco Vaz. He replaced his father as organist when his father died in 1718. And, from there, Seixas went on to become a renowned composer, knighted and famous throughout Europe. But, prodigy though he may have been, we know that child prodigies don’t always succeed and they don’t succeed on their own. The early premières for illuminati and sponsors tend inevitably to give way to less charitable (ambivalent or even hostile) receptions later on.

T oque áspero de Débora Halász confere vitalidade.
[The ‘rough’ touch of Débora Halász on the keyboard imparts a certain vitality to the music.]”
  —  Indice, Folha de São Paulo, Quinta-feira, 30-MAR-2000.

So, if we accept the idea that musical culture derives from natural social processes and infrastructure, then the free flow of information, goods and people made possible by the political regime during Seixas’s adulthood were what permitted the diversity of influences we hear in his music—permitted these to find their audience, permitted him to find success. Likewise, we find now in Portugal a diversity of government programs that support (albeit in variable and tenuous ways) new music composition and performance. The Gulbenkian, for example, and other state-backed centres’ programs are to be commended for their sponsorship of music as a public good.

N  esta viagem, como no vasto oceano, a linha do horizonte encontra-se sempre à mesma distância, por muito que na sua direcção caminhemos. Viagem sem rumo nem fim.
[In this musical journey, as on the vast ocean, the horizon remains always the same distance away from us, however much we travel toward it. Journeys don’t necessarily have endings. The duty of the composer and performer is not necessarily to bring us into a port-of-call. Truly significant music is emotionally like blue-water sailing or like deep intergalactic space travel—boundless. It causes us to feel out of our ‘depth’. It forces us to confront existential and spiritual realities.]”
  —  Sérgio Azevedo, 2007, A poesia dentro de um piano.

Seixas has a quality of self-criticism and insight, and this, too, must have helped him. His social skills and insight are partly what enabled him to successfully manage the transition from child prodigy to mature successful artist and composer. Correlates of his capacity for self-criticism, Seixas’s ‘modesty’ of orchestration and the ‘openness’ of his polyphony do present daunting expressive risks for the performer, and Halász rises beautifully to each of these challenges. Halász performs on a reproduction of a 1734 Hieronymus Haas instrument on this CD. The production values and equalization on the Naxos recording are excellent. And the combination of fine instrument plus fine engineering/production makes Halász’s playing here especially vivid.


It has been now two years since I was last in Lisboa and experienced the music and culture there. Hearing Débora Halász’s playing makes me realize it’s time to start planning another visit to Portugal. Irá, também?

• Halasz D. Carlos de Seixas Harpsichord Sonatas. (Naxos, 2006.)
  
• Calouste Gulbenkian Music Department
  
• International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music
  
• Miso Música Portugal
  
• Centro de Informaçao da Música Portuguesa