Aamulaulu Op.2, No.3 (1905)

Syystunnelma Op.2 No.1 (1905)

A great Finnish song composer, Sibelius was not a great composer of Finnish song. Of all his songs, not far short of ninety are in Swedish, which was his first language, and only a handful are in Finnish. So, while he dominated most of areas of Finnish music in the early years of the twentieth century, it was his younger contemporaries - not least his pupils Toivo Kuula and Leevi Madetoja - who were responsible for the early development of the Finnish song repertoire. Like Madetoja, Kuula was a native of Ostrobothnia and a keen collector of the folk song of that province, which inevitably had a profound influence on his style as a composer. That is clear enough from Aamulaulu, one of the earliest of his many settings of words by the Finnish national poet Eino Leino: apart from the change of harmony and melodic material in the second of the three stanzas, it could almost be a folk song. Another Leino setting from the same set, Syystunnelma is a more sophisticated composition in both its emotively coloured piano part and its liberated construction.