Dear members,
Some time ago I recorded a short piece by
Erkki Melartin from a Finnish radio station. It was called “
Pohjolan Häät”. While Pohjola means something like “Northland”, häät means “wedding.” The announcer also told us that this was an overture (alkusoitto).
I found two links relating to that piece:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/hjp/Melartin/EMop179.pdfThis states that “
Pohjolan häät” was written in 1902 and belongs to the category of incidental music.
I tried to make an automatic translation but I couldn’t understand much. The author assumes that the high opus number is either a mistake or the old and sick composer wanted to give the impression that he was still active by giving a high opus number to an early work.
But the Finnish Music Information Center has these two entries:
http://www.fimic.fi/fimic/nuotisto.nsf/0/7A175A9DB0F6E898C225687E002ADA19?opendocument(This means the incidental music written in 1902)
http://www.fimic.fi/fimic/nuotisto.nsf/0/EE302B00562AA098C225687E002ADDA7?opendocument(This means an orchestral overture which was written in 1929)
I am not sure if the two works are related. Is it possible, that Melartin reworked earlier material in 1929 and gave it the opus number 179? Or did he simply extract the overture from the early incidental music and presented it as an autonomous work?
Perhaps we have some Finnish speaking members here? :)
Mathias
