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First name: Armas
Last name: Launis
Dates: 1884-1959
Category: Quartet
Nationality: finnish
Opus name: Kullervo (arr.Alex Freeman)
Publisher: Fimic 21055
Peculiarities: to buy: FIMIC http://www.fimic.fi/fimic/fimic.nsf/WSMLP?readform&link=wadvancedhaku?openform&cat=sheet_music_library
Information: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Armas Launis (April 22, 1884 - August 7, 1959), was a Finnish composer as well as an ethnomusicologist, a professor, a writer and a journalist. He was born in Hämeenlinna. Armas Launis was mainly an opera composer. He wrote 10 operas (both libretto and music). Several were performed: In Finland: "The Seven Brothers" (1913), the first Finnish opera comique, and "Kullervo" (1917), both in full stage performance, and a concert performance of "Aslak Hetta" in 2004 at Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, directed by Sakari Oramo. Armas Launis also wrote chamber music pieces, cantatas, choruses, suites for orchestra and the music of the first Finnish ethnographic film "A wedding in Karelia, the land of poetry" (1921). Launis was one of the first scholars to collect and do research on folk music. He was very open-minded, passionately fond of travels which he undertook alone, eager to meet other people and to listen to them. He travelled to Lapland (1904, 1905, 1922), to Kainuu (1902), to Ingria (1903, 1906), Karelia (1902, 1905) and Estonia (1930). Everywhere, he was happy to meet local people, had long conversations with them, jotting dowwn popular melodies, also recording famous singers, hired mourners and kantele players. Launis understood the richness and vitality of sung poetry together with the importance of folklore. His numerous publications and the corpus he collected are still being recognized and used nowadays and are valuable additions to the common inheritance of the nation. Later, he travelled and stayed in North Africa, got interest in Arabic, Berber and Bedouin music. This influence can be felt in later works, especially the operas Théodora and Jéhudith. Armas Launis had a PhD (1911) and was full Professor at the University of Helsinki where he taught musical analysis and composition. He completed his studies in Berlin with Wilhelm Klatte and in Weimar with Waldemar von Baussenern. Deeply concerned with the opening of musical education for everyone, he founded the first popular conservatories in Finland which still exist and that he directed until 1930. As early as 1920, he received a life pension from the Finnish State with the permission to live abroad.