Veljo Tormis

“I do not use folk song, it is folk song that uses me.”
 
 Veljo Tormis, a composer deeply in tune with his country’s vital tradition of choral singing and ancient folk culture, was born in Kuusalu, Estonia in 1930. Tormis studied at Tallinn and later Moscow Conservatories and when a teacher at Tallinn’s Music High School numbered Arvo Pärt among his students.
 
Many of Tormis’ works are written for choir and based on an ancient form of Estonian folk song called regilaul. He has written: “National musics can also convey religious feelings; they often represent pre-Christian forms of spirituality, which should also be important and meaningful in our integrating world. Old Estonian runo songs certainly communicate the nature worship and rituals of prehistoric times.”
 
Tormis’s music also draws on the folklore of kindred and more distant peoples such as the Ingrians, Setus, Estonians, Latvians, Livonians, Finns, Russians [...]
“I do not use folk song, it is folk song that uses me.”
 
 Veljo Tormis, a composer deeply in tune with his country’s vital tradition of choral singing and ancient folk culture, was born in Kuusalu, Estonia in 1930. Tormis studied at Tallinn and later Moscow Conservatories and when a teacher at Tallinn’s Music High School numbered Arvo Pärt among his students.
 
Many of Tormis’ works are written for choir and based on an ancient form of Estonian folk song called regilaul. He has written: “National musics can also convey religious feelings; they often represent pre-Christian forms of spirituality, which should also be important and meaningful in our integrating world. Old Estonian runo songs certainly communicate the nature worship and rituals of prehistoric times.”
 
Tormis’s music also draws on the folklore of kindred and more distant peoples such as the Ingrians, Setus, Estonians, Latvians, Livonians, Finns, Russians and Bulgarians. In the 1970s and 80s he wrote a cycle of choral works entitled Forgotten Peoples (Unustatud rahvad), which was the composer’s debut recording on ECM. The recording, featuring the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste, was made in 1990 shortly before the break-up of the USSR and released in 1992. Each of the six cycles which make up the piece focuses on the folk music of a particular people.
 
In 2008, the mesmerising physical power of Tormis’s choral writing was again on display in Litany to Thunder.
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