Ikävyys – a song

IKÄVYYS – Aleksis Kivi, music by Luukas Hiltunen

When Finland's national writer Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) passed away at the age of just 38 on December 31, 1872, after a long illness, at the cottage of his brother Alpertti in Syvälahti, Tuusula, Finland's national composer Jean (Janne) Sibelius (1865–1957) had turned seven just a few weeks earlier, on December 8, 1872. The two events were separated by a distance of about 80 kilometers: the Sibeliuses lived in Hämeenlinna, spending their summers with Janne's paternal grandmother, Katarina Fredrika Sibelius (1792–1879), and his aunt, Evelina Sibelius (1832–1893), in Loviisa.

A few years earlier, in 1868, Janne's father, Dr. Christian Gustaf Sibelius (1821–1868), had died of typhoid fever at the age of 46 during the years of severe famine, and the widow, Maria Charlotta Sibelius, née Borg (1841–1897), had been forced to move with her children to live with her mother, Baroness Katarina Borg, née Haartman (1812–1892), as her widow's pension was insufficient to maintain her own home. The estate had been declared bankrupt due to debts guaranteed by Dr. Sibelius but left unpaid by his friends. Just a few months before Kivi's death, in the fall of 1872, Sibelius had begun attending Eva Savonius's (1846–1936) Swedish-language elementary school in Hämeenlinna. Around the same time, he had also begun studying piano under the guidance of his aunt Julia, during which time he learned to read music at the latest.

From around the age of four, Janne had already been exploring chords and melodies on the piano. A few years after Kivi's death, in 1875, Sibelius composed his first piece: the 12-measure, 45-second Vattendroppar (Water Drops), JS 216, for violin and cello pizzicato. During his career, Sibelius set several of Kivi's poems to music, the most famous of which is Sydämeni laulu (Song of My Heart) for male chorus (1898), which in Kivi's oeuvre forms part of the novel Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers, published in 1870).

When Juhani Koivisto, chair of the Sibelius Society of Hämeenlinna and former chief dramaturg at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, contacted me by email on November 28, 2023, and asked for my interest in setting Kivi's poem Ikävyys to music as a song for baritone and piano, I agreed immediately. The song became part of the society's Inspired by Sibelius series of commissioned compositions, in which the society commissions contemporary composers to set to music poems that might have interested Sibelius but which he never composed. The series is based on a thought experiment: what if the aging master, in the silence of Ainola, had still found the inspiration to compose a song? In what direction would his musical idiom have developed?

The commission also marked the 190th anniversary of Aleksis Kivi's birth on October 10, 2024.

My desire to take on this project was both personal and professional. Sibelius's music has been meaningful to me ever since early childhood. At the age of four, his Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 (1915, rev. 1916 and 1919) in its original version was my first encounter with classical music, along with the original version of the tone poem En Saga, Op. 9 (1892, rev. 1902), for orchestra. My career as a professional musician also began with Sibelius's music. After graduating from the Lahti Conservatory as a professional musician on May 30, 2018, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, at the closing concert of the Sibelius Festival on September 8, 2018, as a special addition to the program, performed my transcription for symphony orchestra of Sibelius's organ piece Intrada, Op. 111a (1925). The transcription was produced at the turn of 2017–2018 alongside a symphony orchestra transcription of the organ piece Surusoitto, Op. 111b (1931). In June 2019, Edition Wilhelm Hansen published my arrangement for String Quartet of Sibelius's Scene d'Amour from the ballet pantomime Scaramouche, Op. 71 (1913, rev. 1925), which had received its world premiere at my recital concert at Ristinkirkko (The Church of the Cross) in Lahti on March 23, 2018, performed by the Lahti Conservatory String Quartet.

Ikävyys for baritone and piano was composed in just two days in Tampere in August 2024, completed on August 15, 2024, and had its world premiere on October 6, 2024, at the Wetterhoff House in Hämeenlinna, performed by baritone Jussi Vänttinen and pianist Kristian Attila. These musicians also recorded the song in the concert hall of the Sibelius Academy's Hall R on March 10, 2026, and the recording was released on the same day on my YouTube channel.

Musically, the song Ikävyys echoes Kivi's somber and bleak poem, while also incorporating narrative elements into the text to heighten the impact of its content. The song thus differs from typical solo songs in its drama; with its operatic quality and extended duration, it can almost be considered a concert aria. Right from the start, the piano, with its first quiet chords, paints a picture of an "autumn evening in a desolate land," to which the poem's protagonist compares the gloom of his soul. The static clusters of chords and the repetitive, bell-like octave notes that appear throughout the work – functioning simultaneously as unifying and supporting elements – reflect the protagonist's hopeless state of mind. The gloom is further underscored by the piano's low register, from which it deviates to the upper register only twice during the song. The first deviation occurs when the protagonist declares, "En taivasta mä tahdo, en yötä Gehennan" ("I do not want heaven, nor the night of Gehenna"). The music has risen over the course of four measures, two octaves, to its high, sparkling register, which, as it accompanies the declarative words, is like a glimpse of heaven that the protagonist determinedly rejects. Another shift to the upper register occurs just nine measures later, before the protagonist's exclamation, "No, ystävät!" ("Well, friends)!" The cheerful three-measure deviation beginning in C-sharp major proves to be only superficial in its joyousness, as the music takes on a more volatile tone in the very next measure, with the arrival of F-sharp minor. The low, clustered chord accompanying the protagonist's cry, "Oi kuulkaat mitä nyt anelen teilt" ("Oh, hear what I now beg of you,)" is, in its wavering tone, like a direct reflection of a chaotic inner world. The exhortation that follows – "Tuonen tupa tehkäät" ("Make a home for me in the underworld") – is accompanied by choral-like harmonies, emphasizing the inevitability of the outcome. The protagonist's descent into his grave – "Hän kätköhön mullan, astuu" ("He steps into the earth's embrace") – is depicted through two-measure-long, eighth-note-based, second-interval repetitions, followed by slow cluster chords in the piano's lowest register. This is followed by a fairly long 14-measure interlude on the piano, in which the syncopated, over-the-measure ostinato octave accompaniment in the left hand, on the G-sharp note, is a direct reference to the third movement, Il tempo largo, of Sibelius's Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63 (1911). In that movement, toward the end, the same rhythmic pattern accompanies a stationary musical phrase an octave higher on the same note, performed by the second violins. In that passage, the conversational two-measure phrases of the woodwinds, centered around the movement's opening motif, build the whole toward a powerful climax before the movement concludes with a quiet, static resignation on the C-sharp note. In my song Ikävyys, that rhythmic pattern accompanies a rising, eight-measure thematic motif on the piano that grows constantly in its intensity, derived from the protagonist's declaration "En taivasta mä tahdo" ("I do not want heaven"), as a compassionate, melancholic observation of the darkness from which the protagonist sees no exit. The piano's melancholic two-measure melodic phrase, at the end of the interlude, resolves the entire passage to a suspended G-sharp whole note. The protagonist has stepped into his grave, from which he cries out twice to his friends: "Mun hautani, nyt kaivakaat halavain suojaan" ("My grave, now dig me a shelter in the marsh"). The statement "Ja peitol mustal se peittäkäät taas" ("And cover it with a black cloth again") is set against a moving, independent musical phrase in the middle register of the piano, depicting the protagonist's friends' work of digging the grave and covering it. The shovel strikes the earth for the last time on a low, broad third with whole-tone notes in C-sharp, following the words "Mä rauhassa maata tahdon" ("I want to lie in peace"), leaving the protagonist to conclude alone, "ja kumpua ei haudallein kohokoon koskaan, vaan multakedoksi kamartukoon, ettei kenkään tiedä, että lepokammioin, on halavan himmeän alla" ("and may no mound ever rise over my grave, but let it sink into the earth, so that no one knows that my resting place lies beneath the pale twilight"). Whether this is a beginning or an end remains open, as the protagonist repeats the question with the song's melodic opening phrase: "Mi ikävyys, mi hämäryys, sieluni ympär', kuin syksyiltanen autiol maal?" ("What is this gloom, this darkness around my soul, like a desolate autumn evening?"). The song concludes with silent, low clusters on the piano.

Mr. Hiltunen composed the above article in Finnish for the Hämeenlinna Sibelius Society in March 2026, and it was published on the society's website in April 2026 as part of the new "Inspired by Sibelius" tab.

Jussi Vänttinen, baritone

Kristian Attila, piano

Recorded at the Sibelius Academy R Building Concert Hall on March 10, 2026.

Sheet music available from Music Finland: https://core.musicfinland.fi/works/ikavyys-b4e8507b-8654-43cf-8131-1b3f4b6aa18f