MUSIC TASK

On November 5^th , I had an opportunity to listen Finnish music when I came to Kokkola Conservatory. This the first time, I really listened and saw a great concert in Finland. I was totally impressed with the melody of songs and I seemed to sing along songs. It was so great when I could read the lyrics in small pamphlets. I thought the pamphlets were very useful because it was easy for me to search the songs when I would like to listen them again.

The concert gave me some songs written by Erkki Melartin who was a very famous composer in Finland. Erkki Melartin was also a well-known teacher and music director in Helsinki Music College, later the Helsinki Conservatory. He wrote a lot of symphonies but I was fall in love with Symphony No.3 which was the five first of the six symphonies by Erkki Melartin, dated from 1903 to 1916. I felt that there was some complex, sophisticated, ambitious, original things in his symphony. After that, I found some information about this masterpiece and I realized Melartin himself thought of Symphony No.3 as his "testament" and a "description of a battle towards enjoying life", since the time of its birth was a period when Melartin's own life nearly ended. He had fallen ill of tuberculosis and partly had to give up his work as a composer and teacher of music theory in order to recover from the - at the time often fatal - disease in aa local sanatorium. At the premiere the symphony had an impact on its audience, as it indeed seemed to describe the joys and sufferings and the final peace of mind of the composer.

It was so amazing concert and I think I should share with my Vietnamese friends about this experience.