The Birth of the World
Early Baroque and Finnish folk music
Merula–Monteverdi–Strozzi–Uccellini–Valderrábano and Finnish folk music
Virpi Räisänen, mezzo-soprano
Taito Hoffrén, runosong
Finnish folk musicians
FiBO Players
During FiBO’s 30th anniversary year we travel to the roots of the Baroque. The Birth of the World explores one of the basic ideas of Baroque music, that of the connection between speech and music.
While Renaissance music reflected the abstract and universal structures of the cosmos, in the 17th century, the individual human with emotions became the centre of music. The task of music was above all to affect the listeners, and this idea is well concentrated in the lyrics of the singing course Le nuove musiche (The new music) by Italian Giulio Caccini: “Music is speech, only then rhythms and tones, where the objective is music that breaks into the minds of people and provokes those wonderful effects that the great philosophers admired.”
The idea of the magical powers of music is also present in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, whose central character Väinämöinen has the miraculous power of song and music. Väinämöinen shares many traits with Orpheus, the mythical singer of the Antique mythology, who was able to bewitch nature and people and who could even persuade the god of the Underworld to give him back his dead wife Eurydice.
Internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Virpi Räisänen, runo-singer Taito Hoffrén and an ensemble consisting of musicians from FiBO and folk musicians take the audience on a journey to the source of music, in which early Italian Baroque and Finnish folk traditions meet.
Duration: 1 h 45 min (incl. intermission)