Kalnins, Alfreds (1879 - 1951)
Biography Works
The founder of Latvian national
opera and the finest early 20th century Latvian composer of solo
songs. He has also enriched a variety of genres –
piano, organ, orchestral, ballet and choral
music, as well as arrangements of folk music – with his
romantically unrestrained use of poetic imagery and subtly
picturesque treatment of the folk idiom. A pupil of Anatoly Lyadov
at the St.Petersburg Conservatory (1897–1900), Kalniņš preferred
the delicate expression of moods in miniatures, an approach whose
roots and analogues can also be traced to the national schools of
Northern European composers – in the works of E.Grieg, S.Palmgren,
and E.Melartin.
In the 1920s Kalniņš worked for a short time at the Latvian
National Opera, mounted the first performances of his operas Baņuta
(1920) and Salinieki (1926), and gave organ recitals. During this
period his national romantic musical style became even more
picturesque, refined and expressionistic. His development continued
during his years in New York (1927–33), when his orchestral, piano
and organ works were influenced also by constructivism, although
this did not affect his choral music.
Numbering over 100, his works for choir are often narrative
and ballad-like, lyrical-epic in nature, with a dramatic pathos and
a joyful enthusiasm inspired by the social struggle of his time. In
the period up to 1918 Kalniņs' choral works sometimes touch on the
genre of the Latvian romantic ballad, but in his poetic perception
he also makes use of idyllic pastoral scenes, painted in his own
dreamy or mournful fashion, where nature often appears as a
personification of his native land.
Most of his over 120 folk song arrangements for voice and
piano were written in the 1920s, whereas the 1930s and 1940s saw
the creation of his most important choral arrangements, about 40 in
all. In his arrangements Kalniņš respects the harmonies based on
natural folkloric scales, yet he also employs chromatic elements
for harmonic colour and favours a rich choral texture.