finlandia

The song was banned during WWII.

No one was allowed to play or to hear. On hearing the song natives of the country were known to cry, the power of a song that did not even have words.

The mythology is that the songs repeat the machine gun bursts at the Nazi’s as they marched into Finland. Actually it is a protest against Czarists Russia several generations earlier.

The church we visited always has good music, which is one reason I attend here. Today’s program was a brass choir, but included tympani and cymbals, along with the trumpets, trombones and tuba.


“Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius',arranged for brass and percussion. And it was being played in this church. I had heard the music hundreds of times (or more), but I don’t do concerts much (budget thing) and I had never seen this piece performed, for sure not with Brass.

The group did was not large, maybe a dozen players, but brass can could big.

Percussionists are an interesting group. Tympanists spend a good bit of the concert waiting, standing, holding their mallets, or else they are humped over the drums with a pitch pipe in their mouths, listening and tuning the drum.

This time the tympanist was a woman, maybe 55, greying hair. Nothing unusual to look at.

The song starts small and swells. Good brass, big sound. Then the tympanist does a roll. It was not complex, but she did it perfectly. Then there another.

The trumpets do staccato. The base blares, the sounds of music and battle and maybe even of airplanes (though the song was written before airplanes), and the tympani comes to life.

Loud, soft, complex rhythms a performance all in itself. The lady did not miss a beat, her performance was perfect. Her part could make or break a performance.

I am not a Finn, but I sat there with heavy eyelids. The affect was stunning. Afterwards while the church members filed out I just sat and thought. The musicians disappeared with their instruments (ok the tympanists took her mallets and left the instruments). Only the conductor stayed, visiting with a church member.

I approached them. “I do not know where you found the tympanist, but she is absolutely amazing.” He agreed. She was not a professional musician, in fact the conductor did not know what her day job was, except that she divided her time between Portland and Atlanta Georgia.

I told him I was stunned. He asked me if I play brass, I said yes and that I still do and he smiled. His group was mostly grey haired. They were way over my head in skill level, but I would love to play with a group like that. I told him that I started playing trumpet as a way to strengthen my weak lungs. He nodded.

When it was all over I felt blessed and a bit weak in the knees.

I will never forget this performance.