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{{Short description|Estonian composer (1950–2000)}}
'''Lepo Sumera''' (] ] - ] ]) was a gifted and versatile ]n composer. An admired symphonist and a pioneer in electro-acoustic and computer music, he was also much sought after as a chamber music composer and the musicians frequently asked him to write new pieces for them. Film directors appreciated his skill to create the atmosphere and delineate the character. Lepo Sumera’s music has been performed in most European countries as well as in the ], ], ] and ].
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'''Lepo Sumera''' (8 May 1950 – 2 June 2000) was an Estonian composer and teacher.


==Life and career==
He was born in ] and studied with ] in his teens, and from 1968, with ] at the ] (then Tallinn State Conservatory). After Heino Eller's death in 1970, he studied with Heino Jürisalu, graduating in 1973. He then did ] at the ] (1979–1982) with the Russian composer ]. Sumera first came to notice in 1972 with ''In Memoriam'', an orchestral tribute to Eller.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz4iNvNQqRA|title=Great Composers: Lepo Sumera|via=www.youtube.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jun/23/guardianobituaries2|title=Lepo Sumera|first=Guy |last= Rickards |date=23 June 2000|website=the Guardian}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ce-review.org/00/23/amber23.html |title=The Torchbearer Dies. ''Central Europe Review'', Vol. 2, No 23, 12 June 2000. Accessed 17 February 2009-Huang, Mel |access-date=17 February 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120421020138/http://www.ce-review.org/00/23/amber23.html |archive-date=21 April 2012 |url-status=usurped }}</ref>


==Legacy==
==Musical Language==
He is considered one of Estonia's most renowned composers along with ], ] and ],<ref>Rickards (23 June 2000)</ref> he was also his country's Minister of Culture from 1988 to 1992 during the days of the ].<ref>Huang (12 June 2000)</ref> As such he was the last Minister of Culture of the ], and the first Minister of Culture after Estonia re-gained independence.<ref name="Hakobian2016">{{cite book | author = Levon Hakobian | date = 25 November 2016 | title = Music of the Soviet Era: 1917–1991 | edition = 2 | publisher = Routledge | pages = | isbn = 978-1-317-09186-8 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=kM2VDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT389}}</ref>
What is the ‘niche’ for Sumera’s music in the universe of contemporary music? Judging him on the basis of a work or two, and departing from the paradigm of a ’pedigree’ style of modern music, the critic might call him a chameleon; some have done so. Incidentally, in his music for films or dramas he really liked to ‘assume new roles’: he enjoyed writing a lovely old-fashioned waltz or a piece of funky rock music, if it was required.
In his works for concert stage he would employ new stylistic means if his vision of a new work required them. With each new work, he started from scratch.


==See also==
The truth is that from the very beginning his musical language demonstrates an individual approach to contemporary composition techniques. For example, in the late 1960s he studied Schoenberg’s counterpoint, and wrote some neat pieces in a strict 12-tone system. In a few years he was convinced that they would not enter his worklist. He admired Messiaen (and studied his composition technique too) and Berio’s Sinfonia, but copied neither of them in his own Fughetta and Postlude, In memoriam, or Play for the Wind Instruments. He would use a particular technique in a particular section as a means for certain musical characters, contrasted with other means and characters (and in some of his works the ironic, postmodern attitude emerges). Yet the texture is always coherent and different devices employed in the work are parts of the whole.
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==References==
A larger picture of Sumera’s music reveals that the seemingly controversial elements are integrated in his idiom in a highly idiosyncratic way, the essentials of which never changed: the acoustic sensibility; the ambiguity of musical characters; the autonomous expressive power of the overall form.
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==External links==
He retained these essentials in electro-acoustic music, which became increasingly important during the last decade of his life. In his film scores he had been using electronic means since the mid-1970s when the cultural ideology refused to acknowledge that there was electronic music for concert stages, and there were no electronic music studios in Estonia (the composers interested in that area used the limited possibilities of recording technology).
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The situation changed in the 1990s. Sumera was particularly fascinated by live electronics. As a composer with a lot of experience with film directors, he naturally got interested in multimedia. Alongside the Cello Concerto and the Sixth Symphony, the multimedia composition Heart Affairs is the top achievement of his last years.
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The technological side of the work is most complicated and its origin is perhaps the most amazing example of the composer's imagination combined with a shrewd analytical mind.
Lepo Sumera had his heart examined for the first time in 1997. He saw the echocardiogram of his heart and was given the chance to listen to its sounds and rhythms. And he immediately recognized the artistic qualities of the ‘image’! Both audio and video material of his Heart Affairs are derived from a human heart – not from the composer’s heart, as the legend goes, but from a perfectly healthy one. But the work is more than a picture of a single heart: it depicts the fragility and beauty of human existence.


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== Symphony's==
The ] orchestra was Sumera’s favourite medium, and the symphony became the major genre in his output. As a genre, it matches Sumera's individual talents, his ability to ‘dive’ into the musical material, to create extensive formal arches. His use of orchestral colours displays remarkable subtlety and a power of imagination. At the same time, timbre has an important dramatic function in his music.


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From the stylistic point of view, the first two symphonies (1981; 1984) are closely related; diatonic modes, long sections of motivic repetition and variation that appear in complex polyrhythmic and tonally ambiguous textures are characteristic of his works written in 1981-86. Since the late 1980s he preferred chromatic synthetic modes, some of them created by him, and paid special attention to the variety of harmonic colours. In that period he wrote his Third Symphony (1988) and Fourth Symphony “Serena Borealis” (1992). The complex textures in the anxious, explosive Fifth Symphony (1995) are based on an extensive use of aleatoric counterpoint (determined aleatorics).
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With the Third Symphony, ‘endless’ meditative sonic fields and melodic lines appeared in Sumera’s music. In his translucent Sixth Symphony (2000), which remained his last work, we find the most fascinating, enigmatic, and tragic meditative music he ever wrote.
His symphonies reflect his most serious and painful experience. Many of his choral and chamber music compositions reveal the person with a vivid sense of humour behind them. The amazingly witty and original ideas in some of his works – Mushroom Cantata (with its text consisting of Latin names of mushrooms), Play for Ten, Songs from Estonian Matrimonial Lyrics, for instance, seem to have sprung from a momentary flash of a sunny mood.

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Latest revision as of 17:49, 22 September 2024

Estonian composer (1950–2000)

Lepo Sumera in 1991

Lepo Sumera (8 May 1950 – 2 June 2000) was an Estonian composer and teacher.

Life and career

He was born in Tallinn and studied with Veljo Tormis in his teens, and from 1968, with Heino Eller at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (then Tallinn State Conservatory). After Heino Eller's death in 1970, he studied with Heino Jürisalu, graduating in 1973. He then did postgraduate study at the Moscow Conservatory (1979–1982) with the Russian composer Roman Ledenev. Sumera first came to notice in 1972 with In Memoriam, an orchestral tribute to Eller.

Legacy

He is considered one of Estonia's most renowned composers along with Heino Eller, Eduard Tubin and Arvo Pärt, he was also his country's Minister of Culture from 1988 to 1992 during the days of the Singing Revolution. As such he was the last Minister of Culture of the Estonian SSR, and the first Minister of Culture after Estonia re-gained independence.

See also

References

  1. "Great Composers: Lepo Sumera" – via www.youtube.com.
  2. Rickards, Guy (23 June 2000). "Lepo Sumera". the Guardian.
  3. "The Torchbearer Dies. Central Europe Review, Vol. 2, No 23, 12 June 2000. Accessed 17 February 2009-Huang, Mel". Archived from the original on 21 April 2012. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  4. Rickards (23 June 2000)
  5. Huang (12 June 2000)
  6. Levon Hakobian (25 November 2016). Music of the Soviet Era: 1917–1991 (2 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-09186-8.

External links


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