Alfrēds Kalniņš

Alfrēds Kalniņš (Cēsis, 1879 – Riga, 1951) was one of the central figures of Latvian music in the first half of the twentieth century, and he is regarded as the founder of opera in his country. A composer above all of vocal music, he worked across a wide range of genres, from songs and arrangements of folk songs to stage and orchestral works.

He trained as an organist and theorist with Louis Homilius and with Liadov at the St Petersburg Conservatory, between 1897 and 1901. Before settling in Riga in 1919, he worked as an organist, teacher and conductor in several towns in Estonia and Latvia. In the Latvian capital he sat on the board of the National Opera and headed the music section of the Ministry of Education. Between 1927 and 1933 he lived in New York, where he organised concerts and took an active part in American musical societies; works on American poetry date from this period. On returning to Latvia in 1933, he became organist of Riga Cathedral and, from 1934, gave organ recitals on national radio, an activity he maintained until 1945. In 1944 he became a professor at the Latvian State Conservatory, whose rectorship he held between 1944 and 1948.

His catalogue includes the opera Baņuta, the opera Salinieki, the ballet Staburags, cantatas such as Mūzikai, Darbs un dziesma and Pastardiena, the orchestral suite Dziesma par dzimteni and some two hundred and fifty songs, among them Bernības rīti. His style ranges from an idyllic Romanticism, close to Grieg, to Expressionism and the Constructivism of the 1930s. Although he generally avoided the direct use of folk melodies, his music conveys a strongly marked Latvian spirit, and his role in his country's culture is often compared with that of Grieg in Norway or Dvořák in Bohemia. He also left an autobiography, written in 1950, and around three hundred and fifty articles for Latvian and Estonian journals.