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Edward Armas Järnefelt was born in Viborg on 14 August 1869 to August Alexander Järnefelt (1833-1896) and Elisabeth Järnefelt, née Clodt von Jürgensburg (1839-1929).
His elder siblings were Kasper (1859-1941), a lecturer, translator and art critic; Arvid (1861-1932), an author; Erik (Eero), (1863-1937), a painter; Ellida (Liida, 1865-1885) and Ellen (Elli, 1867-1901). After Armas, the couple had three more children: Aino (1871-1969), who would marry Jean Sibelius; Hilja (1873-1879) and Sigrid (Siiri) (1875-1876).
In 1870, the family relocated to Helsinki, and young Armas began formal schooling at a Finnish grammar school. In 1884 the father Järnefelt was appointed Governor of Kuopio Province, leading to a move to Kuopio where Armas Järnefelt finished high school at the Kuopio Lyceum. After his graduation, he undertook studies at the Helsinki Institute of Music (Helsingin musiikkiopisto) under the direction of Martin Wegelius. It is here that Järnefelt made the acquaintance of two significant fellow students, the composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), four years his senior, and his wife-to-be, the soprano Maikki Pakarinen (1871-1929). After completing his studies in the fall of 1890, Järnefelt headed to Berlin for further study with Albert Becker. Two years later he went to Paris to study with Jules Massenet. On 25 August 1893, Armas Järnefelt and Maikki Pakarinen were married in Joensuu. From 1895 to 1898, the couple toured the opera houses of Germany (Breslau, Magdeburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Bremen, Hamburg, and Dresden) with Maikki as a featured soloist, while Armas worked as a répétiteur or assistant orchestral conductor. They also returned frequently to Finland in these years to give concerts.
From 1898 to 1903 Järnefelt was conductor of the Wiborg Musikvänners Orchestra (the Viborg Friends of Music Orchestra). In the following years he arranged opera weeks in Helsinki (1904-06) at the newly built National Theatre, with Maikki singing the leading roles. These weeks focused on the works of Richard Wagner, and under Järnefelt’s conductorship Die Walküre received its first full performance in Finland.
During the 1905-06 season, Armas Järnefelt took a position as music director of the Royal Theatre (Kungliga Teatern) in Stockholm (later known as the Royal Opera - Kungliga Operan). After the sudden death of Martin Wegelius in March of 1906, Järnefelt accepted the post of director at the Helsinki Music Institute. However, the following spring there was such demand for Järnefelt in Stockholm that he agreed to return as music director of the Royal Theatre for a period that would eventually span the next quarter of a century.
In 1907, as Järnefelt was starting his position at the Royal Opera, his wife was striving to make a name for herself in Italian opera under the stage name Maria Campoferro. The tensions of two careers eventually led to the couple’s divorce in 1908.
Curiously, both Eero and Armas used the name Campoferro when in Italy. Eero Järnefelt used the signature Erico Campoferro in some of his paintings, while on some of Armas Järnefelt’s programmes, his name is printed as Amato Campoferro
Järnefelt met his second wife at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Liva (Olivia) Edström (1876-1971) and Armas were married in Hanko, Finland, in 1910. Liva Järnefelt, who had made her debut in 1896, left the Opera in 1926.
A few years later, at the end of the 1931-32 season, Armas Järnefelt, then 63 years of age, left his position at the Royal Opera after twenty-five years of service. His final performances were of Hans Pfitzner’s Das Herz. In the autumn of 1932 Järnefelt was employed by the Finnish Opera, where he remained until 1936. The total number of performances Järnefelt conducted at the Finnish Opera, both as music director and as a guest conductor, amounted to 270.
In 1936, after his period with the Finnish Opera was over, Järnefelt moved back to Stockholm. From there he made concert tours to various parts of Sweden as well as Finland, conducting opera performances as well as orchestral concerts.
On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union declared war on Finland with a surprise bombing attack on Helsinki. The conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra at the time, Georg Schnéevoigt, fled the country, and his chosen successor, Tauno Hannikainen, refused to return from America. Armas Järnefelt, then 70 years old, was invited to lead the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, first as guest conductor and later as music director. From his base in Stockholm, he came to Helsinki to lead forty concerts. The last among these was a special event arranged to celebrate the ceasefire. On this occasion Järnefelt conducted Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, concluding the program with a work of his own, the cantata Isänmaan kasvot (The Face of the Fatherland).
The last time Järnefelt lifted his baton was to lead the massive symphony orchestra comprised of musicians from both the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the Radio Symphony Orchestra in honour of Jean Sibelius’s 85th birthday. He himself had then reached the age of 81.
Järnefelt’s career lasted 60 years and brought him a number of honorary titles and awards.
In Sweden:
- The title of First Court Conductor
- Member of the Royal Music Academy
- Litteris et Artibus
- The Swedish Order of Vasa
- The Swedish Order of the North Star
In Finland:
- The title of professor
- An honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki
- Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion of Finland
- Commander, First Class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland
Elsewhere:
- In Denmark, the Order of the Dannebrog
- The Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav I
- In Prussia, the Order of the Crown III
- The Order of the Crown of Italy
- In Belgium, the Order of Leopold II
Järnefelt made his debut at the Finnish Opera in the 1920s with Wagner’s Tannhäuser. His final performance there was in 1949 in connection with his 80th birthday festivities, once more performing Tannhäuser. Wagner was not far from Järnefelt even in death; during his funeral in Stockholm a quintet from the Royal Stockholm Opera Orchestra (Kungliga Hovkapellet) played the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhäuser. At the memorial held at the Old Church (Vanhakirkko) in Helsinki, the overture to Parsifal was heard.
Armas Järnefelt lived to be 89. He died in Stockholm on 23 June 1958. He is buried in the Hietaniemi Churchyard in Helsinki, where his wife Liva was also buried in 1971.
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Armas Järnefelt’s career as a conductor is generally considered to have begun in the autumn of 1893, when he and his wife were hired for the spring season in Berlin. Between the years 1893-1898 they were engaged in several short-term positions in Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg and Dresden. In addition, they were employed for the entire season 1895-1896 in Breslau, 1896-1897 in Magdeburg and 1897-1898 in Düsseldorf. Maikki Järnefelt (formerly Maikki Pakarinen) was frequently featured as soloist, while Järnefelt worked both as a répétiteur or as assistant orchestral conductor. In the autumn of 1898, Järnefelt started a position as music director in his country of origin when he took responsibilities at the Wiborgs Musikvänners Orchestra. With this new position, he was able to present Finnish music, with programmes of Sibelius, Kajanus, Mielck, Pacius, Ekman, Merikanto and Auer, as well as his own compositions to the audiences of Viborg. Also noteworthy of his first season as music director in Viborg, was that now the concert programmes were written in Finnish!
It is a challenge describing Armas Järnefelt’s work as a conductor in anything but general terms. His contribution as a conductor, as the audience perceived it, is lost forever as we are void of any filmed material. That which has survived are the Odeon recordings he made in Berlin (1928-1930), those from Stockholm (1929, 1931), as well as a recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Anja Ignatius as soloist, recorded for Polydor in Berlin (1943). Although the members of the Berlin State Opera Orchestra involved in the recording didn't have enough rehearsal time, Järnefelt managed to keep the ensemble together and create a special atmosphere. Besides the above mentioned recordings, we also have the engaging radio broadcasts. Unfortunately, no works of Beethoven have survived.
Armas Järnefelt was heavily influenced by the conductor Hans von Bülow, whose concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra he often attended during his years there (1890-1893). During those years he also acquainted himself with the music of Wagner, attending fifteen performances of Tristan and Isolde in a row, aquiring standing-room-only tickets!
Above all this, his period of working together with Conrad Nordqvist in Stockholm was paramount. Järnefelt found his small, but precise gestures exemplary . Within a decade, they shared the responsibility of over two hundred performances per year. By the season of 1907-1908, Järnefelt had no less than twenty operas in his repertory as well as most of the Opera Orchestra’s monthly orchestra concerts. In March of 1908 he conducted Wagner’s Ring Cycle in its entirety within a week! Das Rheingold on Tuesday, Die Walküre on Wednesday, Siegfried on Saturday, and the Twilight of the Gods on Monday! He returned to the Ring Cycle in 1911 and 1924, taking upon himself the directing responsibilities as well in the latter. As assistant orchestra conductor, from 1911 as Music Director, and from 1923 First Music Director, Järnefelt’s expertise seemed endless.
He also championed new music premiering several operas from contemporary composers such as Kurt Atterberg, Natanael Berg, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger and Ture Rangström, as well as incorporating in the repertoire of the Opera Orchestra such demanding works as Honegger’s King David, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, and Schönberg's Gurrelieder. Yet, returning again and again throughout his career were the symphonies of Mozart and the works of Wagner, especially the Tannhäuser overture. His scope of repertoire was tremendous.
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Järnefelt made his living primarily as an opera conductor. Around the turn of the century, however, he also had serious plans to compose an opera which was to be based on a Finnish version of a medieval English ballad, and was to be called Velisurmaaja Later, at the beginning of the 1910s, it was suggested that he write an opera based on Juhani Aho´s novel Juha, but he refrained.
Järnefelt never came to write an opera, but incidental music on the other hand was a familiar genre for him. All in all, he wrote the music to four plays. In Finland, he wrote the supplemental music to the performance of Miranda based on Topelius’s saga (1901), to Immi Hellén’s biblical drama Luvattu maa (1907), and to his brother Arvid’s play Titus (1910); in Sweden he composed the music to a production of Aristophanes’ Fåglarna in 1928.
For these plays, Järnefelt wrote musical interludes, songs, and melodramas (spoken text with background music). Stylistically, the individual pieces embody an extensive scale with regards to the demands of changing events on stage. Concert audiences are, above all, familiar with the three-movement suite from Luvattu maa which ranks among his grandest conceptions, and can even parallel the suites from Sibelius´s incidental music.
Similar to the incidental music is the music to the epic 1911 film Sången om den eldröda blomman, a film by the distinguished Finnish-Swedish director Mauritz Stiller, based on the bestselling novel by Johannes Linnankoski. The film would become the sprouting Swedish silent film industry’s biggest success to date. It is considered ground-breaking within the Nordic Film Industry; the first Nordic feature film to which an original sound track was composed. The Finnish subject matter lead Järnefelt toward the National-Romantic style, however the breadth of expression ranges from tender lyricism to breathtaking drama. From this film music, the best known is from the roaring-rapids daredevil scene, from which Järnefelt made an orchestral version called Koskenlasku.
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