Erki Jokinen

Erkki Jokinen (1941, Finland). After graduating Sibelius Academy from the classes of Erik Bergman and Joonas Kokkonen in 1970, Jokinen began explor-ing in his works harmonic sets, tonal colours and textures, as well as complex rhythms. This is reflected especially in his works for accordion and string quar-tet, which he treated, in his words, as a single instrument. Jokinen’s oeuvre does not comprise a large number of works (around 40 in total) and his most recent work was written in 2002, when he stopped composing. His works have attracted many performers and are often featured in concert pro-grammes. Apart from composing, Jokinen was active in music theory as well as pedagogy. Especially prominent in his oeuvre are his Concerto for Accordion and Chamber Orchestra (1987); Rise, a five-part cycle for various types of ensembles; four string quartets (1971, 1976, 1988, 1994); Alone for solo accordion (1979), etc.

Alone (1979) for solo accordion is a piece dedicated to the Finnish accordionist Mati Rantanen and may be considered a through-composed work whose course is determined by shifts in harmonic and dynamic intensity. The work’s fragmentary character and abrupt changes in its presentation of musical materials generate an improvisatory feeling, while the accordion’s usual sonic habitat is expanded by means of percussive and especially colourist interventions. The author sought to high-light the instrument’s expressive abilities, ranging from dense clustered sonorities and delicate timbres isolated in quiet dynamics, via short motoric segments and virtuosic figurations, to the prominent role assigned to the per-former’s own corporeality, that is, the expressive power of physical gesture through a complex sonority approximating synthesised or “concrete” sound.