The years pass. By no means does all music go along with the flow of time. Much of it crumbles into oblivion. In the movement of life, people simply cannot relate to everything new and everything that has been — there is far, far too much of it. And so they pick, as if from the shelves of a department store, scattered fragments they believe suit them or that they happen to need.
For musicians, this is often a tragedy. They strive, they give their all, they embody music’s beauty in rare and special moments — they are with it, within it, and bring back messages from there to others… Yet often this goes unnoticed. Or it is noticed far too little.

For many musicians who perform instruments, the path seems easier: one concert follows another, and there the performer may be noticed more readily, with the echo of recognition in the applause offering quick comfort. But what must a composer feel, who over the course of a lifetime builds piece by piece, fragment by fragment, something greater with their works… though it’s hard to even name what that “something” is. And yet, it is. Often people sense that the body of a composer’s work forms a more or less complete idea, a sound-world, a mass of feeling – an encounter with which can provide profoundly rewarding experiences. Such moments affirm that music is not merely a pastime or entertainment, but that it carries qualities essential to human existence – something “greater than life itself.”

Tormis and Pärt are perhaps such figures. The hesitation in phrasing stems from the fact that we are speaking of something intangible, where the parameters are subjective and the value of the whole is determined above all by aesthetic and intellectual judgment.

When many people agree and recognise that “there is something here,” value emerges. That value, broadly speaking, takes two forms: there is music that is respected and admired, but not very often listened to. And there is music to which people flock naturally, without persuasion, because they actively “use” it. And we are not speaking here of pop music.

After this long prelude, let us turn to Veljo Tormis. It is important to attempt to position his image within this picture. The belief that good music speaks for itself (and therefore needs no translation) or that a great work will inevitably find its audience is deeply misleading and little more than a slogan – as deceptive as the lure of the American Dream.

If we compare again the emergence of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis, we cannot underestimate the factor of “good fortune” in Pärt’s case. Without producer Manfred Eicher’s enthusiasm and the support of a small circle of top performers, his music might not have risen so quickly and so high into the spotlight at the right moment. That sudden rise astonished and overwhelmed Pärt himself. By comparison, Tormis’s successes were considerably smaller.

If we briefly compare Pärt and Tormis once more, then it’s clear that Pärt’s music currently has far stronger winds in its sails, moving forward with momentum even without much outside support. His musical language is more universal, and the message it carries resonates more widely. It seems that people all over the world feel a need to dwell in that atmosphere right now, and to draw strength from it.

Tormis’s music, by contrast, is geographically more local, with songs mostly in languages that sound foreign and unfamiliar, and with a sound-world that is less universal. His sails need additional winds from somewhere. That, precisely, is the aim of the Veljo Tormis Cultural Society and the Veljo Tormis Virtual Centre: to try and provide that wind.

Five years ago, on the 90th anniversary of Tormis’s birth, the wheel began to turn with great hopes. To put the background briefly: after ending his career as a composer at the age of seventy, Tormis gradually began “cleaning his shelves,” as he put it, doing everything he could so that his creative legacy would become more accessible. He shared his materials with libraries, archives, and museums, organised his manuscripts, and—within the limits of his declining health—did what he could to advance general knowledge of runosong.

It would be an exaggeration to call this activity systematic, but it was purposeful. The fact that before drawing the red line under his composing career he engaged in a long interview marathon with Priit Kuusk (a man not fond of long conversations), resulting in the book Becoming a Composer Out of Spite, and that somewhat earlier he had delivered a lecture series at the University of Tartu as Professor of Fine Arts (later compiled by Urve Lippus into the book The Word Was Sung), shows that Tormis was already motivated to tie up loose ends and take stock.

When the American scholar Mimi Daitz was collecting material for her English-language book with Tormis’s help, the composer took the opportunity to organise his catalogue: choosing the definitive title for works with multiple variants, pushing some very early pieces deep into the drawer, and reviewing everything once again. Around that time, Tõnu Tormis began developing the website www.tormis.ee
, uploading copies of articles and reviews, and making available the corrected list of works prepared for Daitz’s book.

Veljo himself was deeply interested in ensuring that the traces of his activity—beyond the many compositions, also his work with musical mother tongue, runosong, and various folk-music initiatives—were accessible to the curious. He sought to kindle that curiosity. He wanted no monument for himself and, as it later turned out, not even a gravestone. He wanted the thoughts and sounds that had driven him to inspire others as well. For if the sound does not reach the ear, and the thought does not reach people, it cannot inspire anyone. In this quiet, gradual way, the idea grew until, on the eve of his 90th birthday, it took form. Already then, Ulvi Rand, head of the Veljo Tormis Cultural Society, declared that the movement’s direction and goal should be to approach Veljo Tormis 100 on a large scale.

The domain veljotormis.com—generously transferred to Tõnu Tormis by Alan Teder, who had started a Tormis database in Canada—quickly took a leap forward and went public, somewhat like an unfinished construction site, on the composer’s 90th anniversary. That was the beginning of the journey toward 100. While the list of works followed the catalogue polished with Mimi Daitz, the nearly 800-entry discography was entirely new.

It must be admitted that technical hurdles have since slowed major progress, but the direction remains clear—even if much of it is still invisible. For instance, there is the whole field of publications: scores, books, articles, concert programmes, and other traces. Especially valuable is this documentary material, which interprets, explains, and guides us step by step through processes of the past. During the Soviet era alone, hundreds of Tormis’s scores were published—not only by music publishers, but also in textbooks, anthologies, brochures, and even low-circulation mimeographs seen only by a few eyes. Why not exhibit them, at least their covers, title pages, and forewords, even if copyright blocks the music itself?

To suggest “just go to the library, archive, or museum” sounds hollow today. Even researchers and scholars seldom find the time for such expeditions. Online and in the digital world, these journeys are far shorter. The same applies to articles in the periodical press: over three-quarters of a century, around 5,000 items have been identified that reference Tormis’s music or activities. The plan is to make them visible—whether as copies or structured descriptions—systematised and useful for building a full picture.

Or consider Tormis’s correspondence. The Estonian Theatre and Music Museum holds around a thousand letters addressed to him, but only a handful written by him. Yet it is precisely those he wrote and sent that are most significant. Why not trace them? Already, much has been found.

No need to discuss all these directions at length—the key is to act. The past five years have brought larger changes in the surrounding environment, which also affect the Virtual Centre. Chief among them is the rise of artificial intelligence, which suddenly casts our work in a new light.

Rapidly, people’s focus in seeking information is shifting from web searches to asking chatbots. If you ask about Veljo Tormis (or any other composer), it won’t take long before the answers turn inaccurate or outright wrong. The reason lies in the lack of accessible authoritative information, and in the fact that for those guiding the algorithms, this field is too marginal. If reliable facts and accurate generalisations were more publicly available amid the noise, the quality of information delivered by chatbots would improve significantly. But for such “side topics” to gain visibility, a great deal of foundational work must first be done. That is precisely what the Veljo Tormis Virtual Centre is working towards.

Without offices, with a very small team and scarce resources, step by step, through quiet advocacy, Tormis’s music is gradually becoming more visible. For music does not speak for itself, does not translate itself, nor cry out “listen to me!” That is done by people—both those who want certain music to be heard more, and those who want to listen. Music is a human matter.

The longest step taken so far has been the year-long worldwide Tormis Singing Competition, culminating on the composer’s birthday in Kõrveaia, where the winners were announced. Behind this contest-like initiative stood, practically alone, the Centre’s project manager, Iti Teder, who engaged with musicians and organisations, encouraged and persuaded them to take part. Participation was relatively open; the main criterion was a link to Tormis’s music.

Ninety videos were submitted from Estonia and abroad. Some amateur choirs later admitted it was their first time recording themselves; for others, it was a reminder of a memorable moment with Estonian music. The farthest guest at Kõrveaia was Taiwanese conductor Meng-Hsien Peng, whose chamber choir Müller had performed Tormis’s Curse Upon Iron a decade earlier. The first prize went to the Junger Kammerchor Basel from Switzerland, represented in person by tenor Julian Schmidlin. French choir Chœur Mikrokosmos’s manager, Magali Cardeilhac, recalled in her speech the words of their leader Loïc Pierre, who called Veljo Tormis his “spiritual father.” Among Estonia’s finest were the national representative choirs — the Estonian National Male Choir, the girls’ choir Ellerhein, and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.

Author: Immo Mihkelson (Veljo Tormis Virtual Centre)
This article was published in Muusika magazine.