ESTONIAN SYMPHONIC MUSIC. THE FIRST CENTURY 1896-1996.
independence on the spiritual life of the nation.
Song Festivals were the greatest and deepest musical-cultural events that
inspired the nation, the groundwork for which had been laid in Tartu in 1869. Through
all hardships and tough times they had retained their national spiritual content. The
Estonian Singers’ League arranged the song festivals with a five-year interval – in
1923, 1928, 1933 and 1938. These were enormous, unparallelled demonstrations of
national unity. The programmes of song festivals included only Estonian music.
The number of singers ranged approximately between 15–20 thousand, the
orchestras had over 1500 musicians playing in them, the audience numbers amounted to
90 thousand and more.
As remarkable conductors, Juhan Aavik, Juhan Simm, Evald Aav, Anton
Kasemets, Raimund Kull and Tuudur Vettik deserve to be mentioned.
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