Jaan Soonvald and His Musical System

Author(s): Mark Rais

Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1992), pp. 45-47
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513209
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 H I ST O RI CAL PERSPE CT IVE

Jaan Soonvald and

His Musical System

Mark Rais

Jaan Soonvald (1890-1980) is undoubtedly one By this time, Soonvald had a

of the most tragic figures in the history of Estonian music. family and had to think about
A scientist of world value, he has not been officially given providing daily bread for its
the recognition he is due; and at present little more than subsistence. Thus, his master-
10 years after his death his ideas are considered interesting ing of professional technique
more in a historical than in a practical vein. Composer, went forward in snatches, slowly, A B S T RA C T

musicologist and teacher, he lived a complicated and fearful off and on. He entered the con-
life in the grip of a totalitarian system, and the system made servatory again this time in The author discusses Esto-
him pay for his uniqueness and inimitability. The majority Tallinn and graduated in 1937 nian composer, musicologist and
teacher Jaan Soonvald. Soonvald,
of his musicological works are still unpublished; the princi- as a composer under the aus-
starting from mathematical ideas,
pal theoretical book of his life's work is kept in the archives pices of Artur Kapp [4]. Soon-
was the first to introduce the term
of the KGB, if it has not been annihilated together with the vald's graduation composition- melodic tonality. He showed the
other works of art and secret documents that the special the overture Lemitu [5] calls inevitability of the appearance of

services of the USSR have removed from Estonia [ 1 ] .
From childhood,Jaan Soonvald's life was a difficult strug-
gle for existence. He was born into a large peasant family in
South Estonia, and his formal education began at a com-
paratively late age. Because his family could not afford to
place him in the classic school, the boy entered technical high
school in Tartu. These educational institutions generally
graduate accountants, stewards and other practical workers;
therefore the teaching of mathematics there was compara-
tively good. By another stroke of luck, the director of this
school at that time was a great Estonian composer, Rudolf
Tobias, the founder of Estonian symphonic music [2]; and the
singing teacher wasJuhan Aavik, a future composer and con-
ductor, professor and director of the Tallinn conservatory
[3]. Aavik organized quite a good chorus in the school and
laid down the foundations of Soonvald's musical erudition.
Nonetheless, in Czarist Russia a man with a certificate
from a technical high school was not able to attend a
university. Therefore, Soonvald went to Germany in 1910
and entered the technical university in Darmstadt, where he
studied only 1 year. From Darmstadt, Soonvald sometimes
traveled to Vienna, at the time a metropolis of the musical
avant-garde. As a result, Soonvald made a decision to devote
himself to music. He returned to Tartu, where he privately
studied music theory and the organ.
Following the outbreak of World War I, Soonvald entered
military school for financial reasons and was sent to the
front. However, he fought only a short time; soon he was
injured and resigned. He returned to Estonia, where he
worked as a teacher of music and mathematics in various
small cities; as a rule, he did not stay long in any one place.
Sometimes he attempted to enrich his musical education:
he renewed his private lessons, in 1920 entered the Latvian
up universal delight, as testified polytonality and paved the way to
computer music. His tragic life can
by its warm reception by
be seen as an example of the art-
Artur Kapp,Juhan Aavik, Artur ist's destiny in totalitarian society.
Lemba [6] and other well-
known Estonian musicians of
that epoch. By this time Soon-
vald had also composed an opera; he published its libretto
in 1935 at his own expense. However the composer, by this
time almost 50 years old, was haunted by unfulfilled yearn-
ings. The opera was not staged, the overture was not publicly
performed. He was then, as before, merely a teacher of
music and mathematics in a school of general education,
where from time to time his choral opuses were performed.
Although Soonvald's diploma from the conservatory states
that he graduated in composition, music theory and the or-
gan, according to recollections of his schoolmates he never
occupied himselfwith the organ in the Tallinn conservatory
(though possibly he passed an examination), and there was
at that time no class in music theory. Most likely, tender-
hearted teachers attempted to help the unlucky learner to
find his own place in the official musical life unfortunately
without success.
After the German occupation of Estonia, Soonvald lost
his teaching work also. Thus began the second circle of his
sufferings. For a time he even returned to peasant work in
order to support his family. He attempted employment
waiting on Germans, using his knowledge of the language,
but the officers had no need for a footman with the highest
musical education. And as a result, Soviet authorities in 1944
sentenced Soonvald to 6 years of imprisonment for 'collabo-
ration' with German occupationists.
Soonvald served only 3 years of his prison sentence-

conservatory (but did not graduate) and in 1925 he again Mark Rais (composer, musicologist), Comptlter Music and Musical Informatics
Association, Kentmanni 1S16, Tallinn EEOOO1, Estonia.
went to Vienna, where he studied harmony with C. Horn.
Received 5 April 1991.

C) 1992 ISAST
Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain.
0961-1215/92 55.00+0.00 LEONARI)O MUSICJOURNAL, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 45-47, 1992 45

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 maximum system

central-balanced system

minimum system

Strips of
do aO e h fis Cis Gis Dis Ais Eis' His' Fisis' Cisis'
tonalities'
alliances
bo fO CO G d a E H Fis Cis' Gis' Dis' Ais'

gesO desO asO es b f 2 G D A E' H' Fis'

11t
III t
esesO besO fesO CesO ges des as Es B F C' G' D'

IVt CeseOsO gesesO desesO asesO eses bes fes Ces Ges Des As Es' B'

Fig. 1. Soonvald's musical system with the note C in the central position in which there are 65 sounds in an octave. Apostrophe (') or
'is' means a rise of one Pythagorean comma; 'es', 'as' or the small 'o' means a drop of one Pythagorean comma.

when half of the term expired, he
was sent into exile instead. Soonvald
lived in Central Asia, teaching harmony
in music colleges in Ashkhabad and
Samarkand. During this time a radical
change came about in his conscious-
ness. Immediately after leaving prison
in 1947, Soonvald began work on a
musical theory, which henceforth be-
came a driving force of his life. The com-music practice (not from abstract the-
positions that he later created (among
them a second opera, an oratorio and
choral songs) were for him only illustra-
I refer to the aspiration of all unsteady unlawfully repressed, thirsted as well
sounds to turn into steady sounds. ) for rehabilitation and for freedom of
Soonvald categorized and documented creative work. However, he had been
the general traits of the folk songs of allconvicted by the military and thus
nations (the first structural works on was not considered a political prisoner.
this question appeared in the end of the When Khrushchev's government pro-
1970s [10]) and worked out new prin- claimed that war criminals did not have
ciples of microchanges in the pitch val- the right to be set free, Soonvald found
ues of sounds, proceeding from real himself in 1956, instead of being reha-
bilitated, being arrested once again.
ory, as in the works of A. Haba with his The KGB determined that Soonvald
1/4 and l/6 tones). Soonvald came to the had served only half of his prison time;
conclusion that each musical composi- consequently he was required to serve
3 more years.
. . . . . . .

tions of his theory. tlOn 1

Soonvald proceeded from the Pythag-
orean postulate that all sounds that
are different on the comma are diverse
sounds, as well as from the first law of
acoustics (all other things being equal,
the length of the string is inversely
proportional to the frequency of the
sound's oscillations). From here Soon-
vald drew up a set of significant theo-
retical conclusions using pure mathe-
matics. He discovered that, alongside
traditional European tonality (which
has been analyzed by many, from
Rameau to Schoenberg), there exists
another kind of tonality that is found in
folk song and in music such as that
by Debussy or Tormis this he called
'a melodic tonality'. (Rudolf Reti, an
American of Hungarian parentage who
discovered it independently 10 years
later on the basis of intuitive assump-
tions and doubtful experiments, was
universally recognized for this theory
[ 7] . ) Soonvald mathematically proved
that the appearance of this polytonal-
ity was historically inevitable [8], and
showed the dependence of mode-
building on the 'gravitations' of its
sounds (publicly this was corroborated
only 35 years later [9] ). (By gravitation
tations, which one can synonymously Following his discharge from prison
express with a mathematical constant. in 1958 Soonvald delivered at the Mos-
It is unnecessary to argue the revolu-
tionary character of such a theory at
that time. In 1947 Norbert Wiener was
only finishing his first book about
cybernetics; Iannis Xenakis, the first to
link music with contemporary mathe-
matics, was 25 years old; Edison Denisov,
who later developed a mathematical
formula for musical composition, was
only 18. It was not in fashion to equate
music with mathematics. But in the So-
viet Union at that time, when a fierce
'struggle against formalism' was taking
place, the publishing of such a theory,
especially by a man who had just been
released from prison, could only lead
to new repressions. Nevertheless, Soon-
vald continued persistently, though se-
cretly, to elaborate on his musical sys-
tem. Immediately following his exile he
went to Moscow, where he became
good friends with L. Mazel, N. Ryzhkin
and S. Skrebkov, the progressive profes-
sors of the Moscow conservatory (all
were at that time 'Formalists').
But things continued to change.
After Stalin's death, political prisoners
were set free. Soonvald, as someone
cow conservatory a lecture entitled "Sci-
entific Principles of Harmony", where
he expounded the basis of his doctrine.
It caused a sensation in the Moscow
musical world (Reti's book was yet not
published it came out 6 months later),
but the KGB was not interested in the
great fame of its former clients. Soon-
vald found it best to leave Estonia for
some time. His friends in Moscow ar-
ranged for him to teach first in
Stalinabad (now Dushanbe) and then
later in Ivanovo-Frankovsk and in Bel-
gorod. One can only guess how this
plan was successfully executed; the fun-
damental participants are dead, written
sources are absent, and Soonvald him-
self, who lived under surveillance to the
end of his days, had good cause for
silence.
In 1966 the new rector of the Tallinn
conservatory, Vladimir Alumae [ 1 1 ], of-
ficially invited Soonvald to work there.
Soonvald became a teacher and the
oldest scientific worker at the conserva-
tory; thus began the most fruitful pe-
riod in his life. Prior to this, Soonvald
had occasionally gone from Belgorod

46 Rais, Jaan Soonvald and His Musical System

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to Estonia, where his choral songs were
performed in the Union of Composers;
and in 1964 he published in Tartu the
first variant of his work [ 12] . This book
was received positively, and in 1969
Soonvald became a candidate of sci-
ence. However, this period of relative
prosperity was short; Alumae left the
conservatory, and in 1971 Soonvald was
dismissed.
Already 81 years old, Soonvald re-
turned to South Estonia, where he was
born, and lived in the small city Voru.
There he created his greatest works, in
Russian and Estonian [ 13] . Between
1972 and 1976 he wrote the principal
book of his life [14]. By that time his
ideas about mode had gotten quite
complex, and he clarified and elabo-
rated on them in lectures at Riga and
I,eningrad.
I came to know Soonvald in this pe-
riod of his life. I found his system attrac-
tive because of its irreproachable logic,
as well the fact that, according to Soon-
vald, each musical composition can be
expressed with one mathematical con-
stant. Soonvald's musical system was built
with respect to the note C in any octave.
Horizontally between the sounds are
perfect fifths; vertically, major thirds.
According to Soonvald, there are 65
sounds in each octave; their names are
deduced from the names of the tradi-
tional European sounds. The concept
of enharmonic equivalence is not appli-
cable; using a different central sound
only gives another arrangement of
these same 65 sounds. Tonality in Soon-
vald's musical system is a group from
eight sounds. The alliance between to-
nalities is, in principle, traditional and
depends on the number of common
sounds. But the rules for the calculation
of this alliance are more difficult than
in the traditional system because of the
great number of sounds per octave. Mu-
sical compositions can be created in the
so-called minimum system (a group of
25 sounds), in the central-balanced sys-
tem (45 sounds) or the maximum sys-
tem (65 sounds) (Fig. 1). Therefore,
according to Soonvald, the difference
between tonality and musical composi-
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tion is not qualitative, but quantitative:
the latter is also a group of sounds,
however, this group is larger and has
accordingly a greater number of con-
stants. For this reason Soonvald has spo-
ken about musical composition as
about mode.
At that time I and others like me
thought that it was enough to introduce
such constants into computer memory
that would create a new musical compo-
sition or re-create an already-written
opus. But by this time Terhardt had
discovered that the first law of acoustics
was erroneous: the octave was not
a ratio 1:2 as Soonvald had thought [15].
In 1977 a group of Estonian psycho-
acousticians discovered the same regu-
larity for all other intervals of equal-
tempered pitch [ 16] . I initiated
computer experiments in Leningrad,
devoted to the re-creation of classical
music and the creation of new acousti-
cal phenomena; these experiments cor-
roborated the impossibility of creating
musical compositions only on the basis
of Soonvald's constants. The theoretical
conclusions derived from these experi-
ments enabled me to create in 1978
what I believe to be the first Estonian
computer composition.
Soonvald knew about my work the
engineers from Leningrad had written
him concerning the results of the ex-
periments. But he was not bitter. He
considered his mission accomplished;
Estonian composers (for example, Val-
deko Viru) began to create musical
compositions on his system. Soonvald's
death in Tartu passed imperceptibly. In
1980 the world was thinking about 'Pol-
ish events', not about melodic tonality.
References and Notes
1. This manuscript by Soonsald was written in Rus-
sian, with the title ''Mtlzykal'no-garmonicheskie
yasleniya sr grafomatematicheskikh kolonkakh"
(Mtlsical-Harmonic Phenomena in Grapho-Mathe-
matical Columns). I heard personally, as an official
representatisre of the Union of Unlawfully Re-
pressed Estonia 'Memento', from an officer of the
KC,B in September 1990 that this work is in the
archises of the KGB. However, at the end of 1990
a great number of papers from the Estonian ar-
chises of the KGB svere annihilated in Uljanos!sk;
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
at present one cannot say whether this mantlscript
by Soonvald is intact.
2. For more information abotlt R. Tobias (1873-
1918), see \,r. Rumessen, compiler, Rudolf Tobias
sonas ja pildis (Rudolf Tobias in the Word and
Photo) (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1973).
3. For naore information abotlt J. Aavik (1884-
1918), see P. Ktlusk, ':Jtlhan Aaxik", in V. Paalmo,
compiler, L. Etukk, ed., Estoslia lauluteatrz rajaftlid
(Fotlnders of Song-Theatre Estonia) (Tallinn:
Eesti Raamat, 1981).
4. Arttlr Kapp (1878-1952) was an Estonian com-
poser, conductor and teacher. See \r. RElmessell,
compiler, Artur Kapp, 1878-1952 (in Rtlssian)
(Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1978).
5. Lembitu was an Estonian militarv leader and
fought for the freedom of Estonia. He died in 1217.
6. ArttlrLemba (1885-1965) wasan Estonian com-
poser, pianist and teacher. See V. Lippus, "Artur
Lemba, meie mtlusika kultutlri uhkusja probleem"
(Artur Lemba, Pride and Problem of otlr Musical
Ctllture), in Teater, mltusika, kino (Theater, Mtlsic,
Cinema) No. 9 (1985).
7. R. Reti, Tonality, Atonality, Pantonality (London:
1 958) .
8. At a later date, the author of this article, on the
basis of Soonvald's theory, pros!ed the same for
atonality. See M. Rais, "Laadja tonaalstlsJaan Soon-
s!aldi muusikalises susteemis" (Mode and Tonality
in Musical System byJaan Soons!ald), in Muasikalisi
lehe.kulgi III (Mtlsical Pages III) (Tallinn: Eesti
Raamat, 1 983) pp. 111 -1 36. In this article the
author also criticises some mathematical errors in
Reti's theory.
9. A. Milka, Theoretical Principles of the Functionality
in Musis (in Russian) (Leningrad: Mtlzyka, 1982).
10. S. Arpa, "Intonational Basis of Htlngarian
Speech and Music Folklore of Zakarpatsky Oblast
of the Ukrainian SSR", in I. Rutltel, ed., The Mltsical
Folklore of Ugro-Finnish .Vations: Arltiquity ansl the Pr-
sent (in Russian) (Tallinn: SK Estonskoi SSR, 1979)
-
p. .D.
11. VladimirAlumae (1917-1979) was an Estonian
siolinist, mtlsicologist and teacher.
12. Jaan Soonsrald, Modes and Arcorrls of the Harmo-
nious Musical System in the Light of Grapho-Mathemati-
ral Analy.sis (in Russian) (Tarttl: Tarttlsky Gostldar-
sts enny Unis ersitet, 1964) .
13. Jaan Soons ald, "Heliread, kooskolad ja mate-
maatika" (Modes, Accords and Mathematics)
(1970); "The Column of Sotlnd Fields and the
Stages of Tonalities' Absolute Alliance" (1972);
"Uleliiduliselt premeerittld kantaadi 'Lenini sonad'
lahtimotestus muusika-matemaatilise teooria pohjal"
(Understanding of the All-Unionally Prized Can-
tata ' Lenin 's Words' on the Basis of Mtlsical-Mathe-
matical Theory) ( 1975) . These vInptlblished manu-
scripts are in the Tallinn Musetlm of Thc-atre
and Mtlsic.
14. See [1].
15. E. Terhardt, Acustira 24, No. 3, 126-136 ( 1971 ) .
16. U. Lipptls, M. Remmel andJ. Ross, To Substation
of the Appearance of the Enlarged Musiral Inte7aals (in
Rtlssian) (Moscow: Akustichesky Instittlt, 1977).
Rais,Jaan Soonszald and His Musical System 47