ABSTRACT
The academic study of music in Finland is a relatively young profession. The first professor of musicology and one of the protagonists of my narrative in this chapter, Ilmari Krohn, was appointed in 1918 to the Imperial Alexander University of Finland, known as the University of Helsinki from 1919 onwards (Finland having gained independence from the Soviet Union two years earlier in 1917). Krohn, also the first PhD in Music in Finland, had defended his dissertation, Über die Art und Entstehung der geistlichen Volksmelodien in Finnland, in 1899, then sponsored by the Department of Finnish Culture and Language. 1 Musicology was established as an independent programme at the university only a few years later in 1923. Krohn had a solid educational background as a musician and composer: prior to his studies at the university and the Music Institute in Helsinki he had spent four years studying music theory, composition, piano and organ in Leipzig and Weimar.
