An organ, a choir, and two hundred songs · Mida üks register teeb
Miina Härma
Born 9 February 1864 at Kõrveküla, died 16 November 1941 in Tartu
1897 Tuljak 2026
A schoolmaster’s daughter from Kõrveküla who spent seven years learning the organ in St Petersburg, then played it in Russia, Finland, Germany and England. She wrote the songs Estonian choirs are still singing, and one of them is danced at the end of every dance festival. Nobody ever recorded her playing.
Ten pipes, 16′ to ½′ · 5.24 m to 16 cm · press a pipe
every pipe is a name, a length and a pitch
Every chapter is a pipe. An octave is half the length and a fifth is 3/2 — a pipe two thirds as long — so the ladder alternates C and G: C1 32.7 Hz to C6 1,046.5 Hz. The lengths are those of open pipes at A4 = 440 Hz and 343 m/s.
01BeginningsAlgus
01 · Kõrveküla · 58°26′N 26°47′E
A schoolmaster’s daughter whose music began at home.
Three things from that house stayed with her: the music she first learnt at home, her father’s violin, and a surname she did not change until she was seventy-one.
C4 261.6 Hz · E4 329.6 Hz · major third · 2^(4/12) = 1.2599 against 5/4 = 1.25 · +13.7 cents · beats 10.4 Hz
Miina Hermann was born on 9 February 1864 at Kõrveküla, in the parish of Raadi near Tartu. Her father was the village schoolmaster and the man who ran the parish’s musical life: he played the violin and conducted choirs and an orchestra. According to Estonian Wikipedia her mother had a musical education too. The sources count the children differently: English Wikipedia says seven, Estonian Wikipedia eight.
The music began at home. The Estonian Music Information Centre’s biography says she had her first grounding in music at home, and the opetaja.edu.ee biography adds that it was her father who taught her the organ. What she later studied at the conservatory did not begin there, then: the organ was not new to her.
At about fifteen she went to study composition and piano with Karl August Hermann. The Tartu composer, linguist and publisher bore the same surname, but according to Estonian Wikipedia the two were not related. Her first teacher was therefore already a published Estonian composer, at a time when the published Estonian composers could be counted on one hand.
She did not take the name Härma until 1935, at seventy-one. For 71 of her 77 years she was Miina Hermann, and everything printed under her name before that year — sheet music included — carries it. This page calls her Härma because Estonia does; but anyone going to an archive to look for her has to look twice.
Eesti Muusika Infokeskus: Miina Härma · Eesti teatri biograafiline leksikon: Härma, Miina · Tallinn Song Festival Grounds: the Miina Härma memorial bench · Estonian Literary Museum: Miina Härma (Rutt Hinrikus) · opetaja.edu.ee: a biography of Miina Härma (Internet Archive copy) · Estonian Wikipedia: Miina Härma · English Wikipedia: Miina Härma
- 1864
Born at Kõrveküla
Born on 9 February into a schoolmaster’s family in the parish of Raadi. She would be buried in the same parish seventy-seven years later.
source - 1879
Karl August Hermann
At about fifteen, composition and piano lessons begin with the Tartu composer and linguist.
source - 1935
Hermann becomes Härma
At seventy-one she Estonianises the family name. Before that she is Hermann for her whole life and her whole output.
source
02St PetersburgPeterburi
02 · St Petersburg, 1883 — 1890 · 59°56′N 30°20′E
Seven years in Homilius’s organ class.
Seven years on one instrument, under one teacher from whose class a large part of that generation’s Estonian organists came. It is also why “the first Estonian organist” needs handling with care.
In 1883, at nineteen, she entered Louis Homilius’s organ class at the St Petersburg Conservatory. Homilius was a St Petersburg-born organist and the conservatory’s organ professor, and a large part of that generation’s Estonian organ training passed through his class.
The list is short and telling: Johannes Kappel, Miina Hermann, Konstantin Türnpu, Rudolf Tobias, Mihkel Lüdig, Artur Kapp, Peeter Süda. It is also the reason to be careful with the sentence “the first Estonian organist”. She was among them, and where exactly she stands in that line is a more precise question than first place.
She finished in 1890. Alongside the organ she studied harmony with V. Siecke and counterpoint and fugue with Julius Johannsen: that is the part of the training that turns an organist into a composer. Seven years on one instrument.
From 1886, while still a student, she was giving organ recitals in Estonian country churches. After graduating she travelled in Europe: organ recitals in several German cities and in London, later in Russia and Finland as well. No source names a church, a hall or a programme. Of her playing there is no recording at all.
Eesti teatri biograafiline leksikon: Härma, Miina · Eesti Muusika Infokeskus: Miina Härma · Estonian Wikipedia: Louis Homilius · Estonian Wikipedia: Johannes Kappel · Estonian Wikipedia: Konstantin Türnpu · Estonian Wikipedia: Rudolf Tobias · Tallinn Song Festival Grounds: the Mihkel Lüdig memorial bench · Estonian Wikipedia: Artur Kapp · Estonian Wikipedia: Peeter Süda · Eesti entsüklopeedia: Härma, Miina
- 1883
Into Homilius’s class
She enters the organ class at the St Petersburg Conservatory at nineteen.
source - 1886
The country church organs
Recitals in Estonian country churches begin while she is still a student and continue for decades.
source - 1890
She finishes the conservatory
Seven years of organ in Homilius’s class, harmony with Siecke, counterpoint and fugue with Johannsen.
source
03At the benchPingil
A4 = 440 Hz
What one stop does
Nobody ever recorded her playing. But the instrument she spent seven years learning in St Petersburg still works the same way: every stop’s name is a pipe length, and a pipe length is a pitch. Pull a knob and watch what stands up in the rack.
1 pipe speaking · 5 distinct frequencies · C4
Click the keys or play them with the letters. A stop can be drawn while a note is sounding — which is how it is done on a real organ.
Stops
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An octave below the note you press. Capped, so it stands only as tall as the open 8′ — half what its name promises.
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The organ’s own voice. Sounds exactly the note you press.
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A stopped pipe: the even harmonics vanish and what is left is soft and hollow.
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A narrow pipe, slow to speak and bright all the way up. You hear it arrive.
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Half the pipe, an octave above.
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The same pitch as the octave, but soft and almost without harmonics.
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A third of the pipe, a twelfth above. Odd on its own, the brightness of the chorus with others.
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A quarter of the pipe, two octaves above.
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A fifth of the pipe: a major third above two octaves. With the quint it makes a horn.
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One knob, three ranks of pipes. High up the ranks break back an octave, or the pipes would run out of length.
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A reed: a brass tongue beats against its shallot and the upper partials carry the sound.
Ready-made combinations
Nothing here is a recording. Each rank speaks at the frequency its own name gives it, and its waveform is built from the harmonics of its family — the shape that family is known by, not a measurement of any particular pipe. The stops are the ordinary names of organ building rather than the disposition of any instrument she played: no source ties her to a named organ.
The rack holds 1.45 metres of pipe; the tallest one here is 33 cm.
04TartuTartu
04 · Tartu · 58°23′N 26°44′E
Back to Tartu, and a choir of her own.
She never wrote for an abstract choir. She wrote for singers she had trained herself and whose voices she knew — and built, alongside, institutions that outlasted her.
In 1894, after the concert tour of Germany and England, she came to Tartu. That same year she founded a mixed choir which has been called the finest concert choir in Estonia of its day. Two years later it sang at the general song festival of 1896.
The choir matters more here than a list makes it look. Everything she wrote, she wrote for singers she trained herself and whose voices she knew. Tuljak was made for this choir.
After the Kronstadt years she returned to Tartu in 1915 and stayed. In 1916 she founded a children’s choir at the Peetri congregation and taught music at its parish school. From 1917 until she retired in 1929 she taught music at the girls’ grammar school of the Society for the Education of Estonian Youth — twelve years in a classroom, spanning the birth of the republic.
In independent Estonia she built institutions. She took part in founding Tartu’s higher music school in 1919 and was editor-in-chief of the Estonian music monthly. The school where she taught carries her name today — but only since 1964, thirty-five years after she retired from it and twenty-three after her death.
Eesti Muusika Infokeskus: Miina Härma · Estonian Literary Museum: Miina Härma (Rutt Hinrikus) · Tartu Peetri congregation: its history · Miina Härma Gymnasium: its history
- 1894
A choir of her own
She founds a mixed choir in Tartu that becomes her instrument and her audience at once.
source - 1916
A children’s choir at Peetri
She founds a children’s choir and teaches music at the Peetri parish school in 1916–1917.
source - 1919
Tartu’s higher music school
She takes part in founding the school from which the next generation of Tartu musicians comes.
source
05TuljakTuljak
05 · Tartu, 1897 · 58°23′N 26°44′E
Her father’s polka, three folk tunes, and a song that will not end.
The one thing of hers an Estonian knows without knowing her name. Here is where it came from, how long it took to reach a song festival — and why there is not a note of it on this page.
Her words
Not one sentence of her own is on this page: quotes.json is empty. Three doors nobody has opened:
- Estonian Wikiquote: the Estonian original of the 75th-birthday statement and the source it cites et.wikiquote.org
- Postimees, 8 February 1939, ‘Miina Härma elu ja töö’ — free full text on DEA dea.digar.ee
- ‘Miina Härma 150. Enne ja nüüd’ — the 2014 jubilee album, compiled and written by Sirje Endre, Ene Kuljus and Risto Lehiste (published by SE&JS) rahvaraamat.ee
The rule the file must meet: every item is {id, et, en, orig: "et", when, url, attributed?, note_et, note_en}, with the Estonian sentence copied from the source page, never the research’s rendering.
The tune of Tuljak was finished in 1897, three years after she founded her choir, and she wrote it for that choir. Under it is a polka she had heard her father play on the violin as a child. To that she added three folk melodies. The song is therefore partly hers and partly what she had heard — which is most of her output, where about a hundred pieces are settings of folk tunes she had written down herself.
The words came afterwards. Karl Ferdinand Karlson, who sang in her choir, wrote a text to the music already finished, taking as its basis his friend Andres Alver’s “Tõnn and Mann’s courtship and wedding story”. It is a song that got its tune first and its words second — which is why the most-sung thing she made is one whose words are not hers.
Tuljak did not reach a general song festival programme until 1928, thirty-one years after it was written. According to Estonian Wikipedia it has been sung at every general song festival since 1980. Anna Raudkats, the founding figure of the Estonian dance festival tradition, set a dance to it, and with that dance Tuljak is the closing number of every general dance festival.
There is not a note of it on this page. The music itself is out of copyright — she died in 1941, and Karlson, who wrote the words, in the same year — but no machine-readable score is publicly available: not on IMSLP, not on CPDL, not on Wikimedia Commons. DIGAR holds scanned pages whose access statement may restrict reading them to workstations inside Estonian libraries. Setting the notes down from memory would be exactly what this site is built not to do. Even the key is unsettled: a modern edition notes that the original stood in A major while the available notation stands in G, and the Estonian Music Information Centre’s manuscript record also gives G.
Laulupidu: Miina Härma at 155 — how Tuljak became a dance festival tradition · Estonian Wikipedia: Tuljak (the story of how Tuljak was made is adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0) · Miina Härma Gymnasium: virtual exhibition, Tuljak
- 1897
The tune is finished
Her father’s polka and three folk tunes, written for the choir she had founded three years before.
source - 1928
On the festival programme
Tuljak reaches a general song festival programme for the first time — at the IX festival in Tallinn. Whether that was the festival at which she was invited to conduct the repeat of her own song depends on which source one believes: one gives 1928, another 1933.
source - 1980
At every festival
According to Estonian Wikipedia Tuljak has been sung at every general song festival since 1980; with Raudkats’s dance it closes every dance festival.
source
06The song festivalLaulupidu
06 · Tallinn, the song festival grounds · 59°27′N 24°48′E
The podium, and how the sources actually word it.
Three “firsts” travel with her name. Two men got some of them before her, two of the three carry a qualifier in the sources that the summaries drop, and the sources cannot agree on the year of the third.
Three “firsts” travel with her name. Estonian sources word them more carefully than the summaries usually do: the Estonian Music Information Centre’s English biography says “the first professional female composer, female organist and prominent choir conductor”, and the Centre’s page for the 2014 jubilee album calls her, in this page’s translation from the Estonian, “the first woman of Estonian descent with an academic education – organist, composer, music teacher, choir conductor”. Every time, the qualifier is inside the claim. In the summaries it falls out.
And that matters, because without the qualifier they do not hold. Carl Friedrich Karell (1791–1857) is called the first Estonian professional composer, organist and singer. Johannes Kappel (1855–1907) is called the first Estonian professional musician, organist and composer — and Kappel took his organist’s diploma from the same Homilius, nine years before she did. No source here names any earlier Estonian woman composer or organist. So the gendered firsts stand; the ungendered ones do not.
The festival one is the most precise and the most often mis-told. What the sources say happened: at a general song festival she was invited to conduct the repeat of her own song. The IX festival’s (1928) chief conductors — the appointed ones — were Juhan Aavik, Lennart Neumann and Anton Kasemets. A composer conducting a repeat of her own piece and a festival’s chief conductor are two different things, and the sharpest figure on this page is that she was never the second of them.
The year itself is not the same in every source either: Maris Hellrand’s essay in the song festival’s 2023 newsletter gives 1928; Kuno Areng, quoted in Estonian Wikipedia’s article on Vaike Uibopuu, speaks of 1933. One more version, that it happened before the founding of the Estonian Republic, turned up only in search-engine summaries and did not survive checking — and neither does the widely repeated line that she was chief conductor of the III, V and VI festivals: she is not among those festivals’ conductors. What is certain is that her songs were on the programmes from the IV festival of 1891 onward.
The first woman appointed chief conductor of a general song festival was Vaike Uibopuu, in 1985; the first festival had been held in 1869, a hundred and sixteen years earlier. The whole of Härma’s life fits inside that gap. This takes nothing from her. It says what it was: a woman invited to the desk on account of her song, and not a desk that was hers.
Maris Hellrand (Laulupidu): Women at the song festival — work and oak wreaths · Estonian Wikipedia: Vaike Uibopuu (quoting Kuno Areng) · Song and Dance Celebration Foundation: the IV festival, 1891 · Song and Dance Celebration Foundation: the IX festival, 1928 · Estonian Music Information Centre: Miina Härma (in Estonian) · Estonian Music Information Centre: Miina Härma · Estonian Music Information Centre: the page for the jubilee album ‘Miina Härma 150. Enne ja nüüd’ · Estonian Wikipedia: Johannes Kappel
- 1891
On the programme
From the IV general song festival her songs are on the programmes — as a composer, not as a conductor. At the 1891 festival the male choirs sing her ‘Enne ja nüüd’.
source - 1928/33
The encore
She is invited to conduct the repeat of her own song — Hellrand’s essay gives 1928 for the year, Kuno Areng 1933. The IX festival’s (1928) own conductors are Aavik, Neumann and Kasemets.
source - 1985
Vaike Uibopuu
The first woman appointed a chief conductor, a hundred and sixteen years after the first festival.
source
07AwayÄra
07 · Kronstadt, 1903 — 1915 · 59°59′N 29°46′E
Twelve years in Kronstadt.
Twelve years in a naval town in front of St Petersburg, in the middle of what should have been her most productive time. Why she went, no source will say.
From 1903 to 1915 she lived in Kronstadt, the naval town on an island in the Gulf of Finland in front of St Petersburg. She gave piano lessons there and played the organ; one source says she performed often in the church of St Nicholas. Twelve years, from her thirty-ninth to her fifty-first — the middle of what should have been her most productive time.
Why she went, none of the sources this research reached will say. Before Kronstadt she had been nine years in Tartu with a choir that sang at the song festival. After Kronstadt she came back to Tartu and stayed twenty-six years, until she died.
She did not marry and had no children; no source offers more on the subject than silence. She died on 16 November 1941 in Tartu, aged seventy-seven, and was buried at Raadi cemetery — in the same parish of Raadi where she had been born.
Eesti entsüklopeedia: Härma, Miina · Eesti teatri biograafiline leksikon: Härma, Miina · Estonian Literary Museum: Miina Härma (Rutt Hinrikus) · Tallinn Song Festival Grounds: the Miina Härma memorial bench
- 1903
- 1915
- 1941
08People and placesInimesed ja kohad
08 · The map
Teachers, colleagues, forerunners. And six stops in one long life.
The people around her and the map: Kõrveküla to St Petersburg, on to London, then Tartu, Kronstadt and Tartu again. Germany and Finland are among her concert tours, but no source names a city in either, so neither is on the map.
- Karl August Hermann Her first teacher · 1851–1909 The Tartu composer, linguist and publisher — the same surname but, according to Estonian Wikipedia, no relation. At about fifteen Miina studied composition and piano with him, so her first teacher was already a published Estonian composer. source
- Louis Homilius Her organ professor in St Petersburg · 1845–1908 A St Petersburg-born organist and the organ professor of the St Petersburg Conservatory. Johannes Kappel, Miina Härma, Konstantin Türnpu, Rudolf Tobias, Mihkel Lüdig, Artur Kapp and Peeter Süda all studied the organ in his class: so their own biographies say — the Estonian Wikipedia articles on Kappel, Türnpu, Tobias, Kapp and Süda, Lüdig’s memorial-bench page at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, and Härma’s biography at the Estonian Music Information Centre. source
- Julius Johannsen Her teacher of counterpoint and fugue · 1826–1904 Under him Härma studied counterpoint and fugue at the St Petersburg Conservatory, alongside the organ she learnt from Homilius; she finished the conservatory in 1890. source
- Karl Ferdinand Karlson Who wrote the words of Tuljak · 1875–1941 A singer in her own choir. He wrote the words of Tuljak to music already finished, taking as their basis his friend Andres Alver’s “Tõnn and Mann’s courtship and wedding story”. He died in the same year as Härma. source
- Anna Haava The poet whose words she set · 1864–1957 A poet born in the same year as Härma. “Ei saa mitte vaiki olla” and “Kui sa tuled, too mull’ lilli” are settings of her words — it is Haava, not Koidula, whose name stands most often beside these songs. source
- Anna Raudkats Who set the dance to Tuljak · 1886–1965 The founding figure of the Estonian dance festival tradition. With the steps she set, Tuljak is traditionally the closing number of every general dance festival. source
- Johannes Kappel “The first Estonian professional organist” — before her · 1855–1907 He took his organist’s diploma from the same Louis Homilius nine years before Härma, and is called the first Estonian professional musician, organist and composer. He is the reason the sentence “the first Estonian organist” needs a gendered qualifier when it is said of her. source
- Carl Friedrich Karell “The first Estonian professional composer and organist” — far earlier · 1791–1857 Born seventy-three years before Härma and called the first Estonian professional composer, organist and singer. He and Kappel are why this page says that her gendered firsts stand and her ungendered ones do not. source
- Rudolf Tobias A fellow pupil of Homilius · 1873–1918 He took his organist’s diploma from the same teacher and is described as the first Estonian composer with a higher composition education — a useful calibration for what Härma’s “firsts” do and do not mean. source
- Vaike Uibopuu The first woman chief conductor, 1985 The first woman appointed chief conductor of a general song festival — in 1985, when a hundred and sixteen years had passed since the first festival. According to Maris Hellrand’s essay Härma was invited in 1928 to conduct the repeat of her own song; she never held the appointed post. source
Places
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58°26′N 26°47′E
Kõrveküla
A village in the parish of Raadi near Tartu. Miina Hermann was born here on 9 February 1864, the daughter of the village schoolmaster.
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59°56′N 30°20′E
St Petersburg
At the conservatory she studied organ in Louis Homilius’s class from 1883 to 1890. After graduating she stayed in the city four more years as a piano teacher, choir conductor and working concert organist.
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51°30′N 0°08′W
London
After graduating in 1890 she travelled in Europe, giving organ recitals in several German cities and in London. No source names a church or a hall.
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58°23′N 26°44′E
Tartu
She came here in 1894, founded a mixed choir, taught music at a girls’ grammar school from 1917 to 1929, helped found the higher music school in 1919, and died here in 1941.
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59°59′N 29°46′E
Kronstadt
The naval town in the Gulf of Finland where she lived from 1903 to 1915, giving piano lessons and playing the organ. Twelve years away from Estonia in the middle of her career.
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59°27′N 24°48′E
Tallinn
The song festival grounds at Tallinn, first used for the IX general song festival from 30 June to 2 July 1928, the festival at which Tuljak first reached a general song festival programme. Whether this was the festival at which she was invited to conduct the repeat of her own song, or the X festival of 1933, is not settled by the sources.
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58°23′N 26°44′E (to the city)
Raadi cemetery, Tartu
She is buried at Raadi cemetery in Tartu — the same parish of Raadi she was born in seventy-seven years before.
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58°23′N 26°44′E (to the city)
Miina Härma Gymnasium, Tartu
The school where she taught music from 1917 to 1929. Founded in 1906 as the Estonian Youth Education Society’s girls’ school, it took her name in 1964 on the hundredth anniversary of her birth. Juta Eskel’s 1984 monument stands in front of it.
09TimelineAjajoon
09 · Kõrveküla – Tartu · 1864 – 1941
Seventy-seven years, line by line.
Number, time, place, event. Choose what to look at and scroll; the line in the margin grows with you and turns grey across the Kronstadt years.
- 1860s
-
Born at Kõrveküla
Miina Hermann is born on 9 February 1864 at Kõrveküla, in the parish of Raadi near Tartu, into a schoolmaster’s family.
source -
The I general song festival
The first general song festival is held at Tartu in 1869; Miina Hermann is five. From this festival the page counts a hundred and sixteen years to the first woman chief conductor, in 1985.
source
-
- 1870s
-
A first teacher: Karl August Hermann
At about fifteen — the year is arithmetic on that age, not a date any source gives — she studies composition and piano with Karl August Hermann. The Tartu composer, linguist and publisher bears the same surname, but the two are not related.
source
-
- 1880s
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Enters the organ class in St Petersburg
At nineteen she enters Louis Homilius’s organ class at the St Petersburg Conservatory. She studies there until 1890.
source -
Recitals in country churches
From 1886, while still a student, she gives organ recitals in country churches. The Estonian encyclopaedia’s entry (E. Pilliroog) holds those recitals to have been invaluable for the musical education of the people.
source
-
- 1890s
-
Finishes the conservatory
She finishes in 1890: organ in Louis Homilius’s class, harmony with V. Siecke, counterpoint and fugue with Julius Johannsen. Seven years on one instrument.
source -
Organ recitals in Germany and London
After graduating she travels in Europe, giving organ recitals in several German cities and in London. Her concerts reach Russia, Finland, Germany and Great Britain.
source -
Her songs reach the festival programme
From the IV general song festival her songs are on the programmes: at the 1891 festival in Tartu the male choirs sing her ‘Enne ja nüüd’. That is the year her festival presence begins — as a composer on the programme, not as anyone invited to the podium.
source -
Back to Tartu; founds a mixed choir
After the concert tour of Germany and England she comes to Tartu in 1894 and founds a mixed choir which, according to the Estonian Music Information Centre’s biography, became the concert choir of the highest standard in Estonia at the time.
source -
Her choir sings at the VI song festival
Two years after she founded it, her Tartu mixed choir sings at the general song festival of 1896.
source -
The tune of Tuljak
She writes her choir a tune with a polka under it — one she had heard her father play on the violin as a child — and three folk melodies. The words are written afterwards, to music already finished, by Karl Ferdinand Karlson, who sings in that choir.
source -
Ei saa mitte vaiki olla
The melody dates from 1898. She had heard the original from an elderly woman in Põlva, who sang it as a wedding departure song, and set Anna Haava’s poem to it.
source
-
- 1900s
-
Moves to Kronstadt
From 1903 to 1915 she lives in Kronstadt, the naval town in the Gulf of Finland, giving piano lessons and playing the organ. Twelve years away from Estonia, in the middle of her career.
source
-
- 1910s
-
Back to Tartu
She returns to Tartu in 1915 and stays there for the rest of her life.
source -
A children’s choir at the Peetri congregation
In 1916 she founds a children’s choir at the Tartu Peetri congregation, and teaches music at the Peetri parish school in 1916–1917.
source -
Music teacher at the girls’ grammar school
From 1917 to 1929 she teaches music at the girls’ grammar school of the Society for the Education of Estonian Youth in Tartu — twelve years in a classroom, spanning the birth of the republic.
source -
Helps found Tartu’s higher music school
In independent Estonia she is a builder of institutions: she takes part in founding Tartu’s higher music school, and is editor-in-chief of the Estonian music monthly.
source
-
- 1920s
-
The IX festival: an encore, not the chief conductor’s desk
The IX general song festival is held in Tallinn from 30 June to 2 July 1928; its own conductors are Juhan Aavik, Lennart Neumann and Anton Kasemets, and Tuljak reaches a general song festival programme for the first time. Her own invitation to conduct the repeat of her song is placed at this festival by Maris Hellrand’s essay; Kuno Areng, quoted in Estonian Wikipedia, speaks of the X festival of 1933 — the sources part.
source -
Retires from the girls’ grammar school
In 1929 she retires from the girls’ grammar school — twelve years after she came to it as its music teacher in 1917. The school takes her name in 1964.
source
-
- 1930s
-
Honorary member of the Estonian Academic Women’s Association
In 1933 she is elected an honorary member of the Estonian Academic Women’s Association. Estonian sources say she was an honorary member of many choirs and societies.
source -
Hermann becomes Härma
At seventy-one she Estonianises her name. Everything printed under her name before that year says Hermann — which matters to anyone sent looking for her scores.
source -
Estonian Red Cross decoration, second class
A year before the honorary doctorate she receives the decoration of the Estonian Red Cross, second class. It is the only state-adjacent decoration this research turned up.
source -
Honorary doctor of the University of Tartu, on her own 75th birthday
The University of Tartu makes her an honorary doctor on 9 February 1939 — her own seventy-fifth birthday. She is described as the university’s first woman honorary doctor. The same year brings the title of honorary professor of the Tallinn Conservatory.
source
-
- 1940s
-
Dies in Tartu, aged 77
She dies on 16 November 1941 in Tartu and is buried at Raadi cemetery — the same Raadi parish she was born in seventy-seven years before.
source
-
- 1960s
-
The school takes her name on her 100th birthday
The Tartu school where she had taught music from 1917 to 1929 takes her name in 1964. The school itself was founded in 1906 as the Estonian Youth Education Society’s girls’ school.
source
-
- 1980s
-
Tuljak at every song festival
According to Estonian Wikipedia it has been sung at every general song festival since 1980; with Anna Raudkats’s dance it is the closing number of every general dance festival.
source -
A monument in front of the school
A monument stands in front of the Tartu gymnasium that carries her name, made in 1984 by the sculptor Juta Eskel.
source -
The first woman chief conductor: Vaike Uibopuu, 1985
In 1985 Vaike Uibopuu becomes the first woman appointed chief conductor of a general song festival; by then a hundred and sixteen years have passed since the first festival. That is the figure Härma’s “first” has to be read beside.
source
-
- 2010s
-
The Bank of Estonia issues a silver coin
On 16 June 2014 the Bank of Estonia issues a ten-euro silver coin dedicated to her work, for the 150th anniversary of her birth.
source
-
10LegacyPärand
10 · A school, a song · 58°23′N 26°44′E
A school, a prize and a song still being danced.
What has been said of her, what carries her name, and where all of it is written down. Every line carries its source; a number the page counts from its own files says so, and where the sources part, the page says that too.
0 sentences about her attributed to a named person: sayings.json is empty. No sentence in quotation marks here is therefore a named person’s judgement of her.
- 0 Times she was a chief conductor of a general song festival 1869–1941 the sources part ↗
- 116 years From the first song festival to the first woman chief conductor 1869 → 1985 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 200+ choral songs Choral songs Estonian reference works credit her with ↗
- ≈100 folk song settings Folk song arrangements, most of the tunes collected by herself ↗
- 31 years From Tuljak being finished to its first song festival 1897 → 1928 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 7 years In the organ class at the St Petersburg Conservatory 1883–1890 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 12 years In Kronstadt, away from Estonia 1903–1915 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 12 years Teaching music at the girls’ grammar school 1917–1929 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 75 Her age when the University of Tartu made her an honorary doctor 9 February 1939 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 77 years The length of her life 1864–1941 counted from the page’s files ↗
- 100 years From her birth to the school taking her name 1864 → 1964 counted from the page’s files ↗
Twelve works the sources name; the two hundred are not counted
- 1897 Tuljak The tune does not sound on this page: no machine-readable score is public. Where it could one day be read from: Karl August Hermann’s 1882 print ‘Tuljaku tants’ in the music supplement of Eesti Postimees, which the Literary Museum’s exhibition ‘Laulupeo allikad’ names and which is out of copyright; the 1898 ‘Miina Hermann’i laulukoori kontserdi laulud’ (DIGAR 122013), which the Estonian Music Information Centre’s manuscript record names, is out of copyright as music and as print; DIGAR’s 1939 ‘Tuljak’ (59400) may be a joint print with Konstantin Türnpu and may be readable only at library workstations. Where not: the MuseScore user upload 44099, whose transcriber, source and licence are unknown; the modern Noodiriiul edition, which stands in G major where the original is A major; the Eres Edition piano arrangement, a new work with a copyright of its own; and the 2025 song festival songbook, a modern engraving.
- Tuljaku tants (Galopp klaverile ehk viiulile) — K. A. Hermanni 1882. aasta trükk Eesti Postimehe Muusiku Lisalehes, Kirjandusmuuseumi näituse „Laulupeo allikad“ järgi readable
- Miina Hermann’i laulukoori kontserdi laulud, II anne (1898) — DIGAR 122013 readable
- Tuljak — DIGAR 59400 (1939 print) readable
- MuseScore 44099 not from here
- Noodiriiul not from here
- Eres Edition, Tuljak (piano) 111 not from here
- XXVIII laulupidu 2025, segakoori repertuaar not from here
- 1880 Isamaa, õitse sa! Her first choral song, written before the conservatory. The source is a school-music blog rather than a reference work; the year stands here at that precision. tune: not on this page
- 1892 Kui sa tuled, too mull’ lilli An Estonian Music Information Centre manuscript record; nobody has opened the page yet. tune: not on this page
- 1894 Kalev ja Linda One of the two large forms beside the two hundred choral songs. tune: not on this page
- 1896 / 1887 Küll oli ilus mu õieke the sources part Two years and two scorings: the Estonian Music Information Centre’s English works list gives 1896 and, in one summary, ‘voice and piano’; its Estonian list gives 1887 and a choral song. tune: not on this page
- 1898 Ei saa mitte vaiki olla She heard the tune from an elderly woman in Põlva as a wedding departure song and wrote the ending herself. The words are Anna Haava’s. tune: not on this page
- 1902 / 1901 Murueide tütar the sources part Described as Estonia’s first musical stage work. One and the same summary dates the composition to 1902 and the premiere at Pärnu’s Endla theatre to 1901; the two do not sit together. tune: not on this page
- — Ööbiku surm the sources part One summary counts it among her lyrical choral songs, another among her solo songs. No year and no poet came back. tune: not on this page
- 1922 Ta lendab mesipuu poole Peep Sarapik set the same Liiv poem in 1993; most recordings and most people’s memory are of that later song. Härma’s setting reached a general song festival in 1999. tune: not on this page
- — Meeste laul An Estonian Music Information Centre manuscript record. The poet is named by the sheet-music shop Noodiriiul — a lead, not a source — and DIGAR’s record 86644 carries an ISMN, so it is a modern edition. tune: not on this page
- — Enne ja nüüd The Estonian theatre biographical lexicon names it among her heroic-style choral songs with ‘Meeste laul’ and ‘Isamaa, õitse sa’; the male choirs sang it at the IV general song festival in 1891. The title is also the second half of the 2014 jubilee album’s, and searches collide the two. tune: not on this page
- — Valik koolilaule kolmele häälele A DIGAR record; the search engine’s summary names her as compiler. A compilation may hold other composers’ songs too. tune: not on this page
Honours and memory
- 1933 Honorary member of the Estonian Academic Women’s Association The Estonian Academic Women’s Association. Estonian sources say she was an honorary member of many choirs and societies; this is the one with a source that names it.
- 1938 Estonian Red Cross decoration, second class The Estonian Red Cross. The only state-adjacent decoration this page’s research turned up.
- 1939 Honorary doctor of the University of Tartu The University of Tartu, on 9 February 1939 — her own seventy-fifth birthday. She is described as the university’s first woman honorary doctor.
- 1939 Honorary professor of the Tallinn Conservatory The Tallinn Conservatory. The same year brought both the honorary doctorate from Tartu and the professorship from Tallinn.
In her name
- Miina Härma Gymnasium, Tartu The school where she taught music herself from 1917 to 1929. Founded in 1906 as the Estonian Youth Education Society’s girls’ school, it took her name in 1964 and its present form of the name in 1994.
- Miina Härma tänav in Tallinn, 1979 A street in Lasnamäe, Tallinn, was given her name in 1979.
- A monument in front of the school, 1984 The sculptor Juta Eskel’s monument stands in front of the Tartu gymnasium that carries her name.
- A ten-euro silver coin, 2014 The Bank of Estonia issued a collector coin dedicated to her work on 16 June 2014, for the 150th anniversary of her birth. No postage stamp could be found.
- A memorial bench at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds The Song Festival Grounds keep a series of memorial benches for figures of the song festival tradition, and one of them is hers.
Written and filmed about her
- 2014 Eesti heliloojad. Miina Härma 150 Klassikaraadio, ERR. A programme on Estonian public broadcasting’s classical station, in the series “Estonian composers”, made around the 150th anniversary of her birth.
- · Eesti heliloojad. Miina Härma Klassikaraadio, ERR. A second, separate episode about her in the same series.
- 2014 Miina Härma 150. Enne ja nüüd Compiled and written by Sirje Endre, Ene Kuljus and Risto Lehiste, with sections by Laine Randjärv, Riho Leppoja and Ene Üleoja; published by SE&JS. The 2014 jubilee album, with a DVD, compiled by the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum with the publisher SE&JS and issued by Tiigi Seltsimaja and the Tartu city government. The link goes to the Estonian Music Information Centre’s music shop page, which gives these details; the book itself has not been read for this page.
- 2023 Naised laulupeol — töö ja tammepärjad Maris Hellrand; the song festival newsletter, 15 March 2023. A song festival newsletter essay on women at the festival, which distinguishes a composer conducting a repeat of her own piece from an appointed chief conductor. That distinction carries this page’s festival chapter.
- 1939 Miina Härma elu ja töö Postimees, 8. II 1939. A Postimees profile, published the day before her seventy-fifth birthday and the day before the University of Tartu made her an honorary doctor. Estonia’s digitised newspaper archive is freely readable, unlike the DIGAR book archive. It is the most likely place to find a sentence of her own — but this page has not opened it.
Watch and listen
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The Estonian Public Broadcasting Mixed Choir sings Tuljak
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The youth mixed choir Vox Populi performs Härma’s Tuljak
The preview images load from YouTube’s image server (i.ytimg.com) as the video cards come near the screen, before any click. The video itself loads from youtube-nocookie.com only when you press play. The recordings and their preview images are not this page’s own: the rights in them lie with the performers and the channels that published them.
What could not be found
This page’s research swept wide and came back empty on several things. They are listed because naming an absence is part of what the page promises.
- Any recording of her own playing. The Estonian Radio archive holds her songs performed by others and a 1954 radio composition about her, but not her at the organ. arhiiv.err.ee
- Any sentence of her own. Seven Estonian-language searches for her speech and for testimony about her produced no verbatim quotation by her and none attributed to a named person about her. Nothing on this page is in quotation marks as hers. emic.ee
- Any machine-readable score. Not on IMSLP, not on CPDL, not on Wikimedia Commons; no MusicXML, MIDI, LilyPond or ABC. DIGAR holds scanned pages whose access statement may restrict reading them to designated workstations inside Estonian libraries. digar.ee
- Any photograph on this page. Wikimedia Commons holds two photographs of her marked as public domain. One is a portrait from the Estonian National Museum’s collection (ERM Fk 2668:165): Commons gives its photographer as unknown, the museum’s record names F. Kvar. The other is Karl Akel’s photograph of her at the conductor’s desk of the 1928 song festival, from the Estonian History Museum’s collection (AM _ 12853:145 F 11687:145). Neither has been added here yet. commons.wikimedia.org muis.ee commons.wikimedia.org muis.ee
- Any named organ. No source ties her to a particular instrument — not Tartu’s Jaani or Maarja church, not the university — so the bench’s stops are the ordinary names of organ building rather than the disposition of anything she played. entsyklopeedia.ee
- Where exactly the figures this page prints — ‘over 200 choral songs’ and ‘≈100 folk song settings’ — come from. Estonian reference works repeat them, but the original list stood on opetaja.edu.ee, which no longer answers: its looming.htm is readable only in the Internet Archive’s 2018 copy, and that copy carries only ‘over 200’; the sub-page looming1.htm, where the hundred-odd settings were listed, is not archived at all. Live sources give the choral figure differently — EMIC says ‘over 200’, the Estonian theatre biographical lexicon and the Estonian Literary Museum ‘nearly 200’ — and the ≈100 settings found no confirmation in any reachable source. Both figures stand here as the reference works repeat them, with no complete count behind them. web.archive.org etbl.teatriliit.ee
- Confirmation of which calendar her birth date belongs to. Every source gives 9 February 1864, and most do not say whether that is Old Style or New. Estonia was on the Julian calendar until 1918, at that time twelve days behind. The Estonian and the English Wikipedia add the Old Style date 28 January, which would make 9 February the New Style date, but this research found no other source that says so. Until one does, the date stands here as the sources print it, with no claim about the calendar. lauluvaljak.ee et.wikipedia.org
- 0 photographs: none has been added to this page yet; the 1928 podium photograph (Karl Akel; Estonian History Museum, AM _ 12853:145 F 11687:145, muis.ee/museaalview/2039983; public domain) exists but is not on this page. beginnings
- 0 sentences of her own (quotes.json) and 0 sentences about her attributed to a named person (sayings.json); the stage is built and stands empty. words
- 0 of 12 works have a tune on this page; no tune sounds. works
- 24 of 29 timeline rows carry only a year; the figures count them from 1 January. timeline
- 1 timeline row is marked circa: the year is the source’s, and no date goes with it. timeline
- 2 places, Raadi cemetery, Tartu and Miina Härma Gymnasium, Tartu, sit at Tartu’s coordinate on the map because no source gives them one of their own. map
- 7 entries in the page’s files are flagged ‘the sources part’: Times she was a chief conductor of a general song festival (numbers.json); The IX festival: an encore, not the chief conductor’s desk (timeline.json); Tuljak: key A major / G major (chapters.json (tuljak)); VI festival 1896: city Tallinn / Tartu (festival.json); Küll oli ilus mu õieke (works.json); Murueide tütar (works.json); Ööbiku surm (works.json). legacy
Four claims in circulation that do not hold: she was not made a People’s Artist of the Estonian SSR in 1954, because she died in 1941; she was not chief conductor of the III, V or VI general song festivals; she did not teach at the girls’ grammar school “until the end of her life” but from 1917 to 1929; and the “ten cavatinas” among her works stand in both the Estonian and the English Wikipedia but not in the Estonian Music Information Centre’s biography or the Estonian encyclopaedia, which at the same figure have ten anthologies of choral songs (“kümme koorilauluvalimikku”); the figure is left off this page as unconfirmed, not as invented.
Sources and further reading
- Estonian Music Information Centre: a biography of Miina Härma
- Estonian theatre biographical dictionary: Härma, Miina
- Estonian encyclopaedia: Härma, Miina (E. Pilliroog, EMBL) CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
- The Tallinn Song Festival Grounds memorial bench
- Estonian Wikipedia: Tuljak the story of how Tuljak was made is adapted from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Estonian Wikipedia: Miina Härma CC BY-SA 4.0
- Estonian Wikipedia: Vaike Uibopuu CC BY-SA 4.0
- Estonian Literary Museum: Miina Härma (Rutt Hinrikus) CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 EE
- opetaja.edu.ee: a biography of Miina Härma (Internet Archive copy, 2022)
- The history of Miina Härma Gymnasium
- Wikidata: Miina Härma (Q438792)
- Estonian Copyright Act, Riigi Teataja — protection runs for life plus seventy years; authorship, the author’s name and honour are protected indefinitely
- DIGAR, the digital archive of the National Library of Estonia
- MusicBrainz: Miina Härma