Jukka Savijoki
https://taju.uniarts.fi/handle/1002
DocMus Research Publications
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-329-114-0 ColeccionesJulkaisusarjat ja erillisjulkaisut [289]
The public defence of a doctoral thesis in 2005 may be seen as the starting point of the present book. On that occasion, an official of the National Library of Finland, rightly assuming that many researchers were present, informed the audience of the launch of an online archive of historical Finnish newspapers. While today databases of this kind are increasingly common, the National Library of Finland was certainly among the first to offer such a service and, what is more, one that from the outset was open to the public and free of charge. Over the years the archive’s contents have grown steadily, comprising today digital copies of not only all of the newspapers published in Finland between 1771 and 1929 but also numerous journals and other ephemera, thus offering a powerful tool for a great many types of research. This database ignited in me a curiosity to investigate if any guitarrelated material was contained therein. The prospect of learning about the guitar’s (possible) past seemed especially enticing given that today the instrument enjoys a steady popularity in Finland with every new generation presenting a higher standard of performance than the last; in addition, more and more new music is written for the instrument each year. In 2005, however, even among professional Finnish guitarists practically nothing was known about the guitar’s history in Finland, and it therefore seemed as if the instrument’s popularity had arisen from nowhere…)
So that the soul would dance in you. The guitar in Finland before the twentieth century
