The Musicology Department moved to renovated premises in no. 1 Vironkatu street in 1984. And an ideal academic community came into being, small but decidedly international. Guests began to arrive with support from annual grants provided by the Tampere-based Pro Musica foundation. Everyone had a study, short-term visitors lived in guest accommodation across the courtyard and walked to the department to give their lessons. The students had their own room, too.

The fruits of this school were to become obvious years later in the form of doctorates. I have now been supervising no less than 103 theses, half of them at the University of Helsinki, and half elsewhere, mainly abroad. Many PhDs have received prizes, such as José Luiz Martinez from São Paulo, Danuta Mirka from Katowice in Poland and Ramunas Motiekaitis from Vilnius in Lithuania. Many of the postgraduates I supervised have got a chair or an academic post, such as Kristian Bankov (Sofia in Bulgaria), Jean-Marie Jacono (Aix in France), Dario Martinelli (Kaunas in Lithuania), and in Finland, Vesa Kurkila, Anne Sivuoja-Kauppala (Sibelius Academy) and Juha Ojala (Oulu University). And many international students came to the Musicology department: south Americans form Brasil, Chile, Peru and Argentina, from all of the Baltic countries and Poland. We organised seminars with various of these countries. I initiated the international Jean Sibelius congress, on the basis that the community of Finnish musicologists ought to have an annual meeting, as they did in the United States and Germany. And so a new tradition was born.

In 1990 the University of Helsinki celebrated its 350th anniversary. I was given the task of organising the music for the anniversary year. The event gave rise to the Helsinki University Music Society or HYMS, which has since organised a large number of concerts, lecture series and other festivities. Its Soivat kaupungit (‘Sounding Cities’) series helped Helsinki celebrate its bicentenary in 2012.

In 2009 we celebrated Fredrik Pacius’ bicentenary and then in 2013, that of Richard Wagner. Composers, from Sallinen to Saariaho have received honorary doctorates. Under the auspices of HYMS there is currently a choir, piano recitals and chamber music. I have myself begun to play chamber music with my students. We have concentrated on French piano quartets, but in the sesquicentennial year of Sibelius’ birth, we are performing his piano quintet.

I have taken care of my post with a degree of regularity to the present day. I have spent a term as visiting professor in places such as the Sorbonne and University of Paris VIII, Aix-Marseille in southern France and the University of Minnesota. I have done plenty of travelling: two or three international conferences every year, and not just in Finland. And this activity looks set to continue.  It is partly in consequence of this that I have been honoured with four doctorates from overseas (Bloomington, Indiana; Tallinn, Estonia; Sofia, Bulgaria; and Aix-Marseille, France).

• ”Minun Wagnerini – Eero Tarasti” (’My Wagner – Eero Tarasti’), Yle Areena (Finnish Broadcasting Company’s catch-up), May 15, 2013. Accessed April 27, 2015.