rival orchestras: the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra collapsed after the German musicians who formed its backbone were expelled from the country, and Kajanus and Schnéevoigt divided conducting duties for a joint orchestra, the Helsinki City Orchestra, that consisted of forty players surviving on starvation wages. The merger rendered Madetoja (and, a year later, Kuula) superfluous, and Madetoja pawned his metronome to stave off penury. Despite the hostilities, he traveled to Russia in September 1914 to take up the conductorship of the Viipuri Orchestra (1914–1916). Madetoja found the group in a state of devastation: he was able to piece together 19 musicians, a reality that forced him to spend much of his time finding and arranging material for such an undersized ensemble. Mature career (1916–1930) A new Finnish symphonist While juggling his responsibilities in Viipuri, Madetoja worked on his most first major compositions, the First Symphony in Helsinki (Kajanus the dedicatee), conducting the premiere on 10 February 1916; apparently he completed the finale just before this performance. The critics, some of whom—for example in Hufvudstadsbladet—noted the influence of Sibelius, received the work warmly. Buoyed by this success, Madetoja relocated to Helsinki and began composing a second symphony in the summer. To support himself, he began work as a music critic for the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper (1916–32) and as a teacher of music theory and history at the Music Institute (1916–39). In 1917, the Finnish government granted Madetoja a three-year artist's pension, which allowed him to focus more on composing. (In 1918, the pension was extended for life.) In 1918, the embers of the First World War ignited into civil war (27 January – 15 May 1918) between socialist Red Guards and the nationalist Whites. The war brought personal tragedy to Madetoja: On 9 April, Red Guards captured and executed Yrjö Madetoja, Leevi's brother, during the Battle of Antrea in Kavantsaari. It fell to Leevi to inform his mother: A month later, during May Day celebrations, Kuula got into an altercation with a group of White Army officers, one of whom shot him to death. These two losses deeply upset Madetoja and likely found expression in the symphony, a composition in which he had already been contemplating Finland's fate in the wake of world war and a revolution in Russia; the epilogue Madetoja affixed to the work is one of pain and resignation: "I have fought my battle and now withdraw". The 17