In the Meņģeļi homestead of Ērgļi Parish, on 30 September 1856 New Style, Andrejs Jurjāns was born – a boy in the family of Annuža, a singer and knower of folk songs, and Andrievs, a farmer who made his own violin. He later became one of the founders of Latvian national music: he wrote the first lasting Latvian symphonic works, conducted at the 3rd, 4th and 5th Song Festivals, and collected thousands of folk melodies so they would not survive only in oral memory.

Jurjāns’s generation entered culture at a time when Latvian society was turning the ideas of the National Awakening into professional institutions, repertoire, and self-confidence. His “Materials of Latvian Folk Music” made musical folklore into a body of material that could be studied, ordered, and used by composers.