Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives,

Dialogues
Kaija Saariaho: Visions,
Narratives, Dialogues

Edited by
Tim Howell
University of York, UK
with
Jon Hargreaves
Independent Scholar, UK
and
Michael Rofe
University College Falmouth, UK
First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright © T im Howell, Jon Hargreaves and Michael Rofe

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Kaija Saariaho : visions, narratives, dialogues.
1. Saariaho, Kaija–Criticism and interpretation.
I. Howell, Tim. II. Hargreaves, Jon. III. Rofe, Michael.
780.9'2-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaija Saariaho : visions, narratives, dialogues / [edited by] Tim Howell, Jon Hargreaves,
and Michael Rofe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-2116-0 (hardcover) 1. Saariaho, Kaija–Criticism and interpretation.
I. Howell, Tim. II. Hargreaves, Jon. III. Rofe, Michael.

ML410.S114K37 2011
780.92–dc22
2011010615

ISBN 9781409421160 (hbk)

 Contents

List of Examples    vii

Notes on Contributors    xi
Preludes and Codas    xv
Acknowledgements    xxv

Visions

1 Meet the Composer   3

Kaija Saariaho in Conversation with Tom Service

2 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes   15

Daniel March

3 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams   41

Anni Oskala

Narratives

4 Stories from the Mouth: Flautists, Bodily Presence and Intimacy

in Saariaho’s Flute Music   63
Taina Riikonen

5 Capturing Time and Giving it Form: Nymphéa   81

Michael Rofe

6 Whispers from the Past: Musical Topics in Saariaho’s Operas   107

Liisamaija Hautsalo

Dialogues

7 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos   133

Tim Howell
vi Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

8 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution  159

Vesa Kankaanpää

9 Networks of Communication: (De)Crystallization and Perceptual

Zoom in Du cristal   177
Jon Hargreaves

Bibliography    203
Index217
 List of Examples

2.1 Cendres – opening material, transcription, 1–13

2.2 Cendres – ending, transcription, 155–9; 165–8
2.3 Cendres – examples of characteristic material, transcription, 95–7;
143–5; 50–51
2.4 Cendres – reduction of opening, analysis, 1–64
2.5 Cendres – ‘mirroring’ of bass-note movement, analysis, 38–41; 131–9
2.6 Terra Memoria – opening section: characteristic material, transcription,
40–41; 62–3
2.7 Terra Memoria – violin/viola melody, transcription, 15–21 (violin);
314–321 (viola)
2.8 Terra Memoria – contrasted material of second section, transcription, 64–6
2.9 Terra Memoria – reduction of opening and closing passages, analysis,
1–64; 293–331
2.10 Terra Memoria – transcription, 229–39
2.11 Phoenix (‘Cantilena’) – transcription, 299–305
2.12 Phoenix (‘Epilogue’) – transcription, 316–330
3.1 L’Amour de loin – recurring oboe melody, transcription, Prologue, 64–72;
Act III, scene 1, 118–136
3.2 L’Amour de loin – appearances of the ‘Love from Afar’ theme, table,
whole work
3.3 Nuits, adieux – textual material, table, whole work
3.4 From the Grammar of Dreams (Song I) – intensifying vocalise,
transcription, 1–12
3.5 From the Grammar of Dreams (Song II) – combined melodic line,
transcription, 1–16
3.6 From the Grammar of Dreams (Song IV) – depiction of drowning,
transcription, 22–7; 34–end
4.1 NoaNoa – example of whisper-play phrase, transcription, 22–8
4.2 Laconisme de l’aile – opening section, transcription, lines 1–5
5.1 Nymphéa – opening material, transcription, 1–24
5.2 Nymphéa – growth-life-decay cycle, analysis, 1–24
5.3 Nymphéa – anamorphosis of opening materials, transcription, 150–61
5.4 Nymphéa – anamorphosis of growth-life-decay cycle, analysis, 149–208
5.5 Nymphéa – captured sound-worlds; overall form, analysis, whole work
5.6 Nymphéa – background shape, analysis, whole work
5.7 Nymphéa and Nymphéa Reflection – formal comparison, table, whole
works
viii Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

5.8 Nymphéa – form as a cycle of cycles, analysis, whole work

5.9 Nymphéa – second cycle, transcription, 24–39
5.10 Nymphéa (Part I) – fractal-like growth, analysis, 1–263
6.1 Jaufré Rudel’s troubadour melody (from van der Werf, 1972: 86) and its
use in L’Amour de loin­(Act I, scene 1) – transcription, 101–8 (Jaufré)
6.2 L’Amour de loin­(Act I, scene 1) – tarantella as topic, transcription,
176–80 (strings)
6.3 L’Amour de loin­(Act III, scene 1) – the noble horse as lord-of-the-manor
texture, transcription, 1–3 (percussion, harp, piano)
6.4 L’Amour de loin­(Act II, scene 2) – the pianto topic, transcription, 583–9
(sopranos, altos)
6.5 L’Amour de loin­(Act IV, scene 3) – catabasis, transcription, 451–8
(harp, piano)
6.6 L’Amour de loin­(Act V, scene 2) – cradle song, transcription, 235–40
(harp, piano, Jaufré, chorus)
6.7 L’Amour de loin­(Act V, scene 3) – chorale, transcription, 493–8
(Clémence, chorus, strings)
6.8 Adriana Mater (Act II, scene 6) – use of the pianto topic in its extreme
form, transcription, 124–5 (chorus)
6.9 Adriana Mater (Act I, scene 2) – execution topic, transcription, 7–11
(side drum)
6.10 Adriana Mater (Act I, scene 2) – musical icon of the rape, transcription,
372–6 (Adriana, chorus)
6.11 Adriana Mater (Act I, scene 3) – nightingale as topic of hope,
transcription, 2–5 (piccolo)
6.12 Adriana Mater (Act II, scene 7) – the heart motif, transcription, 596–600
(timpani)
6.13 Adriana Mater (Act II, scene 6) – catabasis, transcription, 115–16
(harp, piano)
7.1 Graal théâtre (‘Delicato’) – opening material, transcription, 1–8
(solo violin)
7.2 Graal théâtre­ (‘Delicato’) – episodic overview, table, whole movement
7.3 Graal théâtre (‘Impetuoso’) – opening material, transcription, 445–59
(solo violin)
7.4 Graal théâtre (‘Impetuoso’) – descending figures, transcription, 649–54
7.5 Notes on Light – movement layout, table, whole work
7.6 Notes on Light (‘Translucent, secret’) – formal architecture, table, whole
movement
7.7 Notes on Light (‘Translucent, secret’) – opening material, transcription, 1–7
7.8 Notes on Light (‘Awakening’) – cyclic material, analysis, whole movement
7.9 Notes on Light (‘Awakening’) – soloist chromaticism, transcription, 12–21
(solo cello)
7.10 Notes on Light (‘Awakening’) – orchestral refrain, transcription, 22–5
7.11 Notes on Light (‘Heart of Light’) – formal scheme, table, whole movement
 List of Examples ix

8.1 Jardin secret I – spectrogram of 7:50–9:50, taken from A Portrait of Kaija

Saariaho (BIS CD-307)
8.2 Jardin secret I – spectrogram of 0:00–1:55, taken from A Portrait of Kaija
Saariaho (BIS CD-307)
8.3 Jardin secret I – spectrogram of entire work, taken from A Portrait of
Kaija Saariaho (BIS CD-307)
8.4 Jardin secret I – spectrogram of 5:50–6:30, taken from A Portrait of Kaija
Saariaho (BIS CD-307)
8.5 Lichtbogen – analysis of cello F, composer’s sketch, from sketches and
notes, 1985
8.6 Lichtbogen – rough draft of harmony, composer’s sketch, from sketches
and notes, 1985
8.7 Lichtbogen – superimposition of textural levels, transcription, 42–4
8.8 Lichtbogen – texture-derived sound colour analysis, transcription, 127–9
9.1 Du cristal – opening chord, transcription, 1–4
9.2 Du cristal – perceptual network of harmony and timbre, diagram
9.3 Du cristal – ‘empty soundscape’, figure H, transcription, 65–9
9.4 Du cristal – orchestrational relief ‘graph’, diagram
9.5 Du cristal – formal outlines, table, whole work
9.6 Du cristal – tempo network, diagram
9.7 Du cristal – ‘tonal’ sonorities at figure U, transcription, 200–205
9.8 Du cristal – reduction of pitch content, opening to figure E, analysis, 1–39
9.9 Du cristal – vertical sonorities at figures R to Y, analysis, 169–250
9.10 Du cristal – ‘background’ pitch structure, analysis, whole work
9.11 Du cristal – textural narratives, analysis, whole work
 Notes on Contributors

Jon Hargreaves is a freelance researcher, conductor, composer, arranger and

musician. He completed his PhD in 2008 at the University of York and his
thesis, Music as Communication: Networks of Composition, investigated issues
of communication between composers and listeners in twentieth-century music.
Since finishing his PhD he has taught freelance at the University of York, York St
John University, and in the junior school of Trinity College of Music in London.
In 2009 he worked as Research Associate for Heriot-Watt University, composing
music for an experiment investigating the effects of music on dairy cattle.
Currently, he is the Research Consultant for the Changing Key project, a study of
the potential for the role of music in school transition, funded by the Paul Hamlyn
Foundation. He now lives and works in London, where he has recently co-founded
The Octandre Ensemble.

Liisamaija Hautsalo works as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Sibelius

Academy, Helsinki, where she also teaches the history of Finnish opera. Her
current research project involves the development of online material for teaching
Finnish opera in schools. Hautsalo completed her doctoral dissertation ‘L’Amour
de loin: The Semantics of the Unattainable in Kaija Saariaho’s Opera’ at the
University of Helsinki in 2008. Her specialist fields are Finnish opera, history of
opera, contemporary opera and semiotic theory of musical topics; she also works
as a music critic and writer.

Tim Howell is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of

York, where he specializes in the analysis of new music. From the publication of
his PhD thesis onwards, he has become an internationally recognized authority
on the music of Sibelius, which has led to numerous publications, conference
contributions and visiting lectures – most notably at the Sibelius Academy in
Helsinki. His research has now broadened to encompass contemporary Finnish
music. After Sibelius: Studies in Finnish Music (Ashgate, 2006) provides an
engaging investigation into Finnish music and combines elements of composer
biography and detailed analysis within the broader context of cultural and national
identity. This study of Finnish musical modernism, the first in English, has been
highly acclaimed: ‘An elegant, concise and penetrating work that places this music
within a larger European context while addressing the difficult question of what is
“Finnishness” in music’ [Music Research Forum].
xii Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Vesa Kankaanpää has been a Senior Lecturer at the Turku Arts Academy, Finland,
since 1999. He teaches research methods and supervises the academic writing of
students working in animation, film, media management, advertising and music.
Kankaanpää studied musicology at the University of Turku, music technology at
the University of York (UK) and was a visiting scholar at the City University,
London. He has published research on Kaija Saariaho’s music in Finnish (for
example, in Musiikki, 1995, and in Elektronisia unelmia, 2005), as well as in
English (Organized Sound, 1996) and in German (Musiktexte, 2006).

Daniel March is a Lecturer in the Music Department at the University of York

where he specializes in the teaching of music analysis. His research focuses
upon music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His doctoral
thesis, ‘Beyond Simplicity: Analytical Strategies for Contemporary Music’,
provided analytical readings of works by Reich, Feldman, Nyman and others, and
a framework for the analysis of music that escapes traditional models. Recent
research involves an examination of the work concept in relation to twentieth-
century ‘re-compositions’, and analytical approaches to the music of György
Ligeti and Louis Andriessen.

Anni Oskala completed a DPhil at Oxford University in 2007 with a thesis that
focused on the vocal works of Kaija Saariaho, particularly her first opera, L’Amour
de loin. After her doctorate, she pursued a research career in the UK public and
charity sectors, initially working as a researcher for the Arts Council of England
and authoring a number of reports including From Indifference to Enthusiasm
(2008). Her current post is that of Senior Researcher at NatCen, working on a
project called ‘Understanding Society’, a major new longitudinal study of UK
society.

Taina Riikonen is a Post-Doctoral Researcher (funded by the Academy of Finland)

in the Department of Doctoral Studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Her
research project, ‘Sonic Interaction’, explores the processes of ‘encountering’ in
the context of contemporary sound-making, focusing particularly on the interaction
between acoustic instrumentalists and electronics. This process of interaction is
evidenced through three different case studies: the chamber ensemble ‘Avanti!’
(Finland), the free-improvisation group ‘Automatic Writing Circle’ (London, UK)
and the Experimental Studio of Finnish Radio Broadcasting Company.

Michael Rofe is a Senior Lecturer in Music at University College Falmouth,

where he specializes in teaching contemporary music. He previously worked as a
Lecturer in Music at York St John University, a visiting Lecturer at the University
of York and a Course Developer at Canterbury Christ Church University. His
research interests centre on musical energetics, particularly as applied to twentieth
and twenty-first century repertoire. Having taken his PhD at the University of York,
he has recently completed a monograph, Dimensions of Energy in Shostakovich’s
 Notes on Contributors xiii

Symphonies (Ashgate, 2012), in which he offers historical, philosophical and

psychological perspectives on the nature of musical energy, analyzing repertoire
from a time when energeticist metaphors were widely used in Russian musicology.
Other research projects include articles on the work of Russian theorist Boleslav
Yavorsky, physical models of time and their application to music theory, and the
origins and effects of temporal proportion in music.

Tom Service completed a doctorate at the University of Southampton on the music

of John Zorn. He writes about music for The Guardian, and is a regular contributor
to BBC Music Magazine, Opera and Tempo. His articles have appeared in books
and music dictionaries, and in journals in France and Germany. He has given pre-
concert talks and written programme notes for many of the festivals, orchestras
and opera companies in the UK. He began broadcasting on Radio 3 on Hear and
Now in 2001, becoming one of the show’s regular presenters, and has presented
Music Matters since the autumn of 2003. Additional work for the BBC includes
introducing Proms concerts (on radio and TV), appearances on Newsnight Review
(BBC 2) and Radio 5 Live.
 Preludes and Codas

Kaija Saariaho is internationally recognized as a leading figure in contemporary

music, enjoying a well-deserved reputation for works that are both creatively
original and of considerable appeal. Her music communicates widely, reaching
a refreshingly broad audience, and this special achievement merits careful
consideration. In the first symposium book in English to be dedicated exclusively
to this single figure, scholars from both the UK and Saariaho’s native Finland bring
a range of perspectives to her richly varied output. Uncovering the compositional,
historical, cultural and sociological issues that have engendered such critical
acclaim lies at the heart of this collection of essays. Saariaho’s approach to
composition is an inter-disciplinary one; it embraces a number of art forms – visual,
literary and musical – in works that explore a creative dialogue between image,
continuity and time. The content and structure of this volume reflect that breadth
of aesthetic, drawing on a variety of approaches to reveal common perceptions of
musical creativity.
While such diversity is readily accommodated in a multi-authored collection,
the consistency of an underlying compositional identity is also a significant trait. To
achieve this degree of unity has involved some important decisions, and it is useful
to share these as a prelude to the book itself. Any notion of ‘Saariaho studies’ is
only in its infancy given a lack of well-established experts in this area, so selecting
contributors was something of a challenge. A positive sense of freedom of choice
had to be offset against its potentially fragmentary nature; there could be a rather
more diffuse range of contributions than might easily be assimilated into a coherent
volume. Above all, there was never the intention to produce a compendium, as so
often that can amount to little more than a miscellany; instead, the aim is to offer
something far tighter, more concentrated and carefully structured: a symposium.
To that end, the choice of authors became focused on scholars from the UK and
Finland, as this provided a meaningful balance between two centres of research
within what is effectively a new discipline.
It is perhaps worth noting that while the idea of a ‘research group’ is standard
practice within scientific communities (and indeed is very common in the social
sciences), it is still something of a rarity in the arts. The Department of Music
at the University of York is an internationally renowned centre for the study of
contemporary music, with specialist expertise in the area of (new) music from
Finland. To varying degrees, the four UK authors are all connected to this
central point of reference; their collaboration provides both a unity of purpose
and a variety of approach: a research group, in effect. Another crucial facet in
this enterprise concerns Saariaho’s Finnish roots. Although a truly cosmopolitan
xvi Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

figure, she acknowledges the significance of her national identity: the notion of
‘Finnishness’ is deeply embedded in her compositional psyche, even though she
has lived in Paris since the 1980s. Indeed, this Finnish connection is not simply a
part of the origin of this music – it also filters into its reception. Most obviously,
there is a relevant body of scholarship and critical study that is only available in
its native language. (Finnish is, of course, completely unrelated to other European
languages, making this valuable resource stubbornly inaccessible to many – if
not most – readers.) The inclusion of four researchers from Finland, all of whom
have previously published writings on this composer (in their own language),
gives a symbiotic relationship to the whole enterprise. They are able to absorb and
comment upon a whole range of thinking and writing that their UK counterparts
cannot easily assimilate, while an English-based editorial team can ensure that
these materials reach as wide a readership as possible, given the ubiquity of their
language.
With the contributor rationale growing out of a York–Helsinki axis, the book
needed to be carefully structured if these contrasting views were to be fashioned
into a coherent whole. A symposium of nine chapters offering individual
perspectives on a single composer, Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues
reflects the preoccupations of this thought-provoking figure. The grouping of these
contributions under three main headings outlines the breadth of Saariaho’s creative
concerns while subscribing to a carefully formed succession of commentaries.
These larger conceptual domains are sufficiently flexible to absorb a number of
interpretative approaches, yet distinctive enough to articulate a logical sequence
overall. Within this framework, a blend of informed technical discussion and
interpretative critical contexts illuminates the composer’s choice of subjects
that inspire her. But what about her personal voice in all of this? An in-depth
interview forms the opening chapter, inviting the reader to ‘meet the composer’
before engaging with her music. And, of course, music (her truly personal voice)
is absolutely central to all of these contributions which, collectively, offer a wide
coverage of this repertoire. Consequently, the sheer variety of Saariaho’s work and
its considerable appeal – features that provided the initial impetus for this book –
form the guiding principle behind its construction.
The concept of ‘visions’ is far-sighted enough to embrace issues that range
from Saariaho’s compositional manifesto – her formative experiences and
aesthetic values – to an interest in the subconscious as portrayed, for instance,
through dreams. For Saariaho, the inspirational effects of visual stimuli on her
compositional process cannot be overestimated. Earlier interests in electronic
media, and continued preoccupations with blurring the distinctions between timbre
and harmony, contribute to a desire to ‘sculpt’ sound into fluid forms. A student of
art and design as well as music, gifted with synaesthetic abilities that enable her
to see music as colours, many of her pieces are reflective of a visual imagery that
was the catalyst for their inception. Lichtbogen (1986), a pivotal work within the
composer’s stylistic development and her growing international reputation, is a
case in point. A creative reaction to the ghostly forms of the aurora borealis, the
 Preludes and Codas xvii

choice of title – ‘Arches of Light’ – is a strikingly visual clue to both the external
imagery that prompted its conception and the temporal and formal processes that
govern its composition. One feature of the Northern Lights is a sense of infinity –
of timelessness. Yet their flickering rays have energy and speed – light in motion.
Typically, Saariaho is preoccupied here with all-embracing, slow transformations,
generating a sense of stasis on the largest scale: ‘arches’. Set against this is a
musical surface that is full of life, with its energetic repetition patterns and constant
timbral variation: ‘light’. Saariaho’s music readily invites such interpretations.
Connections between extra-musical image and musical realization result in an
imaginative interplay of visual and aural responses: Lichtbogen reaches out to its
audience in a number of different ways.
Saariaho’s commitment to literary-inspired musical forms stems from a
number of perspectives on the idea of ‘narrative’. From the most basic definition of
storytelling (as distinct from dialogue), through issues of history, memoir, legend,
fortune and experience, various potential ways of generating musical continuity
form a crucial strand in her aesthetic. At its most technical, Saariaho’s absorption
of spectralist thinking, with its inherent composing-out of fundamental acoustic
phenomena – their temporal transformation – is essentially a narrative process.
This collision of interests, both literary and technical, originates from a formative
stage in her career. As a composition student in Finland in the 1970s, she had
to come to terms with a music history that was uniquely dominated by a single,
patriarchal figure: the so-called ‘shadow’ of Sibelius, as previous generations
termed it. The effect of this legacy was wide-ranging, as Saariaho explains:

In Finland we have an odd situation: on the one hand, we are equal; on the
other, a completely patriarchal system governs. Every area must have some kind
of father figure, Kekkonen [the former president of Finland for 25 years], or
Kokkonen [one of the most prominent composers in Finland from the 1950s
to the 1980s] – there is something inbuilt in it, the whole system of upbringing
leads to that. All the important Finns are men, including musicians. It comes
from Finnish mythology (in Moisala, 2009: 17).

From this position, it was hardly surprising that while searching for her
compositional identity she notes that ‘many women writers were important: Edith
Södergran, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anaïs Nin. I was interested in how women
writers [and painters] had been able to do this creative work, of which I didn’t find
any satisfying examples in music’ (in Beyer, 2000b: 4). This strongly felt literary
influence is deeply ingrained and has had long-lasting, positive effects. Not only
did it initially manifest itself in an exclusive preoccupation with vocal music,
establishing a productive relationship between (literary) text and (musical) form,
it eventually resulted in an enormous commitment to writing opera. Saariaho is on
record as seeing her compositional output from about 1983 onwards as directly
connected to her first opera, L’Amour de loin (‘Love from Afar’), completed in
2000 (see Beyer, 2000b: 6). With its renewed interest in dramatic discourse and
xviii Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

attendant musical continuity, this opera is the culmination of a number of earlier

trends. It is also part of an ongoing narrative. This particular focus continues in
her later operatic and stage works, and represents a deep-rooted, inter-disciplinary
approach.
Consequently, while visual elements most directly contribute to a formal
shaping that is broadly architectural and therefore spatial, literary concerns are
conveyed through a narrative impulse that is more organic and temporal. These
contrasting yet complementary ways of shaping material are the result of a
meaningful dialogue between different structural forces. Usefully, this brings us to
the last stage of the book. ‘Dialogues’ is perhaps the most over-arching category
here, with the potential to draw upon both visual and narrative elements and
hold them in a creative synthesis. An exchange of ideas is a fundamental trait.
On the broadest level, given how this music communicates with its audience and
how positively they respond to it, there is a genuine dialogue between composer
and listener. Internal debates about modernism, and its degree of challenge to
tradition, form an aesthetic dialogue applicable to both parties. More locally,
the setting up of oppositional strategies to generate tensions that unfold over
time conditions much of Saariaho’s approach. The complementary process
of mitigating between these conflicting impulses – especially in the search for
resolution and closure – is essentially one of dialogue. A good example is Aile
du songe, ‘Wing of Dreams’ (2001) which, as Saariaho’s first major composition
after the groundbreaking L’Amour de loin, is a work of dramatic oppositions: a
concerto (for flute and orchestra). Its overall structure is in two parts, ‘Aérienne’
(‘Ethereal’) and ‘Terrestre’ (‘Terrestrial’), titles taken from the Saint-John Perse
collection of poems that inspired it. Consequently, dialogues emerge from these
extra-musical influences – both visual and literary – and are conveyed through the
inherent duality of the concerto genre itself. This fundamental idea of a pairing of
opposites operates on a number of perceptual levels: dreams/realities; ethereal/
terrestrial; air/land; sky/earth; flute/orchestra; variation/repetition; improvised/
controlled; dynamic/static. Musical processes emanate from external impulses,
offering a wide range of listening strategies to a variety of audiences.
So much for the composer, the contributors and the construction of this book:
what about the reader? In the urgency of a technological age, with its instant
communication that seems so reductionist – consider the cull of vowels (in text
messaging), the length of tweets (on Twitter) and the single-letter adjective (from
the e-book to the iPad) – most people are unlikely to read this volume sequentially,
let alone from cover to cover. Flexibility is key. Consequently, each contribution
forms a self-contained unit, while their succession may be approached in any
order: you are encouraged to browse. Also, in terms of both length and focus,
every chapter is designed to be readable at a single sitting (though, in some cases,
you may need a lie-down afterwards). For those with greater stamina, the placing
of these contributions into groups of three may offer another logical route, should
that appeal. For now though, as a further prelude to the book, the ensuing synopsis
provides an additional overview; together with a coda that draws together a number
 Preludes and Codas xix

of common threads from across the volume, the reader should find different ways
to approach its diverse contents. With music that is so successful at reaching out to
its audience, this book hopes to communicate with its readership in an equivalent
manner.
Starting from the broadest perspective, ‘Visions’ sets out by recording the
composer’s own viewpoint; in an extensive interview with Tom Service, Kaija
Saariaho explains her aesthetic values and discusses the formative experiences
that have shaped her development as a creative artist. She emerges as an intensely
private person who is nonetheless all too aware of her hugely public profile, thereby
setting the scene for a number of such contradictory elements that surround her
music. In the following study, ‘From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes’,
Daniel March outlines the evocation of the nebulous, extra-musical, visual stimuli
that have inspired Saariaho’s works. This encapsulates a significant characteristic
of the sonic world she seeks to portray, as expressive atmospheres are transformed
into precisely imagined structures. That dream-like quality of creative inspiration
is explored further by Anni Oskala; ‘Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams’
uncovers the structures and symbolism of a recurrent theme in this music, and
locates its findings with reference to Freudian dream theory. Visual stimuli and
their potential for psychoanalysis are brought into alignment and offer particular
insights into her artistic imagination, especially when read in conjunction with
Saariaho’s earlier biographical comments.
Literary influences and the close relationship between title and soundscape
– the complex inter-connection of words and music – provide a backdrop to the
concept of ‘Narratives’. Taina Riikonen approaches this issue from a performer’s
perspective, and ‘Stories from the Mouth’ considers the projections of speech and
music in relation to Saariaho’s highly individual flute writing. The questioning of
boundaries, more typically applied to compositional parameters (like timbre and
harmony), finds a new direction in the context of human characteristics: ‘bodily
presence and intimacy’ – whispering, breathing, speaking, playing. Narratives that
are the product of a distinctive type of musical continuity, one that stems from
organic growth and the creative recycling of materials, are discerned by Michael
Rofe. Adopting Saariaho’s comment on her compositional process, ‘Capturing
Time and Giving it Form’ (in Moisala 2009: 54), he uncovers the idea of temporal
narrative as evidenced through an analytical reading of Nymphéa; the implications
arising from this are suitably organic, given their wide-ranging significance.
Saariaho’s commitment to writing opera is a major element in her oeuvre, and the
relationship between these groundbreaking works and a broader operatic tradition
forms the starting point of Liisamaija Hautsalo’s study: ‘Whispers from the Past’.
A semiotic approach to the concept of musical topics within L’Amour de loin and
Adriana Mater provides both a literary slant and a more historical outlook on the
narrative theme.
Finally, with Saariaho’s music being acclaimed for its ability to communicate
with audiences, the third phase of this volume involves a range of ‘Dialogues’. The
clearest genre to focus on oppositions and combinations, ‘Dualities and Dialogues’
xx Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

– the concerto – forms the basis of an analytical investigation of selected works.

My intention here is to demonstrate how competing formal impulses – architectural
and spatial versus organic and temporal – are directly conveyed through the
concerto, a medium that Saariaho particularly values. This is offset by Vesa
Kankaanpää’s ‘Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution’
in its more technical consideration of spectral methods and their musical results,
at a formative stage in her career. A creative dichotomy emerges from Saariaho’s
individual engagement with the blurred relationship between timbre and harmony.
As this issue is the focus of Saariaho’s first theoretical essay about her own music,
Kankaanpää’s chapter is an important exploration of the implications of her
(self-)analysis. A closing investigation of how Saariaho constructs such highly
effective ‘Networks of Communication’, and their significance for our perception
of her music, helps to open up new debates and synthesize fundamental issues
in a thought-provoking discussion. A number of elements crystallize here as Jon
Hargreaves, in an individual blend of philosophical, psychological and analytical
approaches, uncovers a range of listening strategies evoked through the metaphor
of Du cristal …à la fumée.
Ending in a cloud of smoke, which is where Chapter 2 began, suggests a
kind of cyclic quality to the book as a whole – though it is really just one of
many coincidental crosscurrents that reside amongst this collection. A variety of
perspectives within self-contained chapters amounts to a succession of individual
viewpoints: this is the strength and appeal of any multi-authored volume. With
authors given free rein to choose the issues, approaches and musical contexts that
best illustrate their personal topics for discussion, observing underlying threads
that run throughout the book is of interest. Certainly these themes offer a number
of signposts for the reader, but they are also indicative of shared concerns which,
in turn, may point to some fundamental qualities in Saariaho’s music. While these
chapters subscribe to the logic of a precisely formed framework, individually
they offer freely imagined discussions. Although this is by no means accidental, it
nonetheless does involve aspects of speculation, chance – a degree of randomness.
Coincidence is a powerful force. Of course, all of this is perfectly appropriate to
the study of a composer who deliberately and creatively synthesizes such contrary
impulses within her musical narratives. Indeed, it is a notable feature of any
engagement with modernism – let alone with the twentieth century itself, which
still remains the most untidy period in (musical) history.
Historical context may be a useful starting point for these codas of common
themes; finding a ‘place’ for Saariaho’s music, how it might ‘fit’ in a post-serialist,
post-spectralist – even post-modernist – world is of interest or concern (depending
on your standpoint) to several authors. Focusing in a stage raises the spectre of
contemporary music in general and Finnish new music in particular – though
Saariaho’s prolonged (and by now permanent) residence in Paris positively forces
us to adopt a more cosmopolitan stance. The extraordinary nature of the Finnish
phenomenon, this small country seemingly on the fringes of Europe that is such
a big player on the international stage of current musical creativity, is not to be
 Preludes and Codas xxi

underestimated though. Finland has well and truly emerged from the shadows
and come into the spotlight by now. Wherever we seek to position Saariaho’s
achievements in the competing demands of globalized, twenty-first century
composition, we must acknowledge (as she does herself) an indebtedness to the
highly educated, open-minded and supportive attitudes to artistic endeavour that
characterize her homeland. The cultural values of Finland embrace all artistic
creativity – and music in particular – in an enviably enlightened way. Interestingly,
though, few commentators here feel it necessary to investigate Saariaho’s position
in relation, say, to Sibelius, whose shadow cast light on subsequent generations
of composers. It seems as if her distance from tradition, coupled with the lack
of a single chronological route of musical development, has proved to be more
relevant: less ‘after’ Sibelius, more ‘beyond’ him. Fragmentation and diversity
are crucial. We are no longer content (if, indeed, we ever were) to view history
as merely one thing after another: cross-currents and contradictions along with
discontinuities and interruptions seem to interest us more.
The pioneering spirit associated with Kaija Saariaho – as the first woman
composer from Finland to achieve international recognition – has somehow
retreated into the distance as well. What remains so surprising is the time it took
for a woman to achieve this status in the first place. Finland was, after all, the
first country in Europe to give equal voting rights to women in national elections
(in 1906) and this has resulted in an impressive degree of equal opportunities,
reflected through a social democracy that values fairness. But, once again, Saariaho
has chosen to maintain a discrete and considered distance: she claims to have no
gender agenda. As Pirkko Moisala explains:

She frequently emphasised that she did not want her gender to be an issue and
that she did not want to be called a ‘woman composer’ any more that she wanted
to be labelled a ‘computer composer’. She wanted people to experience her
music as music, instead of as music composed by a woman (Moisala, 2009: 16).

Issues about the role of women composers are correspondingly embedded (rather
than highlighted) in the chapters of this book, with the operas providing the most
direct comment here. The subject matter of L’Amour de loin and especially that
of Adriana Mater perhaps offer the clearest insight into any feminist thinking on
the composer’s part – though only to the extent that individual listeners seek to
relate to it. Performance issues arising from Saariaho’s personal engagement with
writing for the flute provide a further, refreshingly novel perspective on this topic.
Any relevance to the formative stages of her composing career emerges with both
frankness and self-awareness during the interview which opens this book. All of
this conveys a notably human, personal quality that lies behind the artistic remove
of the concert-hall.
It appears that different degrees of ‘distance’ collectively form an ongoing
strand amongst various chapters, crystallizing in the idea that Saariaho has
an individual – distinctive – voice within current musical styles. Part of that
xxii Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

uniqueness stems from a very special attitude to musical timescale, though it

is possible to locate this attribute within typically Finnish preoccupations (see
Howell, 2010); few composers today write music that has such slow-moving,
background transformations. A number of perspectives on the projection of
musical time, especially in conjunction with the positioning of formal space,
recur in several studies that are otherwise quite different. Whether or not such
approaches are analytical, psychological, philosophical or historical, or even if
they are geared (respectively) towards compositional intention, listener perception,
aesthetic value or scholarly reception, time and motion are fundamental traits.
This issue almost amounts to a leitmotif within the book as a whole. Indeed,
the sheer variety of ways in which temporal concerns are manifest within such
contrasting genres becomes a compositional fingerprint in itself. Any composer
working in this post-tonal world, who defines their craft as ‘capturing time and
giving it a form’, is likely to prompt investigations of how this might be achieved:
Saariaho is always prepared to address true essentials. Consequently, this gives
rise to a number of related topics of which musical continuity, temporal narrative,
formal perception and structural perspective seem the most prevalent. Saariaho’s
economy – deploying a minimum of material to maximum effect – is a significant
common denominator in this regard.
But what about the distinctive sound-world that her music inhabits?
‘Harmony’, ‘timbre’, ‘texture’ are perhaps the most frequently used terms in
this book, especially in relation to the whole notion of ‘spectral composition’.
Fortunately this is not the place to steal the thunder of fellow contributors, so
most of the technical, analytical and perceptual characteristics of Saariaho’s
(spectral) soundscapes can only appear in the fullness of time – over the course
of this volume. On the broadest scale, stylistic ‘placing’ of this music becomes
relevant again, providing a useful context. As a student in Helsinki in the late
1970s, the emergence of musical modernism through the achievements of Erik
Bergman (1911–2006), the earlier works of Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) and,
above all, in the compositions and teaching of Paavo Heininen (b. 1938) enabled
Saariaho to engage with current trends. But with something of the prevailing post-
serial mentality proving to be a limitation, she became a founding member of
the ‘Ears Open!’ society, Korvat auki – a vanguard of modernist developments
that proactively sought to challenge the establishment. Characteristic of this
group was its interest in compositional developments outside their native Finland,
especially in continental Europe; coming into contact with the spectralist music of
Gérard Grisey (1946–98) and Tristan Murail (b. 1947), was a notably formative
experience. Looking back, it seems somehow inevitable that Saariaho, along with
her colleague Magnus Lindberg, would end up studying at IRCAM – though her
settling in Paris thereafter was a more measured decision.
The deliberate blurring and re-defining of traditionally discrete parameters, seen
by many as a stock-in-trade feature of Saariaho’s sound-world, can be traced back
to this period. (For more details, see Howell, 2006; Moisala, 2009.) Engagements
with electronic media, computer-generated materials and a preoccupation with
 Preludes and Codas xxiii

spectral analysis form an ongoing, developmental thread within Saariaho’s oeuvre.

The idea of ‘composer as theorist’ is also relevant here. Saariaho is someone who
researches and theorizes what she does, applying those findings to her music and
establishing underlying principles. But this rational, compositional approach is
offset by expressive, aesthetic concerns. This music never sounds like some kind
of technical exercise: it is frequently praised for its sensual beauty.
By now, Saariaho’s reservoir of technique is so fully integrated into a process
of ‘sculpting’ sound into fluid narratives that any separating out of its constituent
elements is almost a contradiction in terms. ‘Almost’ is important here. Markedly
differing views on this common issue arise during the chapters that follow, with
a range of perspectives on how far harmony and timbre, for instance, may be
assimilated as separate/distinctive or integrated/unified entities. Additionally,
there is much debate about how this may be perceived by audiences, understood
by analysts, evaluated by psychologists. In turn, the larger-scale ramifications of
this sonic flexibility and its structural shaping – how the listener comes to process
form, or whether form is actually just a process – creates a range of potentially
conflicting, contradictory, even paradoxical viewpoints. ‘Contradiction’ therefore
becomes a theme in its own right. It encompasses widely differing critical
opinions, a range of oppositional strategies within the compositional frameworks
that Saariaho adopts, and a creative aesthetic that combines expressive sensuality
with discipline and rigour.
The fact that there is no single way to assimilate or appreciate this music is
confirmed by these chapters. Such diversity should be warmly welcomed, as it is
surely a strength that so much variety exists within a truly distinctive compositional
voice. Therefore, as we come to conclude that Saariaho’s artistry reaches out to a
refreshingly broad audience, it seems as if this particular Coda has returned to the
opening Prelude: so it must be time to stop. Personally, Kaija Saariaho: Visions,
Narratives, Dialogues is the culmination of a long-term project that has moved
from my championing the cause of Finnish new music within the international
arena to our celebrating the remarkable success of one of its leading exponents.
The collaboration that follows is between authors who share a sincere commitment
to uncover their emotional experience and intellectual understanding of this highly
imaginative sound-world. Ideally, something of their collective enthusiasm for
Saariaho’s sheer inventiveness will emerge from these writings; our aim is simply
to encourage you to engage further with Saariaho’s creative individuality and,
hopefully, to add to your enjoyment of her music.

Tim Howell
 University of York, September 2010
 Acknowledgements

For me, the initial impetus for this project was quite a simple one: a question of
balance. After Sibelius: Studies in Finnish Music (2006) was a single-authored
volume that considered the music of eight composers; Kaija Saariaho: Visions,
Narratives, Dialogues is a book about a single composer, written by eight
authors. Symmetry is a pleasing concept. Consequently, given the collaborative
nature of this enterprise, there are a number of individuals and institutions
whose contributions and support have been particularly invaluable. Without their
commitment and assistance, this book would never have become a reality: I am
extremely grateful to all concerned. With the composer herself at the centre of
this project, I extend my warmest thanks to Kaija Saariaho – for agreeing to be
interviewed about her life and work and for being so candid and insightful about
her formative experiences – and to Tom Service for facilitating this process.
The Department of Music at the University of York has provided me with
research leave and financial support to allow the requisite time and resources
to bring this book to fruition. It also has proved to be something of a creative
focus for a number of shared values and approaches common to the English
contributors in this volume. To some degree (and as alumni this is quite literally
the case), Jon Hargreaves, Daniel March, Michael Rofe and Tom Service have
long-standing connections to this central reference point. Correspondingly,
our Finnish counterparts have their own links as they were all contributors to
another multi-authored study, Elektronisia unelmia: kirjoituksia Kaija Saariahon
musiikista [Electronic Dreams: Writings on Kaija Saariaho’s Music], edited by
Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam (2005). I am grateful to Helsinki University Press
(now Gaudeamus HUP) for granting permission to Liisamaija Hautsalo, Vesa
Kankaanpää, Anni Oskala and Taina Riikonen to draw upon some of the materials
outlined in that anthology. Moreover, all these authors were refreshingly open to
the idea of expanding and developing their thoughts, given this new context for
their work, and I warmly commend their willingness to do so.
Elsewhere in Finland, special thanks are due to the staff at the Finnish Music
Information Centre for all their help and advice. Their website (<www.fimic.
fi>) gives far more detailed and up-to-date biographical information than a book
like this could ever provide, especially as Saariaho continues to be so active. I
am especially grateful to Andrew Bentley, Founding Head of the Department of
Music and Technology at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, for his crucial input
to this project – especially during its early stages. His exceptional linguistic skills
gave me unprecedented access to a body of scholarship that would otherwise
be beyond my reach, while his thoughtful reading, measured consideration and
xxvi Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

lively discussions have been enormously helpful. Special thanks are also due to
Anna Krohn at the Sibelius Academy for her practical support during my various
research trips to Helsinki.
Closer to home, I greatly value the commitment, enthusiasm, insight and
creativity of my two co-editors, Jon Hargreaves and Michael Rofe, with whom
I have enjoyed such a productive and enlightening working relationship – and
friendship – for some years now. Having completed their doctoral studies and
embarked on the early stages of truly promising careers, I wish them every
success in the future, especially in these straitened times. Despite the best of
intentions, competing demands and time constraints have resulted in differing
levels of availability; I know that Jon will agree that Mike’s editorial role has
been particularly demanding, and join me in expressing our gratitude for all his
extra work. Finally, I am indebted to my partner, Cathy Denford, for her unfailing
encouragement throughout this lengthy project. Her contribution extends far
beyond the creation of the image on this book jacket – even if that threatens to
overturn the old maxim that you ‘shouldn’t judge a book by its cover’ – and I am
eternally grateful for her constant support.
The Music Sales Group, London has kindly granted permission for the following
extracts: CENDRES Music by Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 1998 Chester Music
Limited). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by
Permission. TERRA MEMORIA Music by Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 2007
Chester Music Limited). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.
Reprinted by Permission. L’AMOUR DE LOIN Music by Kaija Saariaho; Libretto
by Amin Maalouf (Music © Copyright 2002 Chester Music Limited). (Libretto ©
Copyright 2002 Amin Maalouf). Exclusively licensed to Chester Music Limited.
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission.
FROM THE GRAMMAR OF DREAMS Music by Kaija Saariaho; Words by
Sylvia Plath (© Copyright 1988 Edition Wilhelm Hansen Helsinki OY). All
Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission.
NOANOA Music by Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 2000 Chester Music Limited).
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission.
LACONISME DE L’AILE Music by Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 1983 Edition
Wilhelm Hansen Helsinki OY). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright
Secured. Reprinted by Permission. NYMPHEA Music by Kaija Saariaho (©
Copyright 1988 Edition Wilhelm Hansen Helsinki OY). All Rights Reserved.
International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission. ADRIANA MATER
Music by Kaija Saariaho; Libretto by Amin Maalouf (Music © Copyright 2006
Chester Music Limited). (Libretto © Copyright 2006 Amin Maalouf). Exclusively
licensed to Chester Music Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright
Secured. Reprinted by Permission. GRAAL THEATRE Music by Kaija Saariaho
(© Copyright 1998 Chester Music Limited). All Rights Reserved. International
Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission. NOTES ON LIGHT Music by
Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 2007 Chester Music Limited). All Rights Reserved.
International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission. LICHTBOGEN Music
 Acknowledgements xxvii

by Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 1986 Edition Wilhelm Hansen Helsinki OY). All
Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission. DU
CRISTAL Music by Kaija Saariaho (© Copyright 1990 Edition Wilhelm Hansen
Helsinki OY). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted
by Permission.
Oxford University Press has kindly granted permission for the following:
Phoenix by Richard Causton © Oxford University Press 2006. Extract reproduced
by permission. All rights reserved.

Tim Howell
 University of York, September 2010
Visions
 Chapter 1
Meet the Composer
Kaija Saariaho in Conversation with Tom Service

Encounters with composers are always richly strange experiences. It is impossible

not to carry an image of what you think the person who wrote this music might
be like in person, as if a composer’s character, behaviour and personality ought to
mirror the qualities of their music. With Kaija Saariaho, the distinction between
the persona and the music is especially fascinating. She is one of the most famous
living composers in the world, yet she is an intensely private person; she writes
music of sometimes voluptuous warmth and sensuality, yet, in real life, she shares
that clichéd characteristic of her fellow Finns in not exactly being the last word
in loquaciousness: she seems to weigh her spoken thoughts as analytically as her
music is intuitive and apparently unsystematic. And yet there are points of contact.
Saariaho has a tangible ethereality when you meet her – which is so often the
paradoxical impression of her music. Her work has the vivid evanescence of a
dream, it conjures a weightless physicality, it shimmers with invisible light. In our
conversation, she reveals the biographical origins of her private creative universe,
the internal and external struggles she endured growing up in Finland in order
to fulfil what she instinctively felt as her destiny to be a composer, and how her
musical voice was formed on the continent once she left her homeland for good in
the 1980s, making her home in Paris, where she still lives.
**********
Did you come from a musical family in Helsinki?

I didn’t come from musical circles at all. My father was a kind of inventor who
created his own business in the metal industry. When the business started taking
off, my mother was just at home with the children; with me, the oldest, my sister
and my brother. My parents didn’t have any real education. They came from
very poor families from the eastern part of Finland. So it was a family without
any kind of cultural background. Music, from the start, was completely my own
thing. Music was my own universe, but I had nobody to guide me. It was quite
haphazard, what I learnt and what I didn’t learn.

So how did you first really discover music?

When I was really a little child. I was very sensitive. There was some music that
frightened me, and some that I liked. We had an old-fashioned radio at home, so I
4 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

listened to music on that. But I also heard music when I was a girl that didn’t come
from a radio. It was music that was in my mind. I imagined that it came from my
pillow. My mother remembered me asking her to turn the pillow off at night when
I couldn’t sleep; to turn off the music that I imagined inside my head.
We had a beautiful summer house in Karelia, in my mother’s village. I still own
the house, in fact, but I don’t have time to go there very much. I remember when
I was six or seven that I heard Bach’s music on the radio there. It was fantastic
to hear that music in the midst of nature. I remembered his name, and because
I went to a Rudolf Steiner school, I studied German. I learnt that ‘Bach’ meant
‘little river’. And I thought that was wonderful – it really corresponded to what I
imagined from hearing his music.

So you must have wanted to play that music, to perform the music you felt so
connected to?

Well, I started to play the violin at school. But it was so badly organized: my
parents had no idea what should happen, and I had a terrible teacher who never
even taught me how to tune the instrument. I was completely lost. But good things
did happen. At that time in Finland, children could be quite independent and go
out on their own, so when I was 12 or 13 I started to go to concerts in Helsinki on
my own. It was all my own adventure.

And what did you see? Were there concerts or pieces that made a special impression
on you?

I went to anything I happened to hear about. I still have enormous holes in my

musical culture, you know, because it was all so haphazard. But I heard great
Russian musicians, who were allowed to play in Finland in the sixties – Gilels,
Richter, [David] Oistrakh and Rostropovich. I think I was impressed, but I didn’t
feel cultured enough to be able to really put them in context. I started to buy vinyl
LPs at the same time: whatever I happened to find. I remember I found one big
package of Dieter Schnebel’s music – I picked up whatever there was in the music
stores in Helsinki!

Were you playing the piano by this time?

Yes, but I really had a feeling that I didn’t know anything. I was a lousy pianist. I
was a very shy person, and my lack of culture made me even more shy. And having
to do all these music exams: well, they went more or less OK, but it was never
anything brilliant, never anything great. I became even more uncertain of myself.
I knew I had this imagination and a real need to express myself musically – I had a
horrible need to do it – but because I was such a lousy instrumentalist, I thought as
a composer I would be even more lousy. I remember reading about Mozart when
I was 11, and realizing all the things he could do at my age, and I thought I cannot
 Meet the Composer 5

do this music thing. I always had the feeling that music is so important, I should
not dirty it with my small person. I had all the time the feeling that I didn’t have
enough talent – and yet I had this very big need to express myself musically.

But you must have had ways of at least trying to express that musical necessity,
maybe even some early attempts at composition?

I wouldn’t have dared to show my compositions to anyone at that age. But the
first things I tried when I was nine or ten, I played on the piano in our living
room. My mother loved me playing when she was lying there on the couch, but
she didn’t like it when I tried out my music, which was not smooth music. I was
trying out chords and sounds. She was really irritated by that and said, ‘Why don’t
you play the music you’re supposed to play?’ So I learnt the guitar when I was 13,
because I could play it on my own in my room. And I started to compose a piece
called Yellow and Nervous. It’s interesting: that title has two things, the character
– because I’m always looking for some character in my music – and this colour
perception I have always had. I don’t know where it is now, but that was a piece
I tried to write down. And as time went on, I began to express myself by setting
poems, and writing songs.

The shyness you talk about – that was a personal thing as well as a musical thing?

Yes. Because shyness is part of being insecure – and I was very insecure. As a
teenager you have other problems. I was a very pretty girl, so I tried to get more
confident by being beautiful, by being the object of admiration. That was what I
was looking for, to get more confidence. In fact it didn’t help me at all, because,
of course, instead of outer confidence, I needed inner confidence to do what I
wanted to do. But there was no one to help with that. Musically, I had no chance
to discuss composition with anyone, or someone to test my skills. When I spoke to
my parents about wanting to be a composer, my father was very angry. Even when
I got into the Sibelius Academy, he wouldn’t speak to me. He thought it was crazy,
that I was ruining my life. I had visual talents, for drawing, etching, sketching – I
would spend Sundays at his office drawing plans for houses, for buildings – and he
thought I should be an architect. That made sense for him. It was craziness instead
to try something that there was no proof I was any good at.
So I escaped. When I was 18, I got married, because I wanted to get away from
my parents. His name was Saariaho, and he was an architect. I’m sure I thought
I loved him. He loved me: he was a wonderful person. He was an architect,
maybe four or five years older than me. But when I married him, I found myself
in another prison. I was not even married for one year before I fell in love with
a painter. But I kept my husband’s name, deliberately. I didn’t want to have my
father’s name [Laakkonen]. I never asked what my husband thought about that!
At that age, when you are in so much pain yourself, you hurt other people without
properly understanding what you’re doing. I ended up living with this painter, a
6 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

very famous Finnish artist, Olli Lyytikäinen, for seven years. I thought when I met
Olli that I had never met anyone so free, and I wanted to be as free, as independent,
as he was. But he was an alcoholic, and he became jealous when my career as a
composer started to get going and I started to become stronger and stronger. And
when things went badly with him, I had a nervous breakdown. I still had enormous
problems.

And yet during that time, and that relationship, you did finally make it to the
Sibelius Academy, and become a composer as you had always wanted to. What
was your route there, to Paavo Heininen’s composition class?

It was a long journey. Originally I thought about applying to the church music
course, because I thought I could become an organist in a church somewhere. I
would play Bach; I would play an instrument I loved. But that isn’t what happened.
When the exam came for the course, you had to sing, and for some reason there
was no voice coming out of my head. I just couldn’t sing. I don’t know if it was
because I was so nervous, or if it was some psychological thing telling me this is
not what I should be doing; whatever it was, I didn’t get on that course. Instead, I
was taken to the art school and the university, so I continued my musical studies at
the Conservatory of Helsinki [a separate institution from the Sibelius Academy].
And I was composing. I played piano for a student theatre, and that brought me
back to composition when I was 19 or 20. I started to write songs again, and this
feeling of necessity grew – I must, I must; I just need to compose.
Although I got some kind of degree, I did not complete those courses. I knew
– somehow – that I had to study with Paavo Heininen. I don’t remember what I
had heard of his music by then; of course I must have known some of his pieces,
but this was another feeling of necessity. But there were no places available in his
class. So I called him up. He asked me, ‘Is composition so important to you?’ and
said that there was no room for me. I told him that I just really needed to study
with him. So one Thursday I went to see him. I was still incredibly shy. He asked
me questions to find out how much I knew about music, which I answered shyly;
like singing the opening of the Sacre de Printemps, and other things. But however
shy I was, I had decided that I would not leave the room until he had taken me on
his course. It was crazy, but I knew I could not leave the room. All of the strength
I had, I put into the fact that I would not get up from my seat before he allowed
me to study with him. He tried to say many times there was no room for me – but
finally he had no choice. I became his pupil.

Underneath your shyness, it seems you had an astonishing stubbornness and

strength!

It’s more that feeling of necessity. It’s not strength, because it’s something you feel
you have to do, so there is no other choice. The thing is, studying with Paavo was
very hard. He was very tough. And I knew so little! Thankfully I made friends like
 Meet the Composer 7

Magnus [Lindberg] and Esa-Pekka [Salonen] who supported me and didn’t think
I was ridiculous. But I was so poor analytically that Paavo asked me to go to the
library of the Sibelius Academy and study this and this score. I mean, he told that
to everybody, but someone like Magnus had all those scores at home! However,
I was very advanced in music theory, and by then I had done all the degrees in
harmony and counterpoint that could be done. I had even done piano studies to the
necessary level. But I was still not a good instrumentalist like Magnus, who was a
very good pianist – and still is. Sometimes Paavo would say to me that my music
was too much in my imagination, and for the next lesson I would have to write
music just for the piano, and write nothing down. I still felt inferior because of my
lack of instrumental skills.

But your inner confidence must have been growing at the same time?

It came little by little through my work. One week, Paavo told me to look in the
mirror ten times a day and say to myself, ‘I can, I can do it’. He saw there was so
much energy in me that was lost to this lack of confidence. It was a difficult time,
but I was so excited, because I was so desperate to compose. And I advanced very
quickly. I started so much later than most people, but there are some pieces from
around that time that can still stand. I had things to express, but I just didn’t have
any kind of technical means to express them.
One turning point was when Paavo told me not to write any more vocal pieces
– ‘it’s too easy for you – now you’ll concentrate on instrumental music’. And it
was very difficult, like telling an alcoholic not to drink any more. Even when I
read the telephone book, I started to hear music! But transferring that energy to
instrumental music, it actually brought me back to my childhood perception of
music, which was so full of smells and colours. And that really opened up my
music enormously.

Did this fulfilment of your creative impulse improve your relationships too – with
your family?

Yes. My father was extremely touched when he came to a big concert when my
music was played. He never got really interested in my music, but he at least
started to see the reality of where I was. My mother tried to follow me, too – even
if she never really understood the music, she enjoyed the success I started to have.

You must have been a distinctive presence in the composition department then –
not least because you were the only woman studying there.

It was really a very patriarchal system back then. There were some teachers who
actually would not teach me, because they thought it was a waste of time. ‘You’re
a pretty girl, what are you doing here?’ That sort of thing. It’s funny. I was a really
8 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

fragile, nice-looking girl, not this kind of determined, bossy person. My femininity
was so apparent, so unavoidable.

So what were the things that Heininen made you write? Were you influenced by the
new things you heard and experienced?

There was not much that we heard in performance, but of course there were
influences from Ligeti, who I loved, from Nono, some of whose music I liked a
lot, and from Messiaen, whose work Paavo made me analyse. And Berio, too. The
library was very good at the Sibelius Academy, but it wasn’t really before I went
to Darmstadt in 1978 that I heard new music in performance.

Did Paavo encourage you to go to Darmstadt?

Paavo was completely unusual in Finland because of the internationalism of his

training. He had studied with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and with Persichetti in
New York, so it came from him, the idea to know the whole scene of contemporary
music. It seemed natural, the only thing to do, to go to Darmstadt and see what was
going on. And I found many really interesting things. For example, the first time I
heard Tristan Murail’s and Gérard Grisey’s music – that was fantastic! I will never
forget the effect it had on me. Their music was not played in Scandinavia and it
was not even recorded – well, there was one record, but it had not reached us up
there. It sounded so fresh, it was just unbelievable. We had had this post-serial
education, where octaves are forbidden even in an orchestral context, and Grisey’s
and Murail’s music just sounded so good. Gérard had already articulated certain
things in writing about his approach to the overtone series, which helped me a lot.
Their music gave me confidence, and that was true of all the music I was
attracted to: it was music that gave me confidence for my own work. Much
later, it was the same with Messiaen’s opera [St François d’Assise] which gave
me confidence to write my first opera, L’Amour de loin. The there were many
other French composers we heard, and Italian composers, like Salvatore Sciarrino
who was not known so well then, and I loved his string music. There were also
neo-romantics like Detlev Müller-Siemens, who was some kind of a star at that
time, but whom we [Lindberg, Salonen, and Saariaho, who travelled to Darmstadt
together a couple of times] couldn’t take seriously at all. It was fantastic to have all
this polemic around new music. I also got to know [flautist] Camilla Hoitenga at
that time, and Pascale Crition, a French composer living in Paris; visiting her was
the reason I first got to know Paris.

You haven’t mentioned Boulez or Stockhausen or Xenakis as composers who gave

you confidence.

I knew that music already, and I admired it. But I did not like it very much,
although Le Marteau sans maître I respected very much, and Xenakis’s Kokkos
 Meet the Composer 9

for solo cello was helpful when I was trying to find solutions for my notation. But
I didn’t find myself in their music.

You also met your next teacher, Brian Ferneyhough, in Darmstadt.

I showed Brian a few things because he wanted to be in touch with as many

composers as possible. Grisey said, ‘Don’t come to show me your score if you
don’t think it’s got something to do with my music, I cannot give you general
advice’, but with Brian, it was the opposite. New, different music was like fresh
meat to him! I showed him one piece and he read it through and said, ‘OK, I see
that your heart is there but your brain is over here, they are not together’. And this
was a fantastic lesson to give me. It was exactly what I felt at the time: that I had
some technique now, and still this enormous need to express, but they still did not
match. I think it was the most important thing he ever told me.

Despite the fact that you went to study with him in Freiburg for two years, from
1980?

My idea was to leave originally just for one year, because I still hadn’t finished my
diploma at the Sibelius Academy. I had the feeling that I should be there with Paavo
for the rest of my life, that I had so much to learn from him. It was a kind of agony,
when they said I had to do a two-year course in Germany. My idea was always to
go back to Paavo and study with him. He was like a father figure for me, even if it
was not an easy relationship. He could be very terse and even rude: that was his way
of teaching. He never said anything positive, ever. Very often, Magnus and I had
lessons with him on Thursday one after another. Then we would have lunch together,
and very often I cried, and we tried together to solve my problems.

Yet you wanted to go back to him?

I felt that I owed him everything: all that I knew about music came from him. And
he encouraged me to go my own way – as did Brian.

So what happened in the Ferneyhough class when you got to Freiburg?

I was immediately in this extremely post-serial school. And I realized – well, I

knew already – that this was not what I wanted. These guys were drawing these
unbelievable diagrams on the blackboard, systems, and interactions, and all of that
– and what did you hear of it in the music? All of that complexity, for what aural
result? It was kind of a crash course to get me out of that whole thing. Perception,
hearing what’s happening in music, had been so important with Gérard’s music and
Tristan’s music. I remember I met Tristan when I visited Pascale around that time
in Paris, and I told her I was going to Freiburg. She said, ‘For me, those people are
not musicians!’
10 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

It sounds like you didn’t get much out of those Freiburg years…

I got a lot, because I got out of Finland. It was similar, in the end, to getting rid
of the prison of my parents. In Finland, I started very quickly to be seen as the
woman composer. Even as a student that started to happen, because the musical
circles are so small there. People heard of this pretty girl who was hanging around
composition classes, and word got around very quickly. I felt they wanted to put
me in some kind of drawer where I really didn’t fit. I felt it was such a uniform
culture, and I needed more space to move, to breathe. And then to see Finland from
the outside, like seeing your parents’ home after you move out, was so refreshing.
And I started to take distance from Paavo too. I realized that I had advanced a lot,
but that maybe he had taught me the most important thing, which was how to keep
on constructing my music. I knew I would never go back to study with him – even
if I thought at that time that I would definitely return to Finland.

So Freiburg and Ferneyhough opened up new horizons to you – and the direction
of your life changed.

I started to visit Paris and my friend Pascale Crition while I was living in Freiburg,
and she knew Tristan and Gérard. Because I was so interested in their music, I
became enmeshed in the Parisian musical scene. And I learned about IRCAM,
the chance to learn about computer technology in music, and I was accepted on
the course in January 1982. I liked Paris a lot, I met my husband, Jean-Baptiste
Barrière at IRCAM, and I did very well on the course. We learnt about physics,
acoustics, as well as the programmes used at IRCAM. I was especially interested
in CHANT, the synthetic voice programme. All of that meant that by 1983, when I
had finished in Freiburg, it was quite clear that I would move to Paris. But it took
a while to settle into Parisian musical life. I didn’t yet have many commissions,
because nobody knew me there. I managed to get small things like an exchange
grant from the French Culture Ministry, but my music was not much played. It was
a really frustrating time.
I was working on my first piece for large ensemble, Verblendungen, which
was premiered in 1984 by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka.
This was the first piece I composed without any teachers. I worked on the tape
part in the INA-GRM Studio in Paris, and it was later played at a computer music
conference in the city. It was an enormous success: my first on an international
stage. As a result, the conductor of the Paris performance, Paul Mefano, wanted
to commission an ensemble piece, which became Lichtbogen, so that was the first
important commission that did not come from Finland.

How important were these two works, Verblendungen and Lichtbogen? Were they
the first pieces you wrote in which you felt that technique and expression – or brain
and heart, to use Ferneyhough’s terms – were properly fused?
 Meet the Composer 11

Things changed enormously even between the two pieces. I think that
Verblendungen is still very stiff. It was very consciously planned, and I carefully
stuck to my plans, so there is a stiffness in its expression. With Lichtbogen, the
key was my relationship with cellist Anssi Karttunen. I went to see him because
I needed to make some cello recordings for the piece, and to learn about some
aspects of string technique I still didn’t know about. And in that process of working
together, something happened to the music. I feel that Lichtbogen is a piece I can
approve. It’s breathing music, where Verblendungen is not.

But how do you make a piece like Lichtbogen breathe? I mean in the combination
between live performers and electronics.

It took several years to learn. But I started to learn about how sounds behave in
space, and how I could use my knowledge of the physical properties of sound in
my orchestration, how I could realize my dream spaces. All of these things started
to come together. From 1982, I did nothing else but compose – or try to compose.
It was incredibly hard work, and very frustrating. I was so angry that my music
was not played more, but at the same time, that frustration made me think a lot, and
I heard a lot of concerts. One of the most interesting things for a young composer
is to go to a concert and hear a piece that you hate, and try to understand, why is it
bad? Why doesn’t it work? What would I have done instead? I always work much
more with my ears rather than analysing other people’s scores.

But what about your relationship with Boulez and his music? You can’t have
avoided that in Paris in the early 1980s.

Boulez’s music didn’t touch me at all. And coming from Finland, I didn’t have
very developed social behaviour. So I didn’t immediately go and meet Boulez.
I only realized much later that I should have gone and shown him my scores.
I didn’t, because his music didn’t interest me that much. And I think I paid an
expensive price for that: he has never conducted my music. Never. He must have
felt my behaviour was strange, but there was nothing malicious in it. It was only
because I was very timid, and interested in other people’s music more.

Grisey’s, especially …

But Grisey’s approach did not match mine. I became his friend, but he had a very
systematic way of analysing his sonograms; his orchestration was mathematical,
and my work is not at all systematic or mathematical. It comes back to what I learnt
from the technology at IRCAM and elsewhere. The technology, the machine, only
gives you what you put into it, what you ask it. There are no wonders with it. The
machine cannot compose for you, cannot make you better. And I don’t want the
machine to compose for me – I like composing! I didn’t have any ambition to
12 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

create a programme that would do something complex and wonderful, because I

want to do the complex and wonderful myself.

Complex and wonderful: a good description of the pieces that began to define
your voice, your musical identity – and your fame, in the late eighties and early
nineties, like Du cristal …à la fumée, your violin concerto, Graal théâtre, and the
vocal music you started to write towards the end of the 1990s, for soprano Dawn
Upshaw especially. What characterizes this period of your music for you?

Harmony, texture, and timbre: those things were then, and still are, at the heart
of my musical thinking. The challenge was to find enough craft and experience
to translate all of that thinking, those ideas, into my music, into musical notation.
It was a very big effort, a result of working hard on my compositional process –
which is really a complex interaction between my intellect and my whole being.
And when I had found the basic intellectual tools to open myself up to music, I
was ripe for writing the kind of music I wanted to.
Du cristal …à la fumée was very important for me, because it was my first piece
for large orchestra. It crystallized my ideas concerning musical form, evolution,
and transformation. It was a really large-scale work [Saariaho thinks of the two
parts of Du cristal …à la fumée, for solo cello and orchestra, as a single entity],
and it finished a certain period in my compositional life, I feel, and started another
one. After it, I stopped thinking only in terms of linear transformation and started
looking for more dramatic solutions and situations for my music.
One catalyst for that change was that I was starting to work with important
soloists. I composed my violin concerto for Gidon Kremer, for example, and I got
to know Dawn Upshaw. And having to think about these important musicians and
writing music specifically for them was a new challenge in my music. I could no
longer construct compositional tools for myself alone: I had to make them work
for other musicians. All of the pieces I have written for soloists have something
to do with the personalities of the musicians themselves. They become, more or
less, portraits of these people. It’s strange to say, but writing these concertos and
solo pieces for these brilliant musicians was the first time that I was really aware
that composition is a public job! It was always so extremely private an expression
before for me.

That publicity wasn’t just about composing concertante works, though: by the
mid-1990s, you had become a famous composer! And you were thrust into the
limelight even more when you won the Grawemeyer Award in 2003 for your first
opera, L’Amour de loin. Did all of this public recognition have any impact on your
musical life?

It was all a little bit shocking, and it took a certain time to understand this public
role, because I had been so much concerned only by my music in the past. But
I don’t think it has changed my working methods. Maybe, though, it has taught
 Meet the Composer 13

me to try to keep my privacy, and not to let people’s expectations of who I am

and what I do really bother me. Because, in fact, what can anyone ‘expect’ of my
music? Only something that they have heard already. People just want the same
thing – but better. But inside, as a composer, I am already somewhere completely
different. There are always pressures in the rest of life, but somehow I keep them
outside of me. My work will always be, in essence, very private work, and the
most important thing is that I have enough time and the right conditions to do it.

L’Amour de loin was a hard-won prize for you, creatively speaking.

I felt when I wrote it that everything I had written up to that moment was somehow
in that piece. All the material, my approach to harmony, to texture – all of it was
there. And so after the opera, I somehow felt that I was starting again. Not from
scratch, of course, but on a new basis. That explains the clarity, the formal freedom,
and also the new expressiveness of the flute concerto, Aile du songe, the piece I
wrote just after the opera. I give the soloist more freedom in that concerto than
in my others, because I was no longer working with electronics, which force the
performer in some way to be limited in time.

So what then, more generally, is the relationship between your pieces that use
electronics, and those that don’t?

Each piece has a different starting point. Let’s take Nymphéa, for string quartet. I
wrote that piece around the time that the first digital mixer came out: this was the
first time you could physically do complex sound processing without having ten
people to do the mixing. So that’s why that piece uses the electronics it does. If I
look at the pieces of mine that use electronics, it’s often solo pieces because I’m
interested in extending the instrument or finding a partner for it. In my new opera,
Emilie [composed for Karita Mattila – and no one else; the piece is a 90-minute
solo for soprano], I have some very specific reasons to use electronics. But if I
didn’t have those reasons, I would not use technology. That was always the case,
in reality. The electronics are there because there is an expressive necessity for
them to be there. And in any case, the gear gets old and out of date so quickly. We
have enormous problems updating my older pieces all the time.

Mentioning Emilie brings us back to opera: you are now an opera composer, one
of the most successful and performed anywhere, with three full-length pieces, all
to librettos by Amin Maalouf – L’Amour de loin, Adriana Mater and Emilie. What
was your journey towards large-scale music theatre?

It’s so strange to me, because I don’t feel like an operatic composer. The pieces
have been big successes in France, but on the other hand, I’ve had the nastiest
reviews I have ever received from the French critics about my operas. It’s a very
interesting contradiction, because, in general, I am very appreciated here and there
14 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

is a lot of warmth and respect towards me from the musical world. But I think
some French people – or French critics – have problems with opera. And they
cannot stand it if you do something that is touching. They want opera to stay very
intellectual and modernistic.

And your operas are deliberately, unselfconsciously touching, dealing with the big
themes of love, of war, of existence. Is that a brave thing to do, in the context of a
culture that wants opera to be modernistic rather than moving?

I don’t feel that it’s brave, because I don’t want to do superficial things. And I
think that the only interesting thing in opera is when a composer writes something
real, which is touching for all of us. So it’s not brave, it’s just: why would I do
anything else? For example, in Emilie – why did I want to do it? I wanted to create
something for Karita that was a real challenge for her, to push her to her musical
limits. I only realize now what an enormous thing it is, to be alone on an opera
stage for one and a half hours!

I wonder whether your attraction to opera isn’t a version of the same impulse that
made you compose Yellow and Nervous all those years ago: for all that they are
grand operatic pieces, there’s something private, interior, intimate about all three
of them. Are they really still your private dreamscapes brought into public life?

It’s always the inner space that interests me. And in a way that makes my operas very
difficult to stage. In Emilie, this woman is writing a letter for 90 minutes – so what
do you do with that? It’s very private: everything is happening in this woman’s mind
during one night when she’s working. Like all of my operas, it should have the effect
of being fundamentally private music, music that I want to communicate with the
inner world of my listeners, just as it expresses my inner imagination.

How completely does it express your inner world, though? Is there a precise
correlation between what you imagine in a new work, and what you hear at the
première?

I don’t think that any of my pieces are able to express completely what I would
like to express. Maybe that’s the reason I continue to write new pieces. I think it’s
an unreachable utopia you know. I don’t know about my colleagues, but I cannot
be very happy about the music I have written before. I am never sitting down and
listening to it and thinking, ‘Oh, this is wonderful’. Some pieces survive better than
others, of course. The operas are the pieces in which I have put most of my energy.
They are enormous works every time, and they take a huge effort not only from
me, but also from everybody around me. I hope that some of that energy is in the
music, and I hope I’m able to communicate some of the ideas I have been trying to
communicate. But I also see and hear my weaknesses in these pieces. Even if I am
not somebody who goes back and revises pieces very easily. For all their problems,
I respect the moment in which I wrote these works.
 Chapter 2
From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes
Daniel March

‘Light’, ‘Rainbows’, ‘Smoke’ – names for events that are, quite literally,
impossible to pin down, which are experienced only fleetingly, which drift into
our senses and then recede, leaving remainders, memories, cinders. The evocation
of the nebulous, of things that, like music itself, leave little trace, which continue
to exist only in the recollection of their many occurrences, has been a touchstone
for composers through the ages; the ability of music to draw out such ideas, self-
reflexively almost, is clearly acknowledged in Kaija Saariaho’s compositions. One
need only examine the titles of many of her works to see this resonance, and
the critical response to her music has often been to draw parallels to evanescent
experiences in the natural world.1 Whilst the limited – finite – duration of most
music we encounter means that such parallels are not unique to Saariaho’s work
(the essence of musical experience is, as John Paynter expressed it, ‘how it is made
to go on in time, and – most significantly – how it is made to stop’ (Paynter, 1992:
26)), her compositional language involves a particularly explicit exploration of
time and scale, and thereby how music is perceived, and how it is remembered.
The following discussion presents a cluster, a constellation, a network of music
– a network suggested initially by congruencies of titles – in an attempt to articulate,
if only tangentially, some of that exploration and of the intertext in which it might
productively be placed. It will be unsurprising that Jacques Derrida’s exploration
of supplementarity plays an important role here; over the course of the last forty
years, there has indeed been much reading of the ashes – the tendency to examine
texts in relation to their exclusions, their supplements, their blindnesses, their
remainders, has become well-established, and this way of thinking about music
informs much of the following discussion, even when not directly invoked.2 More

1
  Saariaho herself has written of the possibilities of both the natural and the social
world being progenitors of music: ‘Sometimes I ask myself whether music is brought about
by the friction between the musician and the surrounding world, or rather from the energy
tapped from nature and other arts. In my specific case, maybe the latter, maybe both. I also
feel that smells, light and colours are a wellspring of musical ideas’ (Saariaho, 2000: 114);
in her discussion of Saariaho’s compositional process, Pirkko Moisala explores how the
sensory world acts as an inspiration and how those ideas are translated into musical works
(Moisala, 2009: 55–9).
2
 These ideas have become so well entrenched into musicological discourse that
the list of secondary texts is perhaps at last superfluous – for Derrida’s own discussion of
16 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

explicit, and central here, is the trope of the cinder, which, in Derrida’s writing,
represents another attempt to name, to illuminate, the trace. In Cinders, Derrida
describes how one particular phrase continually returned to him: ‘il y a là cendre’
(‘cinders there are’). ‘Cinder remains, cinder there is, which we can translate: the
cinder is not, is not what is. It remains from what is not, in order to recall at the
delicate, charred bottom of itself only non-being or non-presence’ (Derrida, 1991:
39). To oversimplify, the image of remainders without weight, that cannot be held,
that crumble as we reach out to grasp them, is a potent one.3
Equally potent, of course, is the inevitable association to be made with human
mortality and the ashes of cremation, and from there to the holocaust – the shoah,
certainly – but Derrida also observes how ‘there is a holocaust for every date, and
somewhere in the world at every hour’ (Derrida, 2005: 46). Derrida makes these
connections explicit in his discussion of Paul Celan in Shibboleth, but the trace of
Celan also runs through Cinders – these texts forming part of the work of mourning
that marks Derrida’s later writing. All these are, self-evidently, topics far beyond
the scope of the present discussion, but evoked here as part of the wider meaning
into which some of the much more circumscribed – and, by comparison, trivial –
detail that follows might be placed. They are part of the current chapter’s aim to
read in (and to read into) the music some of those deeper questions which it might
be able to address – they could usefully be considered as ghosts, which remain
present even when not observed.4 If, when reading (the music, and the words that
follow), one continues to hear what Derrida calls the ‘terrifying echo’ of Celan’s
invocation of ashes and of night in Engführung (Derrida, 2005: 47), then this
music has a marker, a rule, against which any invocation of similar themes might
be tested – and thereby be brought into a process of critical exchange. By recalling
the way in which both writers have considered loss, mourning and remembering,
the music might also begin to resonate with these traces – they might become, as
cinders, part of a new constellation forming around this network of music.

Cendres, Cinders

Saariaho’s 1998 composition Cendres is not a major work – in two senses. Firstly,
scale: scored for alto flute, cello and piano and only nine minutes long, it obviously
lacks the scope of the large orchestral works and, more recently, operas, for which
Saariaho is particularly renowned. It also seems like a work of consolidation,
growing from earlier concerns rather than exploring a new range of expression or

supplementarity, see Derrida, 1976: 141–64.

3
  Lawrence Kramer evokes Cinders in his discussion of the autonomous artwork in
Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Kramer, 1995); my own use of Derrida’s text
is much more circumscribed.
4
 I refer self-consciously to Derrida’s own writing around ghosts, spectres, in
particular Specters of Marx (Derrida, 1994).
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 17

meaning. Secondly, and more interestingly, Cendres sits in a particular relationship

to the much larger orchestral diptych Du cristal …à la fumée (‘From Crystal …
into Smoke’) (1989–90). As Saariaho explains in her programme note, ‘I found the
basis of the musical material for this piece [Cendres] in my double concerto …à
la fumée. … The name of the piece also derives from this’ (Saariaho, 2010). Thus,
immediately, we are invited to hear this work as a remainder: a remainder of the
fire that gave genesis to …à la fumée, as the airborne cinders which have continued
to drift and which only now come within our sensory field, as a bringing together
of fragmentary remains into a new frame, as the earlier work’s supplement.5
The use of common material is clearest at the opening. Both pieces begin from
the low E that also forms the starting-point for other music by Saariaho (and must
be one of the most-discussed single pitches in recent musicological literature):
it is this note that, performed on a cello with varied bowing and articulation
and analysed by Fourier transform, is used as the basis for the pitch material
of works such as Amers (1992) and Près (1992).6 In both Cendres and …à la
fumée, this initial sonority evolves in a broadly similar way. Cendres precedes the
cello oscillation between E@2 and its fourth harmonic on G$4 by a plucked piano
note, whereas …à la fumée enriches and extends that initial oscillating gesture
by additional orchestral sonorities, but both pieces use what is fundamentally the
same piano gesture (in …à la fumée, shared with the synthesizer) gradually to
introduce new pitches, starting with F#3, and then B@5 (see Example 2.1 overleaf),
before reaching an initial climax of chromaticism.
When directly compared, however, the differing trajectories are more pronounced:
the timescale is altered (Cendres evolves more quickly), as is the sense of direction
– each piece moves from this opening gesture in its own particular way. One might
consider this effect as a similar initial seed giving rise to different organisms, or
perhaps as changing lights cast on the same object (a crystal, a prism?) creating
shifting reflections or refractions – images evoked in other works. How each piece
concludes is suggestive here. For …à la fumée this ending comes after a series of
exchanges where the flute and cello soloists have moved more obviously to the fore
(rather than being embedded within the orchestral texture), and there is a clear sense
of return to the E@ centricity of the opening of the work, reinforced sff by lower
strings in the penultimate bar. In Cendres, nearly the same material is employed to

5
  Du cristal and …à la fumée – and their interrelationship – have already been the
subject of some discussion, see, for example, Stoianova 1991, Pousset 1994, and Brech 1999.
6
  Detailed analysis of Amers has been undertaken by Stoianova (1994 and 2000) and
Lorieux (2004). One could speculate on the choice of this particular pitch as the starting
point of a number of compositions: in particular it is tempting to make an (unauthenticated)
link to the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, with all the attendant imagery of flowing
water. More prosaically, Saariaho herself has explained how she was unsatisfied with the
cello writing in …à la fumée, and how she welcomed the opportunity of a ‘second chance’
to explore that instrument with Amers, which she began with the same trill (Michel, 1994:
18–19).
18 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 2.1  Cendres – opening material

From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 19
20 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

a rather different effect. In bar 155, the penultimate flute–cello exchange from …à
la fumée is re-used, but now underpinned by a piano harmony built on a low G$ and
using a modified form of the subsequent flute and cello gesture (Example 2.2a). This
material is then used as the basis for what is in effect a seven-bar interpolation in the
later work, before arriving at its ‘original’ form in bar 165 (Example 2.2b). The E@
centricity seems initially to be reinforced, with a fermata E@2 in bar 157 (…à la fumée
has a G@4 here),7 but in bar 166 the emphasis seems to shift back towards G$3 – with
the G@ of …à la fumée finally turning up as part of the final piano right-hand gesture.
These changes mean that the ‘aftershock’ in the following bar becomes in this work
more clearly connected to the gesture that it follows – and to an inverted form with
which the first part of the piece ended (bars 63–5); also suggestive is the addition of
a final bar’s rest.
Other direct connections between the works are fragmentary, with transplantations
of material from the earlier into the later piece varying in how recognizable they
remain. For example, the alto flute’s spinning breath-tone, bars 17–18, is taken from
bar 79 (now agitato rather than intenso), where it also comes after a comparable
process of pitch-filtering. Similarly, bars 41–2 of Cendres – which form a
characteristic rotation of a fixed pitch collection – use bars 154–5 of the earlier work,
with the synthesizer part moved to piano (those bars themselves revisit the gesture
of bars 33–4). The striking dolente figure towards the end of the work (bars 136–7)
is taken from bars 400–401, where it is equally prominent. In a longer passage near
the beginning of the second part of the piece there is a more complex process of
quotation and allusion at work: the flute and cello at bar 75 take a single bar from a
longer soloistic passage of …à la fumée (a passage that later also makes its way into
Cendres, bars 125–30), whilst the cello material at bar 76 derives from the constant
semiquaver movement of the orchestra that surrounds it. Finally, bars 78–80 repeat,
in reverse order, the soloists’ and harp’s lines.
This partial listing of interconnections indicates the kinds of reworking to be
found here. Material is revisited, sometimes directly, but also taken in a changed
direction, so that, as with the opening of both works, the process of growth remains
distinct. The atomization and re-use of this earlier material might reinforce the idea
that Cendres can be viewed, literally, as ‘cinders’, fragments, remnants – one might
even be tempted to identify these as Derridean ‘revenants’. However, the work
also places these musical ideas in a new framework: they are not just collected, but
brought together – fused – into a new dynamic process, a new context.8

7
 The visual equivalence between E@ and G@ when switching between treble and bass
clef may be significant in this context.
8
  Saariaho explains this process from the composer’s perspective: ‘Even if I were to
use similar structural solutions in several pieces I would need to find them again each time.
I can never look at something that I did in an earlier piece, and say, well, I could do the same
thing here, it would do just fine. Even if I end up doing something similar, I need to feel the
necessity again’ (Beyer, 2000a: 308–9).
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 21

Example 2.2  Cendres – ending

22 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Dérive, Drift

Part of that context, and an important aspect in our understanding of the work, is
the image of ‘drift’. The music often appears to be in a state of flux, of motion,
and one seems naturally encouraged to hear it in this kind of metaphorical way.
Certainly, the idea of Saariaho’s music as a representation of a gradual temporal
process – a music of transition – has been a common thread in appreciation of her
works, not least, as observed above, because of their titles. Playing with words a
little further, I would like to make a connection between this piece and a work that,
in titular terms at least, adopts this idea of drift – Pierre Boulez’s 1984 composition
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano.
There is more to this, of course, than a simple process of word association.
The IRCAM connection is the most obvious link between the two composers, but
the wider positioning of Saariaho’s music in terms of geography has also been an
issue of some discussion (see, in particular, Mäkelä, 2007).9 Whilst Saariaho’s
relationship with Boulez and IRCAM deserves an extended examination, there
are some more immediate intersections to be found between these two particular
pieces. The title ‘Dérive’ not only connects with ‘drift’ (in particular, the French
word is used for deviation from a sailing ship’s original course), but also with the
verb dériver (to divert, or to derive) – and Boulez has commented how the titles
of this and the later Dérive II acknowledge their shared derivation from material
originally conceived for Répons (The Ensemble Sospeso – Pierre Boulez, 1993).
The way in which Dérive I uses the SACHER matrix has been well documented
(for instance Bradshaw, 1986, and Bösche, 1997) and it is not so much the process
of composition that is the focus here, but rather a number of features of that work
that overlap with the concerns of Cendres – indeed, which might be viewed as
progenitors for the type of expression to be found there.
Most significant here is the way in which Dérive articulates a series of harmonies
through a filigree surface; the primary palette of six, fixed-octave hexachords is
used throughout, and the concentration on this very limited amount of material in
part gives the work its poise. The harmonies are articulated in two primary ways:
in the first part of the piece decorated by flurries of grace notes and trills, which
give each sonority a sense of inner movement, as if one were seeing the molecular
vibration within a series of crystals; the second part turns them sideways, and
creates a series of initially slow-moving, but increasingly complex and evocative
linear strands, which culminate in what Susan Bradshaw has described as the
‘uninhibited expressiveness’ (Bradshaw, 1986: 223) of melodies such as that given
to the flute towards the end of the work. This sense of line emerging from a series

9
  Being British, and based somewhat to the west of this Franco-Finnish axis,
I am further disqualified by a lack of linguistic competence from commenting on such
connections. Throughout this discussion I would wish to emphasize those aspects of the
works that can be understood as a part of the broader, ‘internationalized’ repertoire of ‘new
music’, rather than being indicative of national identity, or of natural language.
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 23

of static objects seems an important way in which ‘drift’ might be interpreted,

along with a larger-scale sense of the music moving past – a sense created by the
increasing density of the proliferation, the individual shaping through dynamics
and speed of motion given to each line, counterpointed by the cutting between one
harmonic object and the next.
These modes of articulation are also important within the repertoire of Cendres.
To take illustrative examples: the passage at bar 95 articulates a fixed harmonic
field through trills and tremolandi (Example 2.3a overleaf), whereas that at bar
143 elaborates the harmony heterophonically (Example 2.3b). Also significant in
the music is a gesture that again involves a retracing of fixed pitch-spaces – though
in a more dynamic and repetitive way than Dérive – the most extended example of
which is found beginning at bar 50 (Example 2.3c).
There are further connections. Both works fall broadly into two parts and
involve a more energized, linear mode of presentation in their second halves: Dérive
finishes with a coda marking another return to the initial tempo and revisiting the
type of gesture found at the opening; Cendres, although involving more of an
overlap of material between its two halves, also returns to its opening E@ sonority
just before the final passage. Both works display evidence of their composer’s
experience with electronics, and both partially represent ways of imitating
electronic processing through acoustic instruments. This is clearest with the use of
resonance – resonances that evolve or that modify the sonority thrown into it – and
in the use of gradual transformation, parameter by parameter. These transformation
processes, on a harmonic level, however, also mark a clear distinction between
the two works. Whereas in Dérive the changes from one harmony to the next
are generally clear-cut (notwithstanding a process of ‘bleeding’ between them), in
Cendres there is a much more self-conscious manipulation of harmonic fields in
order to create a particular sense of motion. It is this dynamic process that needs
to be examined further.

Taking Form

The predominant approach to the discussion of the details of Saariaho’s music

has been what must broadly be called ‘spectral’.10 This is, of course, unsurprising,
as it is from a particular way of thinking about composition that the impetus for
much of her music originates. In these terms, many gestures can be understood as
‘composings out’ of simpler acoustic phenomena or electronic transformations,
and it is in this way that much of Cendres asks to be heard. The situation is
complicated in this case by the piano, which pushes the music into adopting equal
temperament – though the cello writing in particular plays with the ways in which
that too can be manipulated.

10
  Although an old joke, the punning potential of ‘spectral’ (of a spectrum or of a
spectre) is, in the current context of ghosts, perhaps more suggestive than usual.
24 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 2.3  Cendres – examples of characteristic material

 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 25

As Vesa Kankaanpää has shown, and as the composer herself has articulated,
harmony and timbre in Saariaho’s work have a particular relationship
(Kankaanpää, 2006; Saariaho, 1987). In what follows, the emphasis will be on
how one might re-imagine this work’s processes of transformation – first from
a technical perspective, and then in terms of trajectory and direction. As has
already been outlined, Cendres begins from the low E@ which forms the starting
point of a number of Saariaho’s works. For Amers, this cello note was analysed
to establish the structure and intensity of the partials involved when moving
between sul tasto and sul ponticello position; in his discussion, Grégoire Lorieux
reprints an example of the spectra that result (Lorieux, 2004: 3). Even without
the detailed information of that analysis, however, one can clearly perceive
how Saariaho uses this way of understanding timbre to control the opening of
Cendres. The thin, metallic sound of the plucked piano E@2 blends easily with
the opening cello sul ponticello E@2 and the G$4 with which it alternates. This
reinforcement might be considered ‘harmonic’ – in the sense of belonging to
the natural series of overtones – as is the addition of B@5 in bar 8. By this point,
however, F#3 has also been ‘energized’ by the piano, and additional pitches
rapidly propel the sound towards an inharmonic spectrum, reaching an initial
climax in bar 13, shown above in Example 2.1. Thus this passage may be heard
metaphorically as the playing of a single pitch, E@2, with a transformation from
a spectrally pure mode of articulation (sul tasto) to one that is much ‘dirtier’ (sul
ponticello). The dynamism this process creates is released at the arrival point
of a new ‘tonic’, C#2 in bar 14, initially overlaid with a new harmonic cloud,
then gradually thinned back to a semitone F#–G4. Here, the process of gradually
removing pitches from the top and bottom of the initial harmony is an analogue
of using a variable band-pass filter – a clear example of an instrumental re-
imagining of an electronic process.
Other passages may be heard as presenting different analogues. The quickly
rising, gapped scalic passages in bars 44–50 could be interpreted as mimicking
a rapid equalizer sweep of the spectrum; bars 56–8, where an attenuated run
of this kind is initially presented in fragmentary form before being gradually
revealed, might suggest a process of intercutting or of interpolation of two types
of material. The music between bars 35 and 37 presents another type of filtering
process. Starting from F#–G4 once again, the music divides into two streams. The
upper stream ‘widens’ the filter, to the interval of a major seventh, before closing
it back down to the two pitches with which the process started. The lower stream
of music articulates a move downward from B@3 to C$2: C4 is initially established
as the upper boundary of the pitch-band before lower pitches are introduced;
these are given prominence simply through how much they are ‘energized’ –
here the number of times each one is sounded in a given timespan.
So far, so familiar. What this means is that this music can fairly
straightforwardly be described as a series of transformation processes, for
example:
26 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Bars 1–13 Gradual accrual of pitches across the registers

Bars 14–18 Filtering from wide to narrow pitch-band
Bars 18–24 Pitch sweeps from low to high and back; gradual descent of
upper voices
Bars 25–32 Filtering from densely to thinly filled pitch-band

Hearing the music in this way obviously invites images of movement and of
gradual change through time. This becomes even more pronounced if this passage
is presented in graphic form: in Example 2.4, thin lines represent pitch-gestures,
whereas thicker lines indicate filtering processes. Particularly clear here is the way
in which the music, for example the passage in bars 35–40, may be thought of in
geometric terms – this use of two-dimensional graphics to think about process is
a part of Saariaho’s own vocabulary (see for example, Saariaho, 1987: 107). Also
apparent is how the music alternates between passages of what might most easily
be called tonal clarity – where a bass note is accompanied by a spectral aura (E@2
and G2 are the clearest ‘fundamentals’ in this case) – and much denser passages of
chromaticism.

Example 2.4  Cendres – reduction of opening

 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 27

Such a reading of Cendres in terms of processes derived from a spectral

understanding of sound is easily persuasive. Hearing the music in this way
requires, in part, a knowledge of the types of processes used by Saariaho (and
others) to generate and control material, and also of the origin, for example, of
the harmonies which overlay the opening E@ sonority. What this means, however,
is that the music enacts an acoustic process; however one may attempt to match
pitches and amplitude, it is clearly impossible to re-synthesize a cello pitch by
playing the piano – one can, however, point towards it.11
But it is possible to propose another, supplementary, reading. This is to
reinstate the significance of pitch, or rather, of a pitch-based way of hearing this
music. The timbre–harmony relationship is indeed complex, with Saariaho’s
work representing different explorations of how they interact – in what follows
I do not wish to suggest that one way of listening is necessarily more appropriate
throughout, but rather that we can experience both, drawing one or the other into
focus in certain contexts. Example 2.4, above, acts as the starting point here. As can
readily be observed, there is a significant pitch relationship in this music between
E@ and G$. This is most obvious right at the outset (the E@2–G4 opening), but is
also recalled at the very end of the work, where the piano, bar 166, reinforces
G3 – this change of octave serves to emphasize the importance of pitch class in
this relationship (an importance already suggested by the plucked E@2–G3 dyad
in bars 64 and 159, and the way that, in the previous bar, the cello glissandos
from G2 to E@2). As a bass note, G2 also plays a significant role. Introduced in bar
12, where it initiates a stepwise, directed motion towards C#2, it is given extra
weight by its role in underpinning the first harmony-rotation of the piece, bar 41 –
further reinforced by the f marking. The rapid movement back to E@ immediately
afterward re-emphasizes this close relationship. The G pedal here is approached
via an emphasis on C$2, a ‘plagal’ movement that is mirrored in the second part
of the work by a ‘perfect’ G–C motion in bars 130–9 (see Example 2.5 overleaf).
Whilst one can overstate these examples of tonal residue in this piece, their
presence suggests a more complex frame of reference than might at first emerge
– and, of course, these particular tonal ghosts also return to haunt the more recent
music, as we shall shortly see.
But what of the effect here? These ghostly presences might suggest a return
to the trope of ashes, of mourning, of cremation, and there are other features
that this could unlock. The music is partly an interplay between music in a state
of transformation and music that stays in the same place – the harmonically

11
 It may legitimately be objected that this re-synthesis is not what is being attempted
here – analysing the sound is not the first step to recreating it, but rather is a way of unlocking
ways of imagining new sounds and how they might be controlled. In what follows, I am
not arguing with the validity of such an approach from a composer’s point of view, but
would like to consider the music from a listener’s multivalent perspective, where it is one
possibility amongst several. Interestingly, this kind of ‘spectral’ hearing does not seem to
be indicated for a work such as Dérive.
28 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 2.5  Cendres – ‘mirroring’ of bass-note movement

stable passages of looped material that recur throughout. Their appearance is

marked firstly disperato, then dolce, before finally, in the negative climax of the
work, dolente. Coupled with the use of glissandi, which give the figuration an
unmistakably dolorous character, this trajectory is one of loss. The second part
of the work may also be interpreted in these terms. It begins with a clear sense
of energy – freed from the more overtly spectral concerns of the first part, there
is a greater emphasis on line and its expressive potential. The use of uniform
note values here, of repetition, of the flute finding its ‘voice’ (through the use of
whispered phonemes) and the cello being given greater autonomy, all underscore
the furioso marking. This energy gradually dissipates, however, with the dolente
material coming increasingly to the fore. Whilst much of the music seems to want
to return to that initial sense of energy, this is not achievable, nor is it possible to
settle on the clarity of harmony that characterized the first part – the return to an E@
centricity is suggested, but only approached through short mementos, keepsakes.
The final passages, agitato, are once again wisps, fragments, ashes.

To the Earth

As Saariaho points out in her note, the title of her second string quartet, Terra
Memoria (2007) – ‘for those departed’ – refers to (and plays with) ‘two words
which are full of rich associations: to earth and memory’. The earth in which we
are buried, the ground to which ashes fall, the sites of mourning – all these senses
are bound up here. This work might, then, be read as the coming to rest of cinders
after their airborne journey; it is a place of rootedness, of repose, but also a record
of, the evidence for, that transience. As Saariaho explains, the music not only seeks
to be some kind of memorial, but also sets out to invoke the apparatus of memory:

We continue remembering the people who are no longer with us; the material
– their life – is ‘complete’, nothing will be added to it. Those of us who are left
behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue
to change about different aspects of their personality, certain memories keep
on haunting us in our dreams. Even after many years, some of these memories
change, some remain clear flashes which we can relive (Saariaho, 2010).
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 29

Given this apparent clarity of purpose, this work seems to ask to be read and
interpreted in a rather different manner than Cendres.12 Saariaho goes on to indicate
that there are technical aspects of the music that illuminate her themes metaphorically:
‘These thoughts brought me to treat the musical material in a certain manner; some
aspects of it go through several distinctive transformations, whereas some remain
nearly unchanged, clearly recognizable. … Here earth refers to my material, and
memory to the way I’m working on it.’ Of course, the relationship between earth
and memory, as that between material and compositional process, is much more
complex than any simple binary opposition; the web of memories experienced in
visiting a gravesite illustrates the way in which the two are intimately connected.
This perhaps suggests that material is always-already bound up with memory, and,
certainly in Terra Memoria, the invocation of the musical past takes on a much
more significant role. Thus ghosts, spectres, revenants are here again.
Within the context established by Cendres, it is tempting to hear the more
obvious tonal residue, the passages of more conventional counterpoint, and of
the working out of musical ideas within Terra Memoria as illustrative of the
groundedness evoked by the title – to imagine the harmony in particular, as
having more weight, of being earthbound. There are clearly, though, a number of
common features, and reading one work in the light of the other might also serve
to illuminate what appears a change of emphasis, rather than of essence.
At the level of the musical language, of the repertoire of gesture and technique,
there are many points of contact. Most obviously, the trills and small glissandi,
the oscillation between natural and harmonic tones, and the continual shifting
between normal and sul ponticello playing remain much in evidence, as does the
larger-scale sense of a slow-moving music articulated through a detailed, filigree
surface. There are again passages where a harmonic field is presented through a
regular foreground motion: the material at bar 40ff (Example 2.6a overleaf) is
the first instance of a gesture which is repeated, varied, and transposed during
the following passage – the sense of a ‘fixed’ harmony so prevalent in Cendres
recurs, as does a dramaturgically appropriate ‘weeping figure’ some bars later
(Example 2.6b). Further connections also suggest themselves: the work begins
and ends with harmonies emphasizing D#4 (it is the highest pitch of the opening,
eight-bar sonority, and becomes embedded within the return to this gesture which
characterizes the closing eight bars), and what is arguably the climax of the work is
also created through a sustained, ff unison E@ and its decoration and manipulation
– although this is the E@4 of Dérive rather than the E@2 of Cendres.
The range of gesture is, however, much wider, more varied, richer in association
and interconnection; much of this is due to what appears a more conventional
approach to motivic working. A pervasive presence in this work is a four-note
motif, gradually revealed by the second violin at the outset of the piece – this

12
  In passing, it is interesting to note the prevalence of the string quartet when
twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers seek to evoke what is past, or to memorialize
– examples include music by Crumb, Reich, Andriessen, Birtwistle, Riley and Górecki.
30 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 2.6  Terra Memoria – opening section: characteristic material

circling idea, A#-B-A@-G keeps reappearing in different forms, with the middle
interval variously widened and contracted.13 This approach is at its clearest in the
creation of the long melody which appears twice: first towards the very beginning
of the piece on first violin; later, in the last two minutes, transferred to the viola,

13
 Here are two more spectres: in their most compressed form, these four notes
become B-A-C-H (see also Kramer, 1995, in this context); when widened they transform
into Bartók’s Z-cell (0,1,6,7) – to whom the type of expression to be found within this work
would not perhaps be wholly alien.
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 31

Example 2.7  Terra Memoria – violin/viola melody

placed within a much more active surrounding texture, and expanded and varied
timbrally (Example 2.7 shows both passages). The expressiveness attained through
this very restricted pitch material is reminiscent of György Ligeti’s later works,
specifically music such as the ‘Hora lungă’ of his Viola Sonata (1994) – there
is a similar sense of poise, of exploring a series of pitches in detail, and of an
expressiveness found through a refusal to come fully to rest. That this melody is
heard twice might be connected with Saariaho’s characterization of how memories
can be clearly retained or metamorphose over time; Pirkko Moisala suggests a
clearer anthropomorphism for this type of motivic working: ‘Even though the
musical gestures are constantly varied, they provide consistency. They are like
people: they gather new experiences and remember the past differently than
before; nevertheless, they maintain their recognizable identity’ (Moisala, 2009:
92). The effect in Terra Memoria is rather more ambiguous, however. Certainly,
the material is now heard anew: placed within a changed context, both in the
architecture of the piece and in its immediate sonic envelope, that is inevitable.
However, the link created to the opening of the work, particularly given the close
interconnection between beginning and ending passages, also gives the piece a
cyclic quality – it returns, grounded, to the point from which it began.
Within that large-scale return, the piece as a whole falls into four main sections,
but through the widespread use of similar or related material a more complicated
process of referring to past events emerges. For example, whilst the misterioso
opening of the work charts a gradual increase in intensity before the long violin
melody finally appears (which leads into a contrasting passage characterized by
32 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

the agitato articulation of clear harmonic fields), there is a sudden return to the
opening sound-world to end this section – a number of bars are repeated, but
are now simplified, clarified. The ‘weeping’ figure with which this first section
concludes goes on to permeate the third section of the work – a process that might
legitimately be called ‘developmental’: presented fff con violenza, impetuoso,
there is a sense of anger, of violence coupled with sadness, the kind of expression
which, to evoke Ligeti’s Viola Sonata again, Arnold Whittall has associated
with that work (Whittall, 2003: 204–7). Doloroso or lamentoso passages are
interspersed with double-stopped outbursts – making use of the primary four-note
motif, these linear gestures clearly connect with the rest of the work – and this
section is again cyclic: we arrive at almost the same place, with another six closely
related chordal gestures – but these now mark a decrescendo into the molto calmo
of the final section.

Example 2.8  Terra Memoria – contrasted material of second section

The second section of the work most clearly illustrates the process of
transforming or alluding to already-heard material: it initially sets up a contrast
between an upwards espressivo gesture, which begins as a de-energized extension
of the agitato from earlier, and a series of harmonies, trilled, delicato (Example
2.8). Whilst these remain calm, reposed, the interspersed music becomes
increasingly animated, reaching at bar 106 a sense of clarity which seems to act
as a development. This, however, clearly refers back to the opening of the work
and in particular the cellular repetition found there – and it again goes through
a gradual process of increasing animation before suddenly reappearing in its
baldest form at bar 132. Even this reappearance is transformed, however – the
use of harmonics makes for a more delicate, glassy timbre – and this material
eventually splinters into a tremolando shimmer. The passage that follows – a
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 33

rapid, descending figuration that, eventually, forms a kind of pre-echo of the più
giocoso, scherzo passage towards the end of the work – also connects backwards:
here, to the agitato music first heard at bar 40.

Counterpoints and Unison

It is not just internally that this music can be heard as making reference to the past
– it also recalls styles and techniques associated with earlier periods. If approached
in a manner that focuses on the tonal implications of some of the material and its
transformation – the kind of pitch-based approach suggested earlier for Cendres
– then these become increasingly apparent. There is an attention throughout the
work to questions of implication, direction and combination of pitch class – ‘voice
leading’ and ‘counterpoint’, one might call them – and listening to these with
attention can also clarify the overall shape of the music.
The two outer sections of the work illustrate this process quite clearly. In the
approach to the long violin melody in the opening section, an F#4 is unexpectedly
introduced on the final semiquaver of bar 15 (see Example 2.7, above). The effect
here is quite pronounced: this sudden sharpening of F$ – the highest pitch in the
texture for the previous three bars – does, literally, lead the first violin into the G$
that follows. Furthermore, this movement is underpinned by a bass-line descent
F–E@, thus forming a compound major third in the outer voices – despite the
chromaticism within that span, the tonal implication is hard to resist. This interval,
E@2–G4, is, of course, also the starting point for Cendres, but its effect here is
quite different. Rather than being presented as a self-standing object from which
the music starts, to be explored, transformed, it is here heard in a longer-range
context – as part of the articulation of a directed process. This process is shown
in the reduction of Example 2.9a overleaf; the first 34 bars of the piece present a
gradual semitonal bass descent from F2 to C2, coupled with a treble ascent. This
semitonal bass movement, along with several instances of parallel motion, can
be found throughout this first section; interestingly, the passage that follows, bars
34–64, returns to the same point after following its own, different trajectory: the
cyclic quality of this music again reasserts itself.
At the end of the work, a comparable, though somewhat more complex, structure
can be observed (Example 2.9b). Bars 325 to the end present, more quickly, the
same bass motion as bars 1–34, but the ambiguity between the minor and major
tenth here is suggestive given the dramaturgy of the work – a conventional coding
would give the major a ‘redemptive’ quality, but this piece seems to refuse to
end with any such positive commitment. The remainder of this section appears
concerned with containing – contextualizing – the second moment of clear unison
in the piece: the sustained, pp multi-octave C# in bar 304. The passage begins with
two slow-moving melodic strands – the first presented by first violin and viola
six octaves apart. This idea of a chromatic line doubled some octaves distant is
again a gesture very typical of Ligeti’s late style (for discussion, see, for example,
34 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 2.9  Terra Memoria – reduction of opening and closing passages

Floros, 1996: 59–63); into this ‘vacuum’, second violin and viola weave their
own melody, doubled two octaves distant. The sense of loss here is palpable,
particularly coming after the furioso chordal passage – this is the aftershock of
that trauma. The relationship between the two melodic strands again emphasizes
the interval of a tenth at points of rest and, in bar 300, slips once again between
major and minor. The point of unison itself is approached through glissandi in the
outer parts, and the effect here is truly one of arrival – not only gesturally, but also
in terms of pitch class.
What was described earlier as the climactic point of unison, the E@4 in bar 234,
is also reached through a directed process: filtering a pitch field down to only a few
notes – the type of technique observed repeatedly in Cendres. The ending of this
process is shown in Example 2.10: at the very last moment, the music arrives on
a unison D, which then leads conventionally into the E@. The passage that follows
is remarkable for its undecorated quality, in particular the starkness of the motif in
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 35

Example 2.10  Terra Memoria – bars 229–39

36 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

bars 234–5. The longest sustained E@ comes a few bars later, where, subjected to
gradual transformation between sul ponticello and normal position, coupled with
the fff marking and the inevitable fluctuations of intonation that playing at this
dynamic creates, this note fizzes with energy – it is grainy, dirty, rich in expressive
potential. A comparison with the techniques of Cendres suggests itself here. In
that earlier work, it was suggested that some of the gradual accruals of pitches
could be heard as analogues, representations, of timbral transformations – during
the process of pitch-addition at the outset, one can imaginatively recreate the
(recorded and analysed) change in cello tone to sul ponticello. At this climactic
moment in Terra Memoria, this process is presented to us directly. Rather than
a representation, we hear the change itself; rather than being modelled through
other sounds, we hear the sound as it is; rather than imagining a gesture that took
place in the past, we are confronted with it now. Rather than hearing wisps, shards,
cinders, we are given something solid, tangible, earth-bound. From the image to
the reality, from the air to the earth.

Epilogues

And yet, and yet. Objections to this way of reading immediately suggest
themselves. Most obvious perhaps are questions of specificity. What of the many
other works displaying similar processes as Cendres – are these passages also to
be perceived ‘metaphorically’, as tokens of something not present? Can all such
works therefore be considered as cinders in this way? What of the listener who
does not wish to hear (any) music as a mirroring of spectral processes? What
of comparable passages to the unisons of Terra Memoria in other works – are
these always indicative of ‘groundedness’? What gives it that quality here? In both
pieces, what of the surrounding music, the context of the work, and the overall
sense of drama?
More broadly, the reading presented here sets up a number of dualities
that immediately open themselves up to deconstruction, most obviously that
between ‘air’ and ‘earth’ – ideas that are invoked but hardly interrogated. In the
first instance, listeners may not make the associations with different types of
material that has been insisted upon here – or may not consider the distinction to
be as straightforward as has been suggested. On a wider level, the two types of
listening that have been outlined are again not wholly distinct, and the intention
here has certainly not been to suggest an ‘either/or’ way of proceeding. Further,
to move from that duality to a consideration of possible meanings is perhaps an
interpretative leap too far.
However, even with these objections held firmly in place, the interpretative
lever that has been suggested above might provide a way of thinking through the
pronounced change of sense between the two works. Cendres presents a mode of
articulation that is rarefied, crystalline, hard to penetrate, whereas Terra Memoria
is less obviously polished, rougher, and more clearly expressive. Aspects of their
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 37

construction reinforce this characterization, as has been observed. The earlier work
is also more straightforwardly self-standing – notwithstanding its interconnections
with …à la fumée, the mode of expression is more clearly internalized – whereas
the latter makes a wider range of reference to familiar, more conventional
expressive and technical models.
On a slightly different level, Terra Memoria could be said to be an answer
to the type of musical expression found in Cendres, in that it suggests a move
towards a music that is given shape, necessity and direction through a re-
imagining of conventional pitch-based movement. A similar approach may
also be found in one further composition with which, as a supplement, it seems
appropriate to end this discussion, a work that further illuminates the related
questions of musical coherence. Phoenix (2006), by British composer Richard
Causton, fits closely on a titular level with the other music examined here:
rising from the ashes of its own funeral pyre, the phoenix is a potent symbol of
reinvention and rebirth – which also, of course, ‘completes’ the trajectory of the
network of pieces in this chapter: cinders drift, fall to earth, and from them new
life may be born.14
Beyond this simple narrative, however, the differences of ‘vision’ that these
works reflect (evidenced through the music that results) also cast light on one
other – when placed into this context, Phoenix opens up a number of new
interpretative possibilities. The connection between Causton’s and Saariaho’s
music is an indirect one – certainly, both composers have been influenced by
works most commonly included within the category of ‘spectral music’, as
Julian Anderson observed some years ago (Anderson, 2000: 20–21). However,
in Causton’s more recent works, any direct lineage is harder to identify, but there
remains a continuing attention to detail of sonority and the ways in which sounds
can evolve. An example of the type of timbral animation he favours is found right
at the opening of Phoenix: here, using bariolage and timbral trills, the gradual
entry of pitches in the high treble register is given a strange, otherworldly sense
through the fluctuation of pitch that results. In this respect, though not in terms of
energy, it resembles the central E@ of Terra Memoria, but here the sound is more
tentative, fragile.15 This gesture is repeated, in shortened form, at the beginning
of the second section of the work – like Dérive and Cendres, the work falls into
two parts, here clearly demarcated by the composer – but what is striking here is
the sense of note-against-note working. This is continued throughout the piece;

14
  In terms of scoring, there is also a congruence between the four works: Phoenix
uses the same instrumentation as Dérive with the exception of the vibraphone; Cendres
reduces that ensemble still further (and substitutes alto flute); all pieces use cello; three
include violin and cello.
15
  In correspondence, Causton pointed out that this material refers back to the
second of his Two Pieces for two clarinets, where a similar type of timbral trill is marked
‘incandescent’ – the invocation of fire obviously fits within the poetics of Phoenix; also
suggestive is the fact that the earlier work is entitled ‘Song to End Mourning’.
38 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 2.11  Phoenix – ‘Cantilena’

Causton has talked about particular compositional habits he has developed in

order to guide his counterpoint,16 and, without the listener necessarily being
aware of what these are, the effect is one of clear direction, giving each gesture
a sense of inevitability.
There are moments of disjunction here too, however. Immediately following the
glassy opening, the piano introduces a series of chords in a constant quaver motion,
underpinned by long-held bass pedals. Some bars later, marked ‘deranged’, flute
and clarinet (and to a lesser extent the strings) play over this material in a different
tempo (in the ratio 5:4) – the composer has likened the effect here to scribbling
over an existing artwork, graffiti-like. This passage returns in the second section
of the piece, where the sense of violence that it projects is more pronounced, and
where it foreshadows a passage of moto perpetuo – the same tempo, but now
moving with a constant semiquaver movement from violin and cello. Beginning
from their bottom strings, the instruments ascend – initially in parallel before
gradually finding their individual trajectory – through a process of repetition of
short cells, with pitches added above as the lowest are gradually removed. Though
technically this resembles passages found in Cendres, in terms of gesture it is
much more aggressive, particularly with its underpinning of ff sustained pitches
from piano and clarinet – if this piece is indeed a response to ideas of death and
rebirth (the dedication is in memory of Joanna Greenfield, whose husband part-
commissioned the work), then, as with Terra Memoria, part of that response is of

16
  Personal correspondence with the author.
 From the Air to the Earth: Reading the Ashes 39

Example 2.12  Phoenix – ‘Epilogue’

anger, of violence, of intense feeling.17 Between these passages, however, there

are also moments of calm and delicacy, in particular at the end of the first section,
which disintegrates (‘dies’) into single notes and disappearing piano chords.
The climactic moment comes with a brief cantilena – one might again draw
a comparison with the unison passage in Terra Memoria, but the effect here is
less conventionally expressive. The melody is again made strange through the use
of continually fluctuating timbre (Example 2.11) – this song, sung by a new and
unfamiliar voice over a punctuation evocative of bells, is to be suddenly cut off
as it crescendos to fff. If the first section ends with a sense of disintegration, the
second seems to be leading towards a reconciliation; the piano – initially distinct
from the other instruments, partly because of its inability to sustain pitches –
finally joins the ensemble as an equal. But as it does, the music breaks off. Not
in this work the sense of return observed in both Cendres and Terra Memoria,
but instead an epilogue, in which the music seems to have been pared back to its

17
 However, the companion piece, Sleep, for solo flute, which uses as its inspiration a
poem by George Seferis, seems to be the more straightforward ‘in memoriam’ – Phoenix is
rather more complicated in its poetics.
40 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

essentials (Example 2.12 above). Again, in its sense of counterpoint, in its clarity,
it provides an answer to the questions of how to progress musical ideas posed by
the very opening of the work, but its dramatic effect is much more significant.
Whilst this passage certainly does not offer redemption, or resurrection even, we
are given a kind of balm to the violence with which the work has confronted
us. Rather than music of transcendence, this music is clearly rooted, presenting
recognizable chorale-type gestures through familiar – conventional – instrumental
articulation. This passage of music both completes and re-energizes the trajectory
of the work as a whole – whilst it sounds partly as the coherent outcome of what
has gone before, it also opens up new directions, giving rise to fresh implications
and expectations. And then it stops. It is not with a straightforward vision of the
reintegration of splintered elements, or a re-fusing of cinders back into living form
that this music ends: it is, instead, with yet another supplement – musically and
dramatically – that continues to resonate even after the final sound has died.
 Chapter 3
Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams
Anni Oskala

I’m someone who remembers many of my dreams. Sometimes I dream music, and
sometimes I remember it. Other times it leaves just a memory of an atmosphere,
or some instrumental colour. But I don’t write dreamy, floaty music. It’s more to
do with dreams as a gateway to secret existences, like death and love, the basic
things that we know nothing about. (Kaija Saariaho, in Kimberley, 2001)

Kaija Saariaho has always been fascinated by dreams and dreaming. She believes
that these phenomena act as a gateway to our unconscious, and tries to interpret
meanings within her own experiences based on notes kept in a dream diary
(Siltanen, 1982; Koskelin, 2002; Oskala, 2005). To this end, she has delved into
research literature on dreams, in particular the theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–
1939), the founder of psychoanalysis and of the systematic study of dreams. The
topic of dreaming recurs in the titles of Saariaho’s works throughout her career.
We know that she considers the selection of a title to be an important part of the
compositional process – it helps her to crystallize her ideas.1 The recurring dream-
related titles suggest, therefore, that dreams are also a long-standing source of
compositional inspiration.
This chapter examines five works by Saariaho which refer to dreams or night-
time: Im Traume (‘In a Dream’, 1980), an early piece for piano and cello; three
vocal works from the late 1980s/early 1990s – From the Grammar of Dreams
(1988), Grammaire des rêves (‘Grammar of Dreams’, 1989) and Nuits, adieux
(‘Nights, Farewells’, 1991); and Saariaho’s first opera, L’Amour de loin (‘Love
from Afar’, 2000), focusing on its dream scene.2 These case studies demonstrate
different ways in which dreams have inspired Saariaho at various stages of her
career, in works spanning two decades.
The analyses show how concepts found in dream theories can help to illustrate
specific aspects of musical and textual organization. Connections are drawn at
two levels: firstly, instances where musical ideas appear to have been drawn
consciously from the theories are highlighted, with reference to the composer’s
public statements and writings. At this level, dream research literature functions

1
  See Nieminen, 1985: 26; Michel, 1994: 22; Beyer, 2000a: 308; Stearns, 2002; Huter,
2003: 83.
2
 This chapter does not cover two other pieces by Saariaho whose titles refer to
dreams – Caliban’s Dream (1993) and Aile du songe (‘Wing of Dreams’, 2001) – because,
in these cases, the specific features of dreams and dream theories discussed here are less
suited as analytical tools.
42 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

as an ‘extra-musical’ source of inspiration, in a similar way to prose, poetry

or visual stimuli in other works. Moving beyond issues of biography and
inspiration, the works are analysed in more detail at the second level, with
reference to Freudian terminology. This is not to suggest that Saariaho herself
had specific conceptual or structural parallels with dream theory in mind whilst
writing these pieces, or that her psychic processes at the time of composition
were connected with those identified in the music (see Spitz, 1985: 98–135).
At this level, the approach taken here could be described as ‘hermeneutic’, as
defined by Lawrence Kramer (1990, 1995, 2001), akin to previous analyses of
musical works with reference to psychoanalytic concepts.3 Effectively, parallels
are drawn between Saariaho’s music and the psychic processes of dream
formation and Freudian dream analysis.
From a general perspective, almost all music has elements of development,
variation and re-combination that could be related to aspects of dream theory, and
much previous scholarship has similarly sought to elucidate musical structures
with reference to psychic processes.4 The focus here is on elucidating specific
features of the pieces in question with reference to Freud’s ideas about the
structure, psychological function and interpretation of dreams.

3
  I refer here to the growing body of musicological studies that seek to examine musical
processes with reference to psychoanalytic concepts and terminology, for example those of
Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva (see Välimäki, 2002 and 2003). Several
of these studies use psychoanalytic concepts as an explanatory frame without suggesting
that the composer in question had consciously intended such a conceptual parallel (see
Johnson, 1994; Schwarz, 1993 and 1997; Cumming, 1997; Lyotard, 1998; Välimäki,
2001). In the context of Saariaho’s vocal works, precedents for this approach include
Marja Minkkinen’s description of the role of text with reference to Kristeva’s concepts (the
semiotic chora, the symbolic, etc.) (Minkkinen, 2005; as well as her 2003 dissertation).
Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam’s analysis of the text fragmentation in the last section of Lonh
with reference to Barthes’ Lacan-derived concept of jouissance also borders on this type of
approach (Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, 2003b).
4
 For example, Friedman compares primary processes to the logic of melodic
transformation, and Ehrenzweig considers techniques in serial music and the creative
process in general (Friedman, 1960; Ehrenzweig, 2000 [1967]: 33–4, 49–55). Lyotard has
more recently suggested that the text treatment in Berio’s Sequenza III reflects the logic
of the unconscious (primary process) (Lyotard, 1998). Musical structures have also been
compared with various other formulations of unconscious psychic processes: Julian Johnson
has pointed out similarities between the syntactical processes in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
and Julia Kristeva’s conception of the maternal chora (Johnson, 1994). In turn, David
Schwarz has compared pre-symbolic psychic structures and the music of the minimalist
composers Steve Reich and John Adams with reference to Kaja Silverman’s Lacan-derived
concepts of the ‘acoustic mirror’ and the ‘sonorous envelope’ (Schwarz, 1993). Building
on Schwarz’s work, Naomi Cumming has provided a psychoanalytical interpretation of
Reich’s Different Trains with reference to Kristeva and Lacan (Cumming, 1997).
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 43

Freud and Dreams

According to Freud, dreams are not irrational, but they follow a different logic
from conscious thought. His seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams (Die
Traumdeutung, 1900), was the first serious attempt to systematize this structural
logic, and thus, as per his title, to arrive at a method for interpreting dreams. The
fundamental tenet underlying his work was a belief that dreams provide a uniquely
direct access to the unconscious, which is usually suppressed and inaccessible.
He coined the umbrella term ‘dream-work’ to refer to the various unconscious
processes that distort the true, ‘latent content’ of a dream, turning it into ‘manifest
content’, fragments of which are remembered by the dreamer (Freud, 1999 [1900]:
211–329). By virtue of appearing in such a distorted form, unconscious thoughts
bypass the ‘psychic censorship’ – the inner resistance to bringing any repressed
wishes to consciousness – and can, therefore, feature in a dream. Freud also
suggested that manifest content frequently uses material from the previous day
(ibid.: 127–8). Saariaho’s views resonate with Freud’s theories, and some of his
concepts have helped her to analyse her own dreams (Oskala, 2005).
Freud identified four main processes at play in dream-work. The first two
are responsible for the seemingly irrational symbolic content, and for the loss
of linear time and any ordinary sense of causality. Firstly, ‘condensation’ refers
to multiple ideas, people or elements that are merged into one hybrid, while
in the second process, ‘displacement’, the relative psychic importance of the
various dream elements is altered as they are reorganized and/or replaced (so, for
example, content might be substituted by something else associated with it, or the
recipient/cause of a strong emotion might be changed). The third psychological
mechanism at play is the selection of elements for the manifest content that
can be expressed visually, caused by the limited means of representation in
a dream. The fourth and final process, ‘secondary revision’, is an attempt to
create a more coherent whole by making links and connections between various
episodes in the dream. In Freud’s own words, ‘with its snippets and scraps it
[secondary revision] patches the gaps in the dream’s structure’, and in parts
where the revision is successful, the ‘dream loses its appearance of absurdity and
incoherence’ (Freud, 1999 [1900]: 320).
Having developed this theory, Freud proposed a method of interpreting dreams
that would penetrate beyond the distorted manifest content, allowing the true,
latent content to be gauged. In his view, because dreams result from unconscious
processes, their interpretation should be based on individuals’ own free associations
about their contents (a method he originally formulated with Josef Breuer in their
work on hysterical patients). The task of the interpreter is to analyse and search for
links between the various, seemingly disparate elements related by the dreamer –
the latent dream thoughts (ibid.: 98–105). Further, Freud proposed that all dreams
can ultimately be shown to be disguised ‘wish-fulfilments’ if analysed in this
manner, (ibid.: 98–105), expressing, in concealed form, the innermost repressed
wishes of the dreamer.
44 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Calculated Unpredictability in Im Traume

Saariaho’s earliest work explicitly associated with dreams is Im Traume (‘In a

Dream’) for cello and piano, completed in 1980. At the time, she was exploring
musical structures with sudden switches between materials, yet with static
harmonic frames. As she has described,

Some works resulted in which I tried to fashion a musical dynamic by using

abrupt transitions between different materials and thus to compensate for the
absence of large-scale tensions within the harmonic material. In these works
I used widely differing textures and modes of musical performance – the only
common factor between the different materials is harmony which, paradoxically,
becomes the most stable element of all. As an example, my piece Im Traume
(1980) for cello and piano consists of harmonic material which is well-defined
and non-dynamic, whilst giving a certain background colour to the ensemble.
This material constitutes an ‘area’ which is modified by differing events at the
level of timbre and texture … The transitions from one texture to another are
very abrupt (Saariaho, 1987: 97–8).5

It seems that Saariaho drew extra-musical inspiration for such compositional

explorations from her study of the structures of dreams (Koskelin, 2002), and
she once specified that one of her aims in Im Traume was ‘to construct a formal
whole which progresses as I think our dreams often progress: as fast transitions,
seemingly irrational yet meaningful associations. Moods change unexpectedly or
gradually, metamorphoses change the familiar into something new.’6
Im Traume is indeed characterized by rapid changes of tempo and texture; the
slowly moving interludes and piano passages marked dolce or espressivo give
way time and again, without warning, to the percussive core material of the piece.
There are also sudden and extreme changes of dynamic: the score contains over
50 subito f and p markings. Thus, as the various episodes appear unconnected, and
the changes are unprepared, one could say that the influence of secondary revision
is not felt in this ‘musical dream’. However, there is a ‘hidden’ logic beneath the
apparently chaotic musical surface of Im Traume. Throughout the piece, the ‘cello
and piano vary a basic pool of harmonic material, built around the core pitches
C, C#, D, D#, G, G# and A. There are also certain recurring musical gestures:
pitch clusters structured around tritones or fifths articulate a number of formal
junctures, as do the recurring sul ponticello strikes in the cello, notated on their
own four-line staff; C and G pizzicati permeate the piece, at times underpinning
whole sections like a pedal point (see, for example, pages 5–6 of the score). The
static harmony and recurrent gestural content create coherence and unity across

5
  See also Saariaho, 1981: 117.
6
  Saariaho cited in cover text of the LP Music by Harri Wessman, Usko Meriläinen,
Kaija Saariaho, Johannes Brahms (JASELP 0010, 1987).
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 45

the piece; this is perhaps what the composer herself was referring to with her last
phrase, ‘metamorphoses change the familiar into something new’.
Saariaho’s phrase ‘seemingly irrational yet meaningful associations’ also
reflects her belief, in line with Freud, that dreams can be analysed to reveal
important psychic truths. In Freudian terms, the harmony in Im Traume can be
seen as a musical illustration of ‘latent dream content’, which is the unifying
principle behind all the seemingly fragmentary ‘manifest dream content’ – the
various textures and timbres of the piece. While Saariaho herself has not made this
connection with explicit reference to Im Traume, she has spoken elsewhere of her
strong belief, rooted in Freudian principles, that a dream often tries to communicate
its central latent dream thoughts by presenting them repeatedly, in different guises.
As she has stated, ‘When [in a dream] there are some really important things, then
the thing comes again and again, tries to get the message across to you, but always
in a different way’ (Koskelin, 2002).

Recurring Dreams about a Distant Love: L’Amour de loin

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud also commented on the typical relationship

between successive (sections of) dreams:

In the interpretation of dreams consisting of several main sections, or of dreams

belonging to the same night, we must not overlook the possibility that these
different and successive dreams mean the same thing, expressing the same
impulses in different material. That one of these homologous dreams which
comes first in time is usually the most distorted and most bashful, while the next
dream is bolder and more distinct. (Freud, 1911: 216).

Thus, certain dream thoughts can recur in various guises within a single dream,
and a person can also experience similar content during the separate episodes, or
across a longer time period. Saariaho is particularly interested in this idea as a
result of her personal experience of recurring nightmares (Siltanen, 1982: 49), and
she has come to believe that they happen because the dreamer has not yet grasped
the unconscious message that the dream is trying to convey:

In the case of nightmares a nightmare can specifically be repeated always in the

same form … These things are really important for me because I am a person
who remembers many dreams, and lives in them a long time and writes them
and tries to understand them, because I feel that during the night the brain is
working at high speed to clear things which have not been cleared during the
day (Koskelin, 2002).

Freud also commented on the relationship between daytime fantasies and dreams.
The transformation of daydreams to night-time dreams is in itself a fairly common
46 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

phenomenon, although there is a characteristic ‘peculiar to the dream as distinct

from the daydream: its content of imagined ideas is not framed as thoughts, but
transformed into sensory images which we believe in, and which we think we are
actually experiencing’ (Freud, 1999 [1900]: 348).
Given this context, it is interesting to examine Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de
loin (‘Love from Afar’, 2000), because one of its central themes is the protagonist’s
(troubadour Jaufré Rudel’s) incessant dreaming and daydreaming about love. At
the start of the opera, he fantasizes and describes an idealized distant lady whom
he purports to love. A Pilgrim who has arrived from overseas gives these fantasies
a more concrete form, telling him that the Countess of Tripoli, Clémence, fits the
description perfectly. From this point on, Jaufré can think of nothing else; she fills
his waking thoughts during the day, and he dreams of her at night. Following this,
Act IV as a whole takes place at sea: Jaufré has decided to make his dream come
true and meet her, embarking on a voyage to Tripoli, accompanied by the Pilgrim.
However, unresolved inner conflict takes a toll on Jaufré’s physical and psychological
condition during the journey, and he arrives dying. Shocked by his death, initially,
Clémence revolts against God, but finally accepts what has come to pass and decides
to take the veil to cherish the memory of their pure, ideal love forever.
The way Jaufré’s dreams are described in L’Amour de loin is a perfect
illustration of how daydreams might be transformed to become night-time dreams.
He seems truly to believe that Clémence is the lady in his dreams, even though he
has never seen her. At the start of Act III, he tells the Pilgrim,7

Since you spoke to me of her, nothing else occupies my mind. At night, when
I’m asleep, there appears this face so sweet with sea-green eyes that smile at
me and tell me that it is she, even though I have never seen her. Then, in the
morning, in my bed, I lament that I have not been able to caress her, nor hold her
to me. Is that not madness, Pilgrim? And to think that she, over there, far away,
suspects nothing of it!

The visual and life-like character of dreams is most explicitly reflected in the
dream scene (Act IV, scene 2), which the librettist, Amin Maalouf, included at
Saariaho’s request (Pennanen, 2000).8 The calm opening mood – Jaufré and the
Pilgrim are sleeping – soon yields to an increasing rhythmic urgency, which
reflects the growing turbulence of the sea and of Jaufré’s dreaming mind. The
texture thickens and the dynamic level mounts, reaching its climax in bars 240–
44 whereupon, in the middle of the night, the protagonist wakes and jumps up,
noticeably shaken, uttering, ‘I have seen her, Pilgrim; I have seen her as I see

7
 All references to the libretto are from a translation by George Hall available at
<http://www.tripoli-city.org/amour/index.html> (accessed 25 August 2010).
8
 From early stages of planning, Saariaho expressed a wish to incorporate dreams into
her opera – they were one of the six mentioned libretto ‘requirements’ noted in an early
sketch from 9 August 1995.
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 47

you! … She was here, and her body, and her face and her white dress lit up the
night.’ As Jaufré goes on to describe his dream in more detail, it is enacted on
stage. The white-clad Clémence walks towards the sea, singing, first in French
and then in the ancient Occitan language, the verse, ‘Your love fills my mind
/ Waking and dreaming / But it’s dreaming that I prefer / Because in dreams
you’re mine!’9
The orchestral accompaniment to Clémence’s song, which consists of a
repetitive triplet figure, distinctive instrumentation (vibraphone, crotales, string
harmonics), whispers and birdsong in the opera’s electronic part, and vowels and
humming in the chorus, distinguishes the dream from the surrounding operatic
‘reality’. In addition, the repetition of the verse in Occitan reinforces a sense
of spatial and temporary distance. According to Jaufré, the song is one he has
composed, and during its visual enactment he joins in for a moment, repeating
the line, ‘Because in dreams you’re mine’. During the Occitan verse, however, he
resumes his agitated description of the dream; Clémence moves away, walking
on the sea, but he is too scared to follow her.
In line with Freud’s theory, the manifest content of Jaufré’s dream in Act IV
is a concoction of several memories and thoughts of the previous day(s): the
Pilgrim’s description of Clémence’s piousness and long robe (Act I) becomes
seamlessly fused with Jaufré’s own fantasies of her physical appearance; the
dream also evokes Jaufré’s earlier fantasy about the lady of his dreams, originally
voiced in Act I, scene 2: ‘In a passionate voice she will sing my songs.’ It is
also evident that Jaufré is experiencing recurring dreams of essentially the same
content: the dream he recounts in Act III, and the one he has in Act IV, are both
about Clémence, and she departs from him in each case.
Saariaho’s setting illustrates the recurring dream-thoughts musically. An oboe
melody lends musical unity and coherence to the ongoing dramatic narrative (see
Example 3.1 overleaf, which transcribes two instances). As shown in Example 3.2,
the melody is played on the oboe during Jaufré’s description of his dream (Act
III), and it reappears in the dream scene as the melody of Clémence’s song. The
change from an oboe and an oral account of the song (Act III) to singing voice and

9
 The text of the song in the dream scene is based on a canso of the twelfth-century
troubadour Jaufré Rudel (fl. 1125–48), Quan lo rossinhols el folhos (Occitan ‘When the
Nightingale in the Leafy Wood’). Maalouf has incorporated content from two other verses
of this song into the libretto as well: the first verse talks of the nightingale singing his songs,
which connects to the opening scene where Jaufré is composing a song about a nightingale,
and the content of Jaufré’s dream reflects another verse that translates as, ‘For this love I
am so enflamed / that when I go running toward her, it seems to me that backwards / I turn
around and that she goes off there fleeing, / and my horse goes so slowly / I hardly think
I will ever get there / if she does not wish to hold herself back.’ (Verse 4 in ‘Version 3’,
reproduced from Pickens, 1978: 80–81). Maalouf also incorporates Jaufré’s other canso,
Lanqand li jorn son lonc en mai (Occitan ‘When the Days are Long in May’) into the
libretto in Act II, and the libretto of L’Amour de loin overall is based on the historical
Jaufré’s Vida (see Lampila, 1997; Hautsalo, 2000: 17; Langlois, 2000: 24).
48 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 3.1  L’Amour de loin – recurring oboe melody

a stage visualization (Act IV) perhaps depicts how the idea of Clémence grows
increasingly elaborate and impassioned in Jaufré’s mind as time passes, whilst
also resonating with Freud’s belief that in recurring dreams of similar content, the
latter ones are usually ‘bolder and more distinct’.
Continuing with the Freudian line of inquiry, what could be the unconscious
message that this recurring dream is attempting to convey? At the level of manifest
content, it appears to reflect Jaufré’s wish to be united with his distant love, but
arguably, it reveals a more complicated picture in terms of latent content. His
apparent eagerness to meet Clémence is in fact contradicted by his deeper,
unconscious desire to keep her as a ‘love from afar’ – in the future, rather than
a concrete, present reality. This desire is transformed by dream-work, and is
expressed as a physical inability to keep Clémence near: in the dream that he
describes in Act III, Jaufré feels incapable of caressing or holding her, and in the
dream scene his fear prevents him from following her over the rail of the ship.10
The lyrics of Clémence’s song (which Jaufré says is one of his own compositions)

10
  See Iliescu, 2003: 35; Hautsalo, 2004: 23; and Hautsalo, 2005: 249 for descriptions
of the dream scene as an anticipation of the opera’s overall plot: the impossibility of true
union between Jaufré and Clémence.
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 49

Example 3.2  L’Amour de loin – appearances of the ‘Love from Afar’ theme

Act, scene Bars Description Dramatic context

Prologue 30–34 1(a), phrases C–D, starting
‘Traversée’ note F2, oboe solo
Prologue 64–72 1(a), oboe solo
‘Traversée’
II, 1 157–9 1(a), phrase A, oboe 1 Clémence tells how much
she misses her native land of
France
II, 1 286–9 F2–E2–B1, variation of phrase The Pilgrim tells Clémence
A, oboe 1 about Jaufré
III, 1 118–36 1(b), oboe 1 and 2 Jaufré relates his dreams
about Clémence to the Pilgrim
IV, 1 247–50; 1(a), phrase A, oboe 1 Jaufré tells that he has seen
253–6 Clémence in his dream
IV, 1 263–79 1(b), soprano Clémence sings in the
materialization of Jaufré’s
dream
IV, 1 283–314 Variation of 1(b), soprano; Occitan version of the song
melody becomes fragmented,
phrase A repeated bars
308–10 and 311–14
V, 1 90–93 1(a), phrase A, oboe 1 (cf. II, Clémence is thinking about
1, bars 157–9) the forthcoming meeting with
Jaufré
V, 3 637–47 1(a), oboe 1 and 2 (cf. Clémence’s defiance subsides
‘Traversée’, bars 64–72) and turns into deferential
longing
V, 4 718–21; 1(a), phrases C–D, starting Clémence’s prayer to her
723–32 note F2, soprano (cf. ‘love from afar’
‘Traversée’, bars 30–34);
three variations, bars 723–32

in that scene lend further strength to this interpretation, as the third line explicitly
states, ‘But it’s dreaming that I prefer’.
Jaufré’s dreams appear thus to bear witness to the Freudian notion of dreams
as a route to the unconscious, as his suppressed wish is expressed in a symbolic,
disguised form. To pass the ‘psychic censorship’, his underlying desire is
distorted: it is framed in a poetic context and the song is sung by Clémence, not the
dreamer himself. Further, upon its repeat, the wish is also linguistically concealed,
presented in Occitan, an ancient language, unfamiliar to the modern audience, as
50 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

well as to the protagonist.11 In this instance, it appears that the dream succeeds in
bringing Jaufré’s unconscious turmoil to the fore, as it is immediately followed by
his first desperate admission of his fear and indecision:

I’m afraid, Pilgrim, I’m afraid. You are the voice of reason, but fear does not
heed the voice of reason. I’m afraid of not finding her, and I’m afraid of finding
her. I’m afraid of being lost at sea before reaching Tripoli, and I’m afraid of
reaching Tripoli. I’m afraid of dying, Pilgrim, and I’m afraid of living. Do you
understand me?

As explained above, this inner conflict takes its toll on Jaufré’s physical and
psychological condition. He is taken to the citadel unconscious, recovering his
senses only for a short while during which, driven by the tragedy of the situation,
he and Clémence hastily confess their love for each other before he dies in her
arms. Their vocal lines meet in unison for a few fleeting moments, but never
attain a fully fledged union. The two ‘lovers from afar’ are brought together,
yet their meeting is as short-lived as it is impassioned; their love is to remain an
unconsummated ideal. This apparently tragic denouement is at once also a type
of wish-fulfilment for Jaufré, however, since his dream never becomes a reality.
Indeed, his last words, incited by Clémence’s kiss, are: ‘In this instant, I have all I
wish. Why ask life for more?’
Clémence’s initial reaction to Jaufré’s death is anger; she revolts against God at
first, but, as mentioned earlier, finally accepts what has come to pass and decides
to take the veil to cherish the memory of their pure, ideal love. Once her defiance
has subsided, the melody heard previously in Jaufré’s dreams about his distant
love is played on the oboe (bars 637–47), as a reminder of love’s power to outlive
death. In the final scene of the opera, Clémence’s prayer to her ‘distant love’
brings together her continuing love for Jaufré and her longing for the distant God
(see Hautsalo, 2005: 249–51). Her prayer is set once more to the same melody,
signalling her acceptance and understanding of the mystery and perfection of
ideal, unconsummated love. All in all, then, L’Amour de loin is essentially an
opera about dreaming of, and loving, the unattainable; indeed, the title of the opera
could alternatively be translated into English as ‘love of distance’. At the start of
the opera, Jaufré is content with fantasizing about an indefinite, idealized woman,
and the same sense of ambiguity and acceptance is recaptured in Clémence’s
closing prayer. As the drama unfolds, Jaufré’s recurring night-time dreams about
Clémence allow us to share in his deepest, unconscious fears and desires, and they
express in symbolic form his preference for distance.

11
 It appears that the librettist, Maalouf, has diverged from a literal translation for
these crucial lines 3–4 in French. A literal English translation of the whole verse reads:
‘I am preoccupied with this love / Waking and then dreaming asleep / for there I have
marvellous joy / because I rejoice there rejoicing with joy’ (Pickens, 1978: 79).
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 51

Vocal Works and the Grammar of Dreams

From Dream Theory …

During the composition process [of From the Grammar of Dreams] I read a
book by William Foulkes called A Grammar of Dreams. That was one source
of inspiration. It explored how thoughts are arranged and how the linearity of
a phrase is broken down in dreams. The notion of thoughts bouncing here and
there yielded musical ideas … Plath’s texts also impressed me as very dream-
like in their mood (Saariaho, in Komsi, 2001: 20).

Saariaho first came across A Grammar of Dreams in the early 1980s (Siltanen,
1982: 49). In addition to her interest in Foulkes’s theories in themselves, Saariaho
has related that she also found musical inspiration in the book later that decade
(Saariaho, 1999 [1987]). This is reflected in the titles of her vocal works composed
between 1988 and 1991: From the Grammar of Dreams (a cycle of five songs
for soprano and mezzo-soprano), Grammaire des rêves (for soprano, alto and a
five-piece ensemble), as well as Nuits, adieux, for vocal quartet (SATB) and live
electronics with a title related more broadly to night-time. In this section, it will be
seen that the concepts of dream theory can fruitfully be used to illustrate specific
compositional features of these three vocal compositions, starting with a further
look into Foulkes’s work, in order to understand better what Saariaho found so
fascinating, and how his theories might relate to the pieces under study.
(William) David Foulkes is a leading cognitive dream theorist (born 1935).
His monograph, A Grammar of Dreams, has Freudian roots – it includes a lengthy
section on Freud (Foulkes, 1978: 27–87) – but it also draws on more recent work on
structuralism, linguistics and neuropsychology (ibid., 1978: 103–90). In Freudian
terms, the ‘grammar of dreams’ provides a way to describe and understand the
associative paths of the transformative processes of dream-work. At the core of
this theory is the idea that dream thoughts can be conceived of as sentences whose
linearity has been broken up. Taking this as a premise, Foulkes devises a cognitive-
linguistic notational system – the ‘grammar’ itself – for describing and analysing
the content of dreams, dubbed the ‘Scoring System for Latent Structure’ or SSLS
(ibid., 1978: 193). By using carefully selected key words (verbs and nouns) and
presenting them with abbreviations and specific signs (for example, ←, →, =,
+, -), Foulkes argues that SSLS can be used to describe in a reductive manner
the original linearity behind the various apparently unconnected components of a
dream (ibid.: 199–244).

… to Compositional Practice

Saariaho found the idea of dreams as sentences that have been fragmented and
re-ordered particularly inspirational in the late 1980s. This makes sense in the
context of her compositional development. In 1982–86, Saariaho’s compositional
52 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

focus was on electroacoustic exploration of timbres, with the human voice used
as a non-linguistic source of timbral material. In the late 1980s, however, after
feeling ‘blocked with voice’ (Maycock, 1989; Oskala, 2007: 81–9), she found
renewed interest in using semantic text in her music and in writing for live
singers. In this period, a defining feature of her vocal writing was the use of text
as a source of both semantic meaning and of purely sonic content (Oskala, 2007:
85–9); the vocal parts move about lithely along a continuum from full semantic
units to fragmented phonetic material.12 Foulkes’s ideas on textual fragmentation
in dreams were perfectly suited to offer extra-musical inspiration for Saariaho’s
vocal idiom in this period of change and exploration.
It seems likely, therefore, that in addition to having derived two titles from
his book, Saariaho’s approach to text was guided and inspired by Foulkes’s ideas
in the three ‘dream-themed’ vocal works composed in this period. In all three,
text is presented both in fuller semantic units and in fragmented form, broken up
into syllables and individual phonemes. In fact, the selected texts are themselves
fragmentary in terms of syntax, and opaque in meaning – this is perhaps what the
composer meant by the ‘dream-like’ mood in Plath’s texts in the citation above.
Furthermore, all three pieces involve more than one singer and Saariaho takes the
opportunity to superimpose the same or different texts in her setting, thus adding
to the textual jumble.
In summary, it seems evident that Foulkes’s ideas about the structure of dream
thoughts influenced Saariaho’s text selection and setting in From the Grammar
of Dreams, Grammaire des rêves and Nuits, adieux, all composed between 1988
and 1991. While she had been familiar with Foulkes’s ideas since the early 1980s,
only upon re-reading his work in the later part of the decade did she have the idea
of applying some of these concepts in her compositions. Further, in addition to
text treatment, it will be seen in the next section that the overall form of these
pieces can be illustrated with reference to concepts of dream theory, even though
Saariaho herself might not have intended such parallels while composing.

Dream Episodes in Nuits, adieux

First, the somewhat unusual overall structure of Nuits, adieux can helpfully be
elucidated with reference to the structural principles of dreams. As the title implies,
the piece consists of a number of sections entitled ‘Nuit’ (night) and ‘Adieu’
(farewell). There are a total of five each, presented first in alternation and then
three of each are heard in succession. The ‘Nuit’ sections are set to four dream-like
text passages from Jacques Roubaud’s novel, Echanges de la lumière, consisting
of individual words and textual fragments. In the novel, six people converse
about light – its nature and character, its relation to the world and existence – on
six evenings. The passages selected by Saariaho are opaque contributions by a

12
  Consider Saariaho’s sound/noise axis, and its use in timbral organization (Saariaho,
1987).
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 53

Example 3.3  Nuits, adieux – textual material

Section Bars Text

Nuit I 1–24 Roubaud, passage 1

Adieu I 25–58 Balzac, lines 1, 4, 2, 3
Nuit II 59–79 Roubaud, passage 2
Adieu II 80–111 Balzac, fragments of lines 1–6
Nuit III 112–34 Roubaud, passage 3
Nuit IV 135–87 Roubaud, fragments of passages 1–4
Nuit V 188–99 Roubaud, passage 4
Adieux III–V 200–238 (end) Balzac, fragments and full version of lines 1–6

character named William H., consisting of collections of individual words and

text fragments with no clear syntax or semantic progression. The first four lines
of the first passage, for example, read, ‘Dans l’air / s’arrache / de la terre / au
noir la lumière / et la crache’ (In the air / uproots itself / from the ground / into
darkness the light / and spits it’).13 The ‘Adieu’ sections in turn set text from a six-
line fragment of Honoré de Balzac’s Séraphîta. These texts are used in a particular
way across the sections of the piece, as shown in Example 3.3.
There is a progression in the presentation of the Balzac, apparently from
fragments towards a complete rendition of a given text: a number of lines are first
presented in mixed order (‘Adieu I’), then in fragments (‘Adieu II’), and fragments
again before a final full rendition (‘Adieux III–V’). In the meantime, the first three
‘Nuit’ sections set each of the Roubaud passages, the fourth being set to fragments
from each before a full setting of the final passage in ‘Nuit V’. Notably, however,
some key words are present throughout all four Roubaud passages – lumière, la
nuit –the first and the third in particular, consist largely of the same text material,
presented in different order (and in a different page layout in the original novel).
In a Freudian framework, the piece could therefore be understood as a set of
dream episodes with recurring content (the ‘Nuit’ sections). Although no fixed
interpretation is necessary, the intervening ‘Adieu’ sections could perhaps be seen
as moments of waking between the dream episodes, as the dreamer goes through
the content of the dream, the message becoming gradually clearer with each repeat.

Battling with a Nightmare: From the Grammar of Dreams

In From the Grammar of Dreams, Saariaho chose to set fragmentary texts by

Sylvia Plath (1932–63): the poem ‘Paralytic’ from the posthumous collection Ariel
(1965), and three fragments from the author’s only novel, The Bell Jar (1963).

13
 Roubaud, 1990: 12, 13–14, 47 and 69.
54 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 3.4  From the Grammar of Dreams (Song I) – intensifying vocalise

 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 55

‘Paralytic’ uses few full stops, and semantically connected text portions are
consistently divided across different lines and stanzas, giving the impression of a
‘stream of consciousness’. Similarly, the first and longest fragment from The Bell
Jar mostly consists of one long, incoherent, stream-of-consciousness sentence,
listing unconnected (traumatic) memories from the protagonist’s past (see also
Minkkinen, 2005: 68–9). Within an overall musical depiction of dreaming, I
would argue that the first song of From the Grammar of Dreams also depicts the
process of waking up from a dream. At the start of Song I, the mezzo-soprano part
is set to a gradually intensifying vocalise (see Example 3.4); this culminates in a
sudden declaration of ‘A bad dream. I remembered everything’.
The text is first uttered in repeated fragments, then in full form (bars 21 and
25). This creates a very vivid impression of the mezzo-soprano suddenly waking
from a bad dream experienced during the first half of the song, and then gradually
calming down while thinking of the events in her dream. This impression could
have been explicitly intended by Saariaho, who has described the first song as
a musical representation of a nightmare (Komsi, 2001: 21). To continue on this
line of interpretation, the soprano part of Song I could in turn be interpreted as
a musical depiction of the actual nightmare. Against the vocalise, the soprano
delivers the poem ‘Paralytic’ in a fragmented, disjointed and timbrally volatile
manner. Despite the apparent disorder, the soprano line is structured as a series
of melodic progressions towards an F#5–G5 motif, concluding with an F#5–G5 trill.
This order beneath disorder could be seen as a musical depiction of masked latent
content and coherence in this musical dream, similar to the harmony in Im Traume
explored above.
Going further still, after the ‘nightmare’ of Song I, the remaining four songs of
the cycle can readily be understood as a reflection of the process of interpreting
the dream using the Freudian method of free association. During this process, the
two singers represent the conscious and the unconscious parts of the dreamer’s
mind.14 This interpretation begins in Song II, where the mezzo-soprano recites
a string of elements she remembers about her bad dream (‘I remember[ed] the
cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig-tree and Marco’s diamond’) and tells
of an association of them all to her own life (‘Maybe forgetfulness’), as if she
were in Freudian dream therapy. Saariaho has changed Plath’s text to be in the
present tense (‘I remembered’ to ‘I remember’) which enhances the psychological
immediacy of the account.
In the meantime, the soprano part continues independently, illustrating the vivid
unconscious activity that occurs while the dreamer’s conscious mind is reflecting
on the dream. The interaction of the two vocal parts is also illustrative. In the first
half of Song II (bars 1–15), the soprano and mezzo-soprano sing simultaneously,
alternating between text delivery in half voice and vocalise, creating between

14
 In the revised version of From the Grammar of Dreams (2002) for soprano and
electronics, this impression is suggested very strongly, as there are two voices but only one
sound source.
56 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 3.5 From the Grammar of Dreams (Song II) – combined

melodic line
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 57

them a unified melodic line (see Example 3.5). In this way, the musical setting
illustrates the constant search for connections between the remembered fragments
of manifest dream content and its hidden, true significance, concealed in the
unconscious parts of the mind during the interpretation of the dream.
After the mezzo-soprano has finished going through the dream thoughts and
associations in Song II, Songs III–V depicts how the protagonist – the dreamer –
gradually comes to terms with the unconscious traumas revealed by the nightmare.
The solution proposed by the melancholy Song III, set to a fragment from ‘Paralytic’,
is a Buddhist retreat from life – ‘ask nothing of life so life will ask nothing of you’.
Song IV also begins in an unpromising way: set to fragments from The Bell Jar
describing the novel’s protagonist Esther’s suicide attempt, the song offers a vivid
musical depiction of drowning with a texture dominated by desperate breath sounds.
In bar 26, however, the strong and insistent beat of the heart, depicted musically with
repeated iambic rhythms, draws the singers back to life. As pulse is rarely present
in Saariaho’s music of that period (Otonkoski, 1989: 3), its use here reinforces the
musical and narrative effect. By the end of the song, both voices affirm their wish to
live on with the repeated phrase ‘I am.’ The mezzo-soprano’s hesitation returns and
turns the affirmation to a question, ‘Am I?’, in bar 37, resolved only in the soprano’s
final whisper, ‘I am’ (see Example 3.6 overleaf).
The fifth and final song acts as a final affirmation of the newly found peace of
mind – making From the Grammar of Dreams comparable in overall progression
to The Bell Jar, where Esther’s mental health and sense of self is finally restored
(De Lauretis, 1988: 129–33). Decorative, melismatic, a vocalise in both parts
finally turns into the positive closing words, ‘I smile’, set to a crescendo on a
bright major third. According to Saariaho, the wordless melismas of Song V are a
depiction of birdsong (Komsi, 2001: 21). Perhaps after going through the traumas
of the nightmare, the song’s protagonist observes her own life from afar, from a
bird’s-eye view, before returning back to reality and life, smiling.

A Dream of Love: Grammaire des rêves

For Grammaire des rêves, Saariaho created a fragmentary text collage by

selecting portions ranging from full verses to individual lines and words from
several poems by Paul Eluard (1895–1952) (Saariaho, n.d.).15 Suitably, the
key themes in the selected fragments are dreaming, irrational dream visions
and idealized, symbolic descriptions of love. The composer’s treatment of
the selected texts breaks down the linearity and syntax of the sources. Rather
than make a through-composed setting, Saariaho repeats and reorders words,

15
 Most of the material derives from poems IV, VI, VII, VIII, XIV and XXVII of the
opening section (‘Premièrement’) of Eluard’s collection L’Amour la poésie (‘Love Poetry’,
1929). Individual fragments also derive from the poem ‘Le Miroir d’un moment’ from
Capitale de la douleur (‘Capital of Pain’, 1926) and the long, prose-like section ‘Nuits
partagées’ from the collection La Vie immédiate (‘The Immediate Life’, 1932).
58 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 3.6 From the Grammar of Dreams (Song IV) – depiction

of drowning
 Dreams about Music, Music about Dreams 59

syllables and individual phonemes (see also Minkkinen, 2005: 69–80). Analysis
of the textual arrangement and musical setting of the Eluard fragments suggests
an overall dramatic progression from dreaming to waking, not wholly dissimilar
to From the Grammar of Dreams; perhaps herein lies the deeper structural
connection between these twin-titled pieces.
To begin with, at a number of structural junctures, there are textual fragments
that suggest a temporal frame for the musical events – a night that gradually
turns into dawn: ‘the night is passing’ (‘la nuit se passe’, bar 49), ‘it is dawn’
(‘l’aube se passe’, bar 89), and ‘the night ends’ (‘la nuit s’éteint’, bar 140).
Indeed, the opening part of the piece gives the impression of being a musical
depiction of the dreaming mind during sleep. The fragmentary text treatment,
already discussed above, supports this reading, and Saariaho explicitly instructs
the singers to ‘speak dreamily’ in bar 62. Looking at the text fragments, this
appears to be a dream about a blue-eyed lover, interspersed with apparently
irrational material about stars and assorted childhood memories. The various
dream episodes often re-use the same textual material from earlier on, with
growing intensity, in line with Freud’s notion; subsequent, homologous dream
episodes are ‘bolder and more distinct’. For example, the passionate stanza ‘My
love for having fulfilled my desires / Set your lips on the sky of your words like
a star’ (‘Mon amour pour avoid figurée mes désir / Mis test lèvres au ciel de
tes mots comme un astre’) is first presented in fragmented form in the opening
section, with the fragments brought together in a second, passionate rendering
of the text in bars 76–88, marked ‘ecstatic’.
After this section, the impassioned mood of the dream subsides and the process
of waking up begins. The musical flow becomes distinctly more controlled and
regular; for the first time in the piece, all members of the ensemble play in synchrony
(bars 89–100). The change of mood reflects the text, which now describes elements
of the waking world – birds, trees, wind, light – as dawn approaches; the use of
birds as a signal of the present, waking world is a point of comparison with the
final movement of From the Grammar of Dreams. At the end of this section, in
bars 101–10, the singers convey, in jerky, accented phrases that the lover in the
dream is closing his eyes (‘tu terme tes yeux’), with the dream starting to fade
away. The process of waking up continues, and the musical intensity mounts,
finally culminating in bars 184–9 with frantic five-fold repetition of ‘it is dawn’
(‘l’aube se passe’) followed by the realization that ‘you are not there’ (‘tu n’es pas
là’), conveyed in a high, desperate cry in both voice parts.
In the section immediately preceding this moment of awakening (bars 169–88),
the text of the singers is a collection of individual fragments and words from the
previous sections, and some new words that are associated with the same themes
(for example, ‘des bois’ (‘the wood’) and ‘les feuilles’ (‘the leaves’) relate to the
earlier fragment ‘un arbre’ (‘a tree’)). It is as if during the process of waking up,
the dreamer is going through the material and realizes that the lover has gone –
it has all been a dream. Alternatively, however, this section could also depict a
process of retrospective reflection about, and interpretation of, the dream, using a
60 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

method of free association similarly to From the Grammar of Dreams. Either way,
the musical dream Grammaire des rêves is essentially a Freudian wish-fulfilment
of love, to be lost upon waking.

Music about Dreams

Saariaho has applied a range of features associated with dreams in her music. At
different stages of her career, as her compositional preoccupations have changed,
different aspects of dream theories have caught her attention. The abrupt transitions
in dreams inspired early works such as Im Traume, while in the opera L’Amour de
loin, completed 20 years later, she re-uses a melody to illustrate the recurring dream
of the opera’s protagonist. In between, at a time when Saariaho was returning to
writing for live human voices, specific ideas about the arrangement and syntax of
dream thoughts inspired Saariaho’s approach to text selection and treatment.
There are also similarities between these ‘dream’ pieces. First, the idea of
‘hidden logic’ – of presenting and repeating similar material in different guises,
either within a single dream (piece), or across separate episodes or dreams – has
found musical application in several of the works. Second, the musical dreams,
in particular in L’Amour de loin and From the Grammar of Dreams, bear witness
to this composer’s belief that dreams can act as a gateway into the dreamer’s
deepest, unconscious conflicts, doubts and wishes. Finally, it has been shown that
the principles of Freudian dream interpretation can offer an analytical framework
for describing the particular arrangement and treatment of text in Saariaho’s three
vocal pieces composed between 1988 and 1991.
The ‘dream analyses’ suggested here are, of course, only one possible
interpretive take on these fascinating pieces of music – but they result from an
approach that is clearly fruitful for describing and analysing certain characteristic
features and structural process of these works. As Freud also reminds us, for dream
interpretation:

The most difficult thing is to persuade the beginner in dream-interpretation to

recognize the fact that this task is not over when he has a complete interpretation
of a dream in his hands, one that is meaningful and coherent, and enlightens
him about all the elements in the dream-content. Besides this, it is possible that
there is an overarching interpretation of the dream which has escaped him. It is
really not easy to get an idea of the wealth of unconscious trains of thought in
our thinking, all struggling for expression, nor to believe how clever the dream-
work is in its polysemous mode of expression, killing seven flies at one blow
(Freud, 1999 [1900]: 340).
Narratives
 Chapter 4
Stories from the Mouth: Flautists,
Bodily Presence and Intimacy in Saariaho’s
Flute Music
Taina Riikonen

The flute is one of Kaija Saariaho’s favourite instruments. She has explained part of
this attraction in terms of the sound-producing mechanism of flute playing, which
allows a combination of breathing, whispering and tone generation. Consequently,
speech, whispering and different kinds of breath tones become central sonic
elements in Saariaho’s flute writing, requiring performers to use a range of sound-
producing techniques. Such characteristics are constantly recombined in ways that
radically alter the player’s sound-controlling mechanisms: the ‘classical’ pure and
dense sonority extends to the seamless layering of breathy hissing, speech and
whispering. In very literal terms it also turns the flautist into a speaking subject,
a concept that seems to undermine the Western art music ideal of musician
transparency (see Goehr, 1998).
This chapter discusses the flautist’s bodily presence when using speech and
breath techniques, with special reference to the solo flute works Laconisme de
l’aile (‘Laconism of the Wing’, 1982) and NoaNoa (‘Fragrant’, 1992). These
pieces introduce subtle continua within a sound/breath axis and in order to explore
this, particular attention is paid to the intimate flautist–flute relationships that
redefine processes of embouchure (the position of the lips). Both works question
the existence of borderlines between flute sound and speech, as well as the singular
embouchure; these pieces are based on the assumption of flexible relationships
between flute and flautist. For instance, Laconisme de l’aile begins with the
flautist reciting a poem by Saint-John Perse, and when speech gradually turns
into whispers and finally breaks down into phonemes, the flute sound production
intertwines closely with this transformational process. In a way, the flute texture is
a product of speech. In NoaNoa, however, various mixtures of speech, flute tones
and breath sounds interact with electronic materials (which are both pre-recorded
and presented in real time).
The aim here is to explore musical sound production primarily as a bodily
process, resulting in an analytical approach that extends beyond conventional
dualisms such as mind/body, music/language and expressive/technical. The
methodological framework employed represents an intersection between
performance studies, the sociology of the body, and gender studies, revealing
64 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

common narratives. One of the main themes concerns how a particular flautist–
flute relationship may generate different meanings and interpretations in the
context of performance as a result of interaction with contemporary instrumental
techniques (see Hennion and Grenier, 2000).
The epistemological basis of this study is wide-ranging, consisting of
interviews with flautists who have premiered Saariaho’s works, and discussion
of relevant scores and recordings. This combination of approaches and its
attendant data is fruitful as it gives rise to multi-dimensional observations: the
interactional processes in music can be understood as simultaneously bodily,
symbolic and relational (see Burkitt, 1999). Flautists and their bodies are seen not
as corporeal containers of pre-determined musical ideas, but as highly productive
intermediaries – working between various gestures, habits, spaces, languages and
practices. The key focus is on the constructive, socio-material nature of the flute–
flautist relationship and the subjectivity of sound production.1
The embodied aspects of music and music-making have been of interest for
several decades in studies of popular music, ethnomusicology and the sociology
of music (see Blacking, 1973; Attali, 1985; Frith, 1996; Whiteley, 1997). These
paradigms theorize the body primarily from the perspectives of sociology, cultural
studies, feminism, cultural anthropology and philosophy. A recent tendency has
been to conceptualize embodiment through an approach drawn from cultural
studies, examining identities, bodily experiences and socio-material cultures as
particular relationships (see Shilling, 2001: 340; see also Welton, 1998; Burkitt,
1999). Criticism of the Cartesian mind–body dualism is ongoing within the
multifaceted fields of feminism, cultural studies and philosophy (see Barker, 1995;
Davis, 1997), but in general there has been a slight epistemological shift in the
theorizing of socio-material procedures. Cultural contexts are understood more
and more as fluid practices rather than fixed matrices (Rawnsley, 2007: 640).
All this questioning of meanings located in the mind–mind2 reality has come
surprisingly late to the study of Western art music. One of the few relevant
examples is George Fisher and Judith Lochhead’s article, ‘Analyzing from the
Body’ (2002). The writers suggest that it is important to study the embodiment of
art music practices, particularly in performance, because music as a sonic art is
never exclusively a mental phenomenon. Furthermore, when musical meanings

1
 This emphasis is perhaps the most musician-centred among the wide range of
studies on Kaija Saariaho’s music. Her work has been considered, for example, from the
perspective of music analysis (Iitti, 1993 and 2002; Grabócz, 1993; Kankaanpää, 1995
and 1996; Brech, 1999; Howell, 2006), investigating gender and composer problems
(Moisala and Diamond, 2000; Iitti, 2001), exploring electronics as a compositional element
(Emmerson, 1998), focusing on her operas (Hautsalo, 2000) and in the context of gestures
of desire and love (Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, 2003a and 2003b).
2
  See Suzanne G. Cusick’s seminal article, ‘Feminist Theory, Music Theory and the
Mind/Body Problem’ (1994), which discusses the (assumed) meeting of minds between
composer and listener.
 Stories from the Mouth 65

are located in bodily actions, the performative aspects of sound-making could be

conceptualized more strongly from a practical basis (Fisher and Lochhead, 2002:
39). Fisher and Lochhead emphasize the concept of performativity and its relation
to the epistemologically active body, suggesting four themes when theorizing the
body in the context of art music: cognition, sexuality, performance and cultural
anthropology (ibid.: 44). In this chapter, the intertwining of performativity and
sexuality are investigated through an in-depth examination of the flautist–flute
relationship in Saariaho’s flute music.

The Flautist’s Open Lips

The Western transverse flute is played with open embouchure – the mouthpiece is not
inside the mouth of the player, as is the case with the recorder, ney, kaval, clarinet,
saxophone, oboe and bassoon, for example. Consequently, it is quite easy for the
flautist to speak, to whisper or to generate a breathing sound at the same time as making
actual blowing movements. However, with the emergence of modern woodwind-
playing techniques (in the context of Western art music) in the early decades of the
twentieth century, the very core of sound-producing techniques remained sacrosanct.
It is no coincidence that the use of speech to extend flute techniques came quite late,
after developments in flutter-tonguing, key clicks, vibrato changes and various kinds
of articulation (see Bartolozzi, 1982 [1967]). As Lydia Goehr remarks, the strong
binary divide between music and language, particularly as portrayed in the formalist
ideologies of the Romantic period, has had long-lasting effects (Goehr, 1998: 92–3).
The existence of words, as well as the use of programmatic ideas, was considered a
threat to the ‘inner’ world of absolute music. However, speech is located in the very
same area of the flautist’s body as that of flute-sound production. Therefore, actually
speaking (or whispering) while playing modifies the instrumental sound quality.
Such a break with the predominant classical ideal of a breathless flute sound offers
a new perspective on the instrument – the integration of speech and flute sonority.
I suggest that the main reason for the inhibited use of breathing sounds in Western
flute playing has been the ideal of the transparent, disembodied player (see Goehr,
1998: 142). The loss of that transparency changes the sonic object, the flautist, into a
gendered and sexual body, which cannot act separately from the carnal – sometimes
symptomatically called ‘extra-musical’ – realm, with its variety of meanings.
The rupturing of a solid flute sonority through diverse breathy sounds also
undermines the ideal of a rigorously mastered embouchure construction. The
exclusive body-building of certain facial muscles opens up possibilities of diverse
embouchure settings: the embouchure cannot be fixed, but has to be in constant
change. Instead of being a strictly controlled construction in the production of a
dense flute sound, the flautist’s lips become more of a fluid aperture of mixed sonic
emanations. This constant half-openness, this potential for creating messy sounds
by speaking, whispering and playing simultaneously, is a quality that Saariaho has
used in a very particular way in her flute works. The texture is based on the shifting
66 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

continua of intermingled sounds, and that brings the embouchure – the lips of the
flautist – to the nexus of sound production.
French feminist Luce Irigaray also considers lips (in the plural) to be central
body parts. In her well-known elaboration of feminine sexuality,3 she emphasizes
the sexuality of woman as multiple and diverse thus:

As for a woman, she touches herself in and of herself without any need for
mediation, and before there is any way to distinguish activity from passivity. A
woman ‘touches herself’ all the time, and moreover no one can forbid her to do
so, for her genitals are formed of two lips in continuous contact. Thus, within
herself, she is already two – but not divisible into one(s) – that caress each other
(Irigaray, 1985 [1977]: 24).

Irigaray’s poetic writing often parallels and intertwines ‘the two sets of lips’ of
a woman: the lips of the mouth and the genital lips (Irigaray, 2004 [1977]: 18).
Lips are conceptualized as a threshold, as always half-open; they are therefore
‘strangers to dichotomy and oppositions’ (ibid.: 18), resulting in ‘several voices,
several ways of speaking resound endlessly, back and forth’ (Irigaray, 1985
[1977]: 209). Similarly, the embouchure of the flautist playing Laconisme de l’aile
and NoaNoa cannot be fixed; it is in a constant state of subtle change. The lips
form the spatiality for several different encounters: between the flute and the lips,
between speech and breath, and between language and flute sound. These different
elements and modes of action are not in opposition, but are more like changing
stages of sonic continua. These are always already plural; they are ‘not divisible
into one(s)’ (see Irigaray, 2004 [1984]).
In Saariaho’s flute music overall, the non-hierarchical presence of all kinds of
embodied sounds of the flautist (and the flute) forms a starting point – rather than
the outcome – of its sonic aesthetics. Sound production is based on an openness
towards subtle variations of diverse sounds and their combinations. The elaborate
degree of control required by these combinations demands a sensitive awareness
of the relationship between lips and flute.

Laconisme de l’aile and NoaNoa

The fluid aperture of the flautist’s lips is used very prominently in Laconisme de
l’aile: the piece starts with the recitation of an excerpt from the poem Oiseaux
(1962), by Saint-John Perse.4 Gradually speech turns to whispering, which leads

3
 Irigaray’s thoughts have aroused a lot of discussion on the subject of essentialism
(see, for example, Fruss 1989; also Whitford, 1991; Chanter, 1995; Stone, 2006).
4
  ‘Ignorant, ignorant de leur ombre, et ne sachant de mort, de mort, que ce qui s’en
consume d’immortel au bruit lointain des grandes eaux. Ils passent nous laissant et nous
sommes plus les memes, ils sont l’espace.’ [‘Ignorant of their shadows, knowing of death
 Stories from the Mouth 67

to the combining of consonant repetition and flute resonance (the flute is then in
the playing position). This recitation passage also includes two composed breaths
(inhalations) (line 1, bar 3 and line 3, bar 4), which could – depending on how they
are realized – interrupt the line of speech or reinforce its subjectivity.
In this opening passage, the loose contact with the mouthpiece of the flute,
combined with the abundant use of composed breaths, jeopardizes the assumed
close – almost inbuilt – relationship between flautist and instrument. The flute can
no longer be understood as a naturalized and musicalized extension of the flautist’s
body (a prosthesis), and is more like a particular cultural object with diverse socio-
material connotations. In fact, in the flautist’s hands, far away from the lips, it
could refer to any kind of sound (there are no particular anticipations of a sound-
type yet), or to performativity, sound theatre, happenings and so on. Its detached
existence directs attention to the flautist’s mouth, which now lacks the protection
of the flute. The naked, breathing mouth oozes the moist abysses of the lungs,
larynx, mucous membrane, windpipe, palate and lips, thereby deconstructing
the assumed functional, solely sound-productive relationship between flute and
flautist at the very beginning of the piece.
Breathing is a central texture in Laconisme de l’aile, even after its opening
section. At line 20, bar 2, breathy sounds flow first through the flute, and then the
flautist fully covers the blowing hole whilst inhaling and exhaling, interrupting the
melodic lines of the piece. After some fragmented phrases with different messy
sounds (hissing and key clicks, for example), the flute playing transforms into
speaking, now via flutter-tongue technique and a gradual change to the repetition
of the consonant ‘t’ (at line 25). That repetition leads to the words ‘traversé,
traversé, d’une seule pensée’ [‘traversed by a single thought’]. This line continues
the excerpt from the poem quoted at the beginning, and the performer is advised
to move the flute away from the lips when reciting it. Inherent in all the phrases
throughout the piece is an undercurrent of unstable contact between the lips and
the flute.
Speaking and breathing in NoaNoa always requires contact with the flute, but
various speech-play-breathy-sound techniques are used. The whispering of actual
words during the sound production is the most common speech-play texture, and
it is significant that these textures are always combined with electronic sound
manipulation.5 The flautist synchronizes this electronic material (both its live

only that immortal part which is consumed in the distant clamour of great waters, they pass
and leave us, and we are no longer the same. They are space.’] English translation by Robert
Fitzgerald, 1971.
5
  The text of the piece is a collage of excerpts from Paul Gauguin’s diarial book, Noa
Noa (1919). During the whole piece, the flautist whispers the following text: ‘L’arbre sentait
la rose la rose très odorant sentait rose rose sentait rose strt ststststttttttttt sentait la rose. Mes
yeux voiles par mon coeur-r sentait la rose la fleur-r la fleur. Ttttttt très odorant melange
melange melange d’odeur l’arbre sentait la rose fleur. Tr tr tr. Fleur fanée fleur fleur lflfr
melange d’odeur parfums parfums de santal très odorant s f tr f s z t f. L’arbre sentait fleur
68 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 4.1  NoaNoa – example of whisper-play phrase

reverberations and pre-recorded textures) by use of a foot pedal. The whole piece
contains some 63 pedal hits that make the pedal itself a kind of extra limb for the
flautist, who both touches the electronic material and is touched by it at the same
time. The spatio-sensory reaching forwards and backwards becomes one of the
most central aspects of the flute playing here.
NoaNoa starts by introducing and accumulating various techniques (different
vibratos with reverberation, changes in vibratos and pitch glissandi, trills with
harmonic sounds). There are long whisper-play phrases at bars 23–8 (see Example
4.1), 48–55, and 71–5. These sections are always layered with electronic material:
reverberation (in bars 23–8); pre-recorded male whispers, manipulated flute
sounds, reverberation (48–55); reverberation and pre-recorded breathy flute
sounds (71–5). Pre-recorded whispers are also present at bars 88–92 and 135–40.
The end of NoaNoa bears a certain resemblance to the end of Laconisme de l’aile
in that both include ascending scales with microtonal altering. The presence of

dorée. Je reviendrai. Mes yeux la fleur fleur fleur fanée. Trtrttttttttt je fl s trtttttttstststkstsksts
trro jeje t je je t ta kata ka rot e re fl sa ka tr s z k z t k fl tr z t k ro fl tr ka z t fl tr ro z t k fl
tr z t k s t s t s. La fleur f r s t s s t s. La fleur.’ [‘The trees smell rose, the rose, fragrant, the
fragrance of the rose. My eyes catch my heart, the fragrance of the rose, the flower. Very
fragrant, the mixture the mixture, the fragrance of the rose tree. The wilted flower, the
mixture of fragrances, perfumes of the sandalwood. The fragrance of the tree, the golden
flower. I return. My eyes, eyes, the flower flower flower, wilted. … I … the flower … the
flower.’] English translation by TR.
 Stories from the Mouth 69

silences is also part of the texture at the end of NoaNoa; there are several pauses
that get longer and longer towards the close of the piece.
How a piece ends is significant – an ending can absorb, process and now carry
the spatial and temporal sonic histories of a work – but the opening of a work
can be equally important. The relationship between the player and the instrument
is usually established at the opening of an instrumental piece, the presence or
absence of the voice of the performer emerges, and the distance/proximity axis
relative to the linguistic-semantic material is revealed on some level.

The Opening of Laconisme de l’aile: Secularization of the Flautist

As mentioned earlier, the solo work Laconisme de l’aile starts with the flautist’s
recitation of a passage from a poem written by Saint-John Perse (see Example 4.2
overleaf). The score advises the flautist to recite the text ‘slowly and calmly, but
with a clearly audible voice (if possible by heart, eyes towards the audience)’.
The flute is in the hands of the flautist and is supposed to be ‘very slowly lifted
towards the lips’ in order to reach them at the point indicated. During this opening
section the flautist makes two radical disengagements in her or his identity as a
performer: disengagement from the flute with the lips, and disengagement from
eye contact with the score. Speaking and whispering (the recitation changes to
a whisper at line 3, bar 4) without the flute in the playing position produce an
embodied performer subjectivity, but the two composed breaths (at line 1, bar 4
and line 3, bar 4) define the flautist as being distant from a transparent sonic object.
Depending on how these breaths are generated, the flautist can adjust the distance
or closeness between body and flute-playing actions. This process of adjustment
will give different meanings to the breaths.
Having interviewed several flautists who have played Saariaho’s flute music,
it is startling how diverse a range of approaches were adopted for the recitation
section of Laconisme de l’aile. For example, Petri Alanko referred to the
opening as ‘more a kind of atmosphere-creating element’, the aim of which is to
‘prepare the piece’.6 In other words, he defined the recitation as an introductory
‘element’, not as ‘music’: the work begins proper when the flute enters. On the
other hand, Eva Tigerstedt said, ‘These [the recitation and composed breathings]
do not bother me …, well, perhaps the recitation bothers me a bit because I
don’t have the training for reciting poems.’ It seems that Tigerstedt is separating
recitation performativity – speaking – from flute-playing performativity,
positing herself as a flautist far away from a speaking subject. Anne Eirola, who
premiered Laconisme de l’aile, further remarks that the flautist ‘actually has to
enter another … performing genre’ during the beginning of Laconisme. What

6
  These and subsequent quotations are taken from my interviews with Petri Alanko
(24 January 2001), Eva Tigerstedt (24 January 2001), Anne Eirola (14 March 2001) and
Mikael Helasvuo (24 January 2001).
70 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 4.2  Laconisme de l’aile – opening section

is significant in Eirola’s statement is that she does not totally separate speaking
from the authority of flute playing, although its otherness (compared to playing)
is present in her remark.
Finally, Mikael Helasvuo approaches both speaking and breathing from a
completely different standpoint; for example he states that ‘It’s great when you
can start with this kind of poem and then the [flute] sound grows little by little …
It has always been an essential part of this [flute] instrument, the breathing and
the speech; it [the playing] starts from the mouth’. Helasvuo seems to emphasize
 Stories from the Mouth 71

a particularly embodied interrelation between the flute and the flautist, whereas
Alanko, Eirola and Tigerstedt talk about playing the beginning of Laconisme from
the perspective of a music–language relationship and the performance aspect
within this. Helasvuo considers both speech and audible breathings as potentially
expressive techniques that are always inherent in flute sound production. Therefore,
speaking and breathing actually constitute flute playing, in contradiction to
Alanko’s statement which hierarchically separates these actions, at least in the
context of Laconisme de l’aile.
The above statements show that the rupturing of the close flautist–flute
relationship is not an insignificant issue for flautists and their experience as
performers. It could be argued that the opening section of Laconisme de l’aile
secularizes the flautist; it does not allow him or her to be first and foremost the
disembodied sonic object. In most cases, by speaking, the flautist’s gender is
immediately revealed: the secularization is sexualization as well. The female
or male flautist who speaks, breathes audibly and whispers, with eyes turned
towards the audience, is a fully embodied person who produces and engenders a
very different reaction from a flautist focusing solely on playing. At the start of
the piece, several open relationships are established: between flautist and flute,
between speech and flute sound (the two different ‘voices’ of the flautist), between
composed breaths and unscripted inhalations, and between the flautist-as-sound-
maker and listener-as-spectator. The listener (who does not know the piece) cannot
fully anticipate the developmental processes of these relationships or how closely
they are intertwined.

Listening and Breathing

I now turn to two flautists and their performances of the opening section of
Laconisme de l’aile. Camilla Hoitenga’s7 and Manuela Wiesler’s8 very different
breathing, speaking, whispering and playing illustrate how flautists can adjust
the relationship between themselves, the flute and the sound within the playing
body. Since both these performers are women, this investigation will focus on the
particular significance of female sound production.
Camilla Hoitenga delivers the whole spoken section (line 1, bar 1 to line 3, bar
3) in an everyday voice, with speech-like intonation changes. The voice is close-
miked, giving rise to the impression of listening to an ordinary story rather than
a recitation, or performance, of a poem. The first composed inhalation (0’07”–
0’08”) is located in the cheeks, and it sounds like a breath that someone takes
while telling a story: the openness of Hoitenga’s mouth is audible. The second is
much more intense and heated, and is located more in the windpipe, abdomen and
the upper-side muscles than in the cheeks. Hoitenga’s mouth is still quite open,

7
 On the CD Aile du songe, Montaigne-Naïve MO 782154, track 1.
8
 On the CD L’Oiseaux tendres, BIS CD 689, track 3.
72 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

but not as much as the first time. When the whispering section starts, she does not
change her voice to a complete whisper, but produces some kind of speech-whisper
combination,9 incorporating both the pitch of speech and the noisy quality of a
whisper. The resonance of the flute is audible for the first time in connection with
the word ‘l’espace’ (‘space’) (0’36”), and is easily audible when Hoitenga directs
the ‘s’ phonemes towards the lip-plate of the flute. She proceeds from speaking to
playing quite quickly, given that the duration of the whole passage (line 1, bar 1 to
line 5, bar 1) is only 47 seconds. The differences between breathing, speaking and
playing are therefore clearly distinguishable.
Manuela Wiesler has a very different approach to the recitation section. She
starts with a distant voice, a slow tempo and dramatic intonation changes. Her
speaking resembles singing, and she strongly emphasizes the notated rhythms
of the text. It is startling to notice that there are no breaks between the words.
The first inhalation (0’12”) is very long, taking three seconds. She executes it
with a lip posture that sounds like a flute embouchure; the lips are puckered up,
and the air stream moves from a very small hole inside the mouth. This hissing
inhalation is located in the lips and the teeth, with the air streaming out quite
audibly from the very front of the mouth. The second inhalation (0’47”–0’49”)
is faster, but it contains the same hissing quality, again giving the impression of
a flute embouchure. From this, Wiesler proceeds directly to whispering which is
even slower than speaking. The resonance of the flute is audible for the first time
– just as in Hoitenga’s version – in connection with the word ‘l’espace’, but the
‘s’ phoneme is broadened sideways, stressing the resonance of the front teeth as
much as the resonance of the flute. The whole section, played by Wiesler, takes 1
minute and 42 seconds.
The long inhalations that Wiesler produces with the embouchure-like lip
posture anticipate the controlled embodiment of actual flute playing. The
breathing does not rupture her assumed flautist subjectivity, which is maintained
as standardized through all the sonic expressions. Furthermore, in adopting a
particular lip position she reconstructs her lips into a new instrument that acts
as a substitute for her missing contact with the flute. Therefore, her mouth is
primarily inaudible as an embodied, gendered sound-producer, because her lips
are instrumentalized for the purposes of the controlled flute embouchure. This
instrumentalization of the lips refers both to the absence of the standard lips–flute
contact, and to the disembodied flautist-performer. In a way, Wiesler estranges the
gendered materiality of her mouth by musicalizing her speaking and mimicking
the flute-playing embouchure during inhalation. Subsequently, it could be said that

9
  In our many discussions on breathing, speaking and whispering on the stage, the
actor and lecturer in speech technique Tiina Syrjä (Department of Drama, University of
Tampere, Finland) has remarked that the difference between whispering and speaking is not
clear at all for acting students. Syrjä says that often students assume their silent speaking
to be whispering.
 Stories from the Mouth 73

this estrangement also implicitly refers to the control of the feminine sexuality
(see Irigaray, 2004 [1984]).
In Hoitenga’s case, on the other hand, speaking, inhalation and playing are
all produced with diverse embodied meanings. The everyday speech quality
creates a feminine subject who is not associated with flute playing at all. In other
words, the speaker at the beginning of Laconisme de l’aile is not necessarily
the same subject (performer) as the player some bars later: there is a separation
of roles here. The first inhalation places the authority of the speaking subject
primarily in Hoitenga’s mouth, where the apparatus of both breathing and
speaking is located. The mouth as female is therefore a central construction in
her performance. Hoitenga’s mouth performs as a fluid aperture with blurred
borderlines between various kinds of sonic material and narrative content. This
potential for creating both sonic and semantic stories – mixed realities – from a
particular female mouth emphasizes the constructive character of both flautist
subjectivity and its related gender.

‘Unduly Intimate’ and ‘the Facile’ Linkage with the Flute

The intimate encounter between flautist and flute raises complex questions
of distance and proximity between the two. During the recitation section of
Laconisme de l’aile, the instrument in the flautist’s hands is a liminal object:
it could be understood as a musical instrument or a ritual artefact. Within this
liminality there is constant reference to the lips of the flautist, but which lips?
The opening recitation creates an immediate awareness of the existence of the
vocal chords (as resonating, audible but invisible ‘lips’ in the throat). In the case
of a female flautist – holding the flute far away from the lips of her mouth – the
implicit consciousness of her third lips (the labia) is indisputable. Therefore, the
flute in her hands is never just a flute in her hands. Without the predetermined
mouth–lip contact it becomes a controversial object, loaded with diverse socio-
sexual connotations.
To illustrate the particular liminality of the flute relationship in the context
of Western performer identities, an extract from the interview with flautist Eva
Tigerstedt reveals the crucial nature of intimate bodily contact during performance:

ET: A Swedish composer sent me a piece … There were things like … ‘make eye
contact with someone in the audience’ and [laughs] ‘here you have to embrace
your flute’. … I thought I won’t perform that …

TR: So, that was your limit? …

ET: Well, I think it is … unduly intimate somehow. Of course, you could have
an instrumental theatre, but I don’t want to … [mimics the stroking of the flute].
I think that’s too much [laughs].
74 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

TR: But it’s very intimate to speak into the flute [in Laconisme de l’aile] as well,
isn’t it … and …

ET: [interrupts] It is! Yes … but it’s not like … that kind of … I think that it’s …
facile … It doesn’t bother me.

TR: Is it quite near … playing [the flute]?

ET: It is quite near playing and it’s near singing … But these kinds of things like
‘make eye contact’ … I mean, what does it have to do with the music … with the
sonic [material] any more? I think it’s more like some kind of flirting.

Tigerstedt names two different actions that she does not want to do (at least as
a flautist in a performance): making eye contact with a particular person in the
audience and embracing her flute. It is intriguing that Tigerstedt seems not to
problematize eye contact with the audience at the beginning of Laconisme de
l’aile. Of course, there is a difference between looking at one person and having
an unfocused view over the whole audience, but it seems not to be the object of
the look that is at the heart of Tigerstedt’s feeling of discomfort. The question is
perhaps more: what makes the female flautist’s gaze flirting in one context and
facile in another? And, how do these gazes relate to the distance and proximity
between the lips and the flute?
In Laconisme de l’aile, the flautist’s speech is accurately notated in the score.
In other words, speaking is performatized (as well as musicalized) and the flautist
can adopt the role of the soon-to-be-playing performer if she or he so desires.
This notated speech also helps to explain the distance between mouth-lips and
flute. If the flautist follows the directions in the score and slowly starts to move
the flute towards her mouth, the distance between flute and lips is an ambiguous
and unmusical relationship for a moment within the whole recitation passage.
Relative to this dynamic and functional movement towards flute playing, eye
contact with the audience (as a whole) is part of a sheltered and legitimized
performance practice: the flautist is not flirting with the audience, because she is
reciting notated text during her gaze. She is on the threshold of sound-producing
performance. On the other hand, in the Swedish work Tigerstedt mentions, eye
contact is supposed to be a surprise, devoid of any musicalized behaviour that
could mitigate the unwanted nuances of the gaze. The chosen member of the
audience cannot know whether the flautist is really flirting with him or her as a
performer, or on a more personal level. This kind of ambiguous situation could
confuse the culturally restricted roles of both sound production (performer) and
sound reception (audience). For example, in his reflections on ‘contemplation’,
Richard Leppert has remarked that the etiquette of contemplated listening (in
Western art music culture) forces the listener into a physical passivity that curtails
bodily reactions as highly controlled, private, inaudible and invisible (see Leppert,
1993: 25; Small, 1998: 27; Goehr, 1992: 236).
 Stories from the Mouth 75

There may be intimacy in the context of performing Western art music, but it
typically occurs between the performer and his/her instrument through a particular
music being played – but not between the performer and the audience. The
predetermined ways of interacting with the instrument preserve the remoteness
of the performer in relation to the audience. Embracing the flute excludes any
culturally relevant reference to actual flute playing. As a gesture from a concert
stage it may seem too intimate because it very quickly turns the flute into a
fetish object, devoid of (‘purely’) musical content. The relationship between
the performer and the instrument is then understood primarily as erotic. In fact,
Pedro Rebelo, examining the performer–instrument relationship as ‘a multi-modal
participatory space’, suggests (following Georges Bataille’s work) that through the
concept of ‘difference’, an erotic aspect in the relationship between the performer
and the instrument always exists (Rebelo, 2006: 27–35).

There seems to be a particular performative state that has the intangibility

commonly associated with an erotic object of desire. The intangibility of this
state only contributes to its status as object of desire. It is a state that manifests
engagement, participation, and above all enunciates the instrument as entity. The
instrument becomes distinct from other instruments and from the performer until
what is left is difference. This object of desire, or rather desired state, questions
the very ontology of instrument and performer. This desire is not directed at
a particular object, but rather it emerges out of the difference that is manifest
between the performer and the instrument (ibid.: 31).

It seems that Rebelo’s definition of the presence of the erotic in the performer–
instrument relationship is based on conceptualizing both the ephemeral sound
and its heavily embodied production as the locations of difference as desire. The
‘intangibility’ of the erotic, then, is not only the abstracted difference as desired
state, but it extends to the inestimable embodied intimacy between the player and
the instrument: the accumulated touching-sensing as the relation between the two.
As Rebelo suggests, the ontological difference arises from the ambiguity between
instrument and performer in this constant mutual productivity. For example, does
someone who is simply hearing/sensing a flute sound wish to know where the soft
edge of the lips of the flautist ends and where the round edge of the blowing hole
of the flute begins? At the moment of sound production these two are nuzzled
against each other. They are reaching out to each other, passionately – and after
decades of repetition, also unconsciously. While blowing into the tube, the flute is
never a separate entity from the player, because the generated flute sound is always
a body sound of the performer as well. Furthermore, this body-instrument sound
inhabits a multi-levelled location, since breathing exits from the player’s body
while never having left it completely.
However, the process of amalgamation between the player and the
instrument is highly restricted, as subtle control mechanisms form a hidden
basis for the cultural negotiations concerning the embodied nature of the
76 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

musician–sound relationship. Therefore, it could be suggested that any sense of

eroticism between performer and instrument is linked to the (illusory) loss of a
very detailed control process: the rupturing of possession of the predetermined
sound-producing mechanisms, as the mastering of both the playing body and
the instrument as an entity. This kind of eroticism is based on ‘the elimination
of temporality’ as a total abandonment to the moment, ‘a reaction against time
itself’ (see Weiss, 2002: 10). It is an attraction based on a kind of illusion of
erasing the embodied history between performer and instrument, a yearning for
an atemporal disembodiment. Moreover, Tigerstedt’s unwillingness to embrace
her flute in the performance situation may reflect an unwillingness to expose the
loss of the temporal and spatial history of her flute–lips relationship. Given that
any public interaction with the instrument is assumed to refer solely to sound-
making in art music practices, gestures indicating erotic intimacy between
any subjects and entities are taboo. Suggestive interaction with the instrument
destroys its function as an objectified mediator of musical ideas and makes it a
potential tool for individual, intimate, sexual pleasure. Therefore, it could be
argued that the liminality of an instrument–player encounter is always both the
liminality within the axis of embodied pleasure/disembodied aesthetic, and of
sound felt as a multi-sensory experience. For the opening of Laconisme de l’aile,
these interacting forms of liminality materialize both in complex adjustments
of distance/proximity between the flautist’s lips and instrument, and in the
interrelation between gaze and speech.

Sensual Whisperings in NoaNoa

After focusing on the inter-relationship between female flautist and flute, we turn
now to the relationship between male flautist and sound production in the context
of bodily presence within Saariaho’s flute music. This investigation concerns the
exploration of whispering in NoaNoa. The materiality of whispering is particularly
sensual in that it always implies extreme intimacy between the whisperer and the
listener (see van Leeuwen, 1999: 27). In the context of Western art music, listening
to a whispering flautist has particularly loaded connotations, given the relationship
between instrument, lips, whispering, language, flute-sound and listener. Also, it is
by no means inconsequential to consider how or what the flautist whispers, or how
that whispered material relates to flute-sound production.
There are several whisper-play sections in NoaNoa, for which Jean-Baptiste
Barrière, Saariaho’s husband, has produced pre-recorded whisperings. Although
these are often quite androgynous sounds – their gendered qualities may be difficult
to trace – Barrière’s whispers are recognizable as male: they are low-pitched
and pronounced close to the microphone. The intriguing thing is that they seem
to include two highly controversial qualities: on the one hand the words sound
fragmented and messy, making the speaking subject ambiguous and vulnerable;
on the other hand, despite moving from right to left through the loudspeakers,
 Stories from the Mouth 77

these whispers seem to dominate the sonic space. In a very subtle way they appear
at the same time both emasculated and empowered.
The following extract from an interview with the flautist Mikael Helasvuo
discusses listening to the pre-recorded, male whispers when they become immersed
in the context of his own whispering and playing:

TR: What do you think about these [in NoaNoa …] when there are these male
whispers and then you whisper and play at the very same time … What approach
do you have as a flautist when you play this?

MH: Oh, you mean … erotically, when … here … a woman and a man …

TR: Yes, or I mean as a flautist …

MH: Yes, it hasn’t occurred to me that if the [live] performer is a woman, then
it’s going to be more erotic.

TR: Yes, there are those [pre-recorded] male whispers in any case.

MH: But there could be a deep eroticism between two men as well … You could
see it like that.

I was slightly confused when Helasvuo immediately contextualized both the pre-
recorded and live whispers of NoaNoa as being erotic. Although I anticipated a subtle
denial of the sensual aspects of the playing situation, the straightforward placing
of heterosexual eroticism at the centre of the act of performing seemed surprising.
Moreover, although it seemed at first that Helasvuo was maintaining some kind of
hetero-normativity in his statement, his emphasis could actually be interpreted as
being more concerned with the role of listening to erotic tension in the mixing of
these whispers, than on the hetero/gay difference in terms of counterpart dualism.10
The embodied location of the voice assumes pertinence in the amalgamation
of pre-recorded male whispers with live whispers (whether male or female). In
his book, A Voice and Nothing More, Mladen Dolar argues that in the case of the
human voice there is no such thing as disacousmatization,11 because the actual
source of the voice (the vocal cords) can never be seen. Thus:

It [the voice as object] is not the haunting voice impossible to pin down to
source; rather, it appears in the void from with it is supposed to stem but which

10
 In her article ‘No Bodies There: Absence and Presence in Acousmatic Performance’,
Linda Dusman remarks that new music (and acousmatic music) ‘subverts the reproduction
of the historical as natural, as queer sexuality subverts reproductive sexuality as natural’
(Dusman, 2000: 342).
11
  See Michel Chion’s terms ‘acousmatic’ and ‘de-acousmatization’ (1994).
78 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

it does not fit, an effect without a proper cause. In a curious bodily topology, it
is like a bodily missile which separates itself from the body and spreads around,
but on the other hand it points to a bodily interior, an intimate partition of the
body which cannot be disclosed – as if the voice were the very principle division
into interior and exterior (Dolar, 2006: 70).

In the performance situation of NoaNoa, the listener can sense the very concrete
division between the interiors and exteriors of two bodies: the sonic encounter
between the openness of the lips of both the live flautist and the pre-recorded
whisperer. The oozing quality of whispers seems to represent the resonance of
touching between these two lips – and now I am speaking particularly about the
touch as heard. Just as the touch of someone could leave a sense of imprint on the
skin, the resonating pressure of a sound (vibrating back) could touch our bodies
very comprehensively.12 Touch is located in the sound, which is generated in two
interior–exterior continua. In the case of NoaNoa, the touching as sound is a co-
production of two distant bodies.
Helasvuo seems to conceptualize his aural experience of pre-recorded male
whispers as sensing, as being able to touch and be touched by two simultaneous
voices: his own voice and the voice of the pre-recorded whisperer. His description
of an eroticism that emerges from the presence of several whispering mouths seems
to highlight both the intimate nature of whispering (particularly as an amplified
sound) and the sensuality of the indefinite touch of the voice (see Irigaray, 2004
[1984]). Therefore, his emphasis seems to lie more in the subtle variations of what
sound as touch could do, rather than what it is. Such an emphasis is crucial for the
performer, but interestingly its immediate outcome could be experienced by the
listener as well. While listening to multi-embodied whispers, the listener is placed
within the interior flow of creating sonic sensations, and not necessarily in the
external stability of perceiving pre-determined ideas.

Stories from the Mouth

In the context of Western art music practices, the performer–instrument relationship

as a bodily presence is a seriously under-theorized area of investigation. However,
in terms of sound-producing actions, it has a quintessentially structural role. It is
highly significant as to how the instrument is touched and what kind of distances
and proximities emerge through interaction. Moreover, the different degrees of
inter-relationship with the instrument may be located in particular bodily areas,
depending upon the sonic textures and the cultural negotiations of the sound–
body–meaning continuum.

12
  I am indebted to fixed media composer Antti Sakari Saario for our many inspiring
discussions on touching, listening and sensing different sounds.
 Stories from the Mouth 79

In performances of Saariaho’s flute music, the encounter between flautist and

instrument is based on the mutually open flexibility between the flute and the lips
of the flautist. Sound-production mechanisms are not standardized around a single
type of sound, but they are situated between breathing, whispering, speaking and
different kinds of flute sounds in a constantly evolving process. The flautist is thus
confirmed as a multi-voiced storyteller; his/her stories from the mouth are told with
constant fluidity. The subtle adjustments of breath, lip and air are intertwined with
the socio-cultural changes in the authorial position of the flautist-as-sensation-
maker. Similarly, the mouth-lips of the flautist are not just stringently controlled
producers of a certain kind of dense flute sound, but more a complex junction
between semantic, symbolic, embodied and socio-material meanings. The lips
allow the outward emanation of the changing shapes of airstreams and breathing,
as well as the resonant depth of imprints left by whispered or spoken words; they
delineate the flautist’s organic connection to the flute through the proximities and
distances between the lip-plate of the flute and the lips. These actions place the
lips at the core of the flautist’s bodily presence, suggesting a range of different
connotations in relation to musicalized/bodily/linguistic sounds.
The sociologist Henri Lefebvre asks in his book, The Production of Space,
‘if the body, as capable for action, could create space?’ (Lefebvre, 1991 [1974]:
170). His own answer to this question is yes, with an important emphasis on
the mutually productive relationship between body and space: they are always
in a constant interaction. In the case of performing and listening to Laconisme
de l’aile and NoaNoa, the spaces these works create include definite bodily
presences, the interior realms of fluid and sensual sounds. The intimacy of these
spaces is produced by their being invisible, or aurally unrecognizable, consisting
of sensitive interaction between several bodies in diverse time–space continua
(of a live flautist, of pre-recorded speakers and flautists, of listeners and sound
engineers and so on). Within this interaction, the resonances of touch as sound are
the significant producers of the sonic meaning-making. Following Lefebvre’s idea
of an acting body being a creator of space (and vice versa), it could be said that in
Kaija Saariaho’s music the spatial production exists at a rather micro-tactile level.
For example, a slight change in the angle of the airstream, the delicate adjustment
of the blowing hole of the lips and the invisible but tactile controlled movements
of the abdomen muscles – when combining speaking and flute playing – can create
sonic spaces that permit certain social and historical meanings.
The opening section of Laconisme de l’aile could be understood as generating
the flautist’s performativity principally through speaking. Reciting the poem forms
a simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of the voiced flautist, and the
intimate relationship between the flautist’s mouth, the instrument and its sound.
Thus, the primary voice of the flautist is his or her own speaking voice, and not the
sound of the flute. The relationship between the flautist and the flute is unstable
during the whole piece, which makes the flautist an embodied subject rather than
a disembodied sonic object. This embodiment contains a perspective on gender,
since the voice (with all its other features) is always acknowledged as gendered.
80 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

The spatio-temporal flux of different reverberations, the sonic presence of

diverse, controlled movements and the constant amalgamation of various multi-
embodied and multi-gendered whispers, create the particular sensual realm of
NoaNoa. Through the constant organic foot–pedal contact, the flautist both touches
the electronic material and is touched by it at the same time. It actually offers the
performer the possibility to be in contact with sonic material that is produced
beyond the divided borderlines of different bodies. This dual touching also blurs
a series of assumptions between the different authorial voices of NoaNoa; it is
difficult to tell who is the maker and who and what is being made, as well as
how and when such diverse sounds are/were created. The distributed authorities
of the sounds seem to be constructed in the interstitial spaces between diverse
acts, realized by several bodies in various temporal and spatial contexts. Such
dualistic parameters as active/passive, complete/incomplete, self/other, male/
female, language/music and original/reproduced are ruptured in these complex,
multi-embodied, authorial spaces.
The flautist who performs music by Kaija Saariaho cannot stay mute or
singular. She or he has to strive towards semantic and symbolic modes of
expression, towards fluid processes of sound production, and towards plural
embodiments of encountering the flute. The mouth of the flautist is a continually
transforming umbilicus of the multi-voiced emanation of breathing, hissing,
speaking, whispering, articulating, blowing and micro-controlling: a constantly
adjusting diversity of sound-sensation-meaning production. In the fleshly stories
from the mouth, the flautist can encounter the amalgamation and interconnection
processes with persistently stratifying layers of various embodied histories and
stories, spaces and instrument-relationships of sound making.
 Chapter 5
Capturing Time and Giving it
Form: Nymphéa
Michael Rofe

Music is purely an art of time, and the musician – with or without a composer –
builds and regulates the experience of the speed of time passing. Time becomes
matter in music; therefore composing is exploring time as matter in all its forms:
regular, irregular. Composing is capturing time and giving it a form. (Kaija
Saariaho, 2000)1

Music is a temporal art form. In the absence of a definitive spatial reality – scores,
recordings are mere representations of ‘the music’ – the temporal coordinates of
start-point and end-point act as the primary delimiting attributes of a work. And
as time is generally conceived to pass uni-directionally – the so-called ‘arrow
of time’ – music can construct relationships between the temporal domains of
past, present and future: memories of past musical experiences (from earlier in
the piece, or from earlier in one’s life) shape present perceptions, giving rise to
expectations of future possibilities. In this model, musical narratives can develop
in a way similar to a literary plot:

Following a story … is understanding the successive actions, thoughts, and

feelings in question insofar as they present a certain directedness … We
are pushed ahead by this development and … we reply to its impetus with
expectations concerning the outcome and the completion of the entire process …
The primary direction of care is toward the future. Through care, we are always
already ‘ahead of’ ourselves (Ricoeur, 1980: 174 and 181).

Jonathan Kramer has suggested that the musical corollary – teleological listening
– is common in Western cultures largely due to the prevalence of tonal music,
wherein the listener constructs a sense of directed motion towards moments of
tonal stability. As he states, ‘rates of motion [may vary], but not the fact of motion’
(Kramer, 1981: 550 and 555).
This last point highlights a fundamental difference between ‘clock time’ and
‘musical time’, a distinction that Thomas Clifton terms ‘the time a piece takes’
as opposed to ‘the time a piece presents or evokes’ (Clifton, 1983: 81).2 As such,

1
  From Saariaho, 2000: 111; see Moisala, 2009: 54, for further discussion.
2
  As Kramer points out, this distinction is most apparent in film, which rarely presents
a real-time unfolding of events (Kramer, 1988: 403).
82 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

not only can music be said to exist ‘in’ time, but time also exists ‘in’ music. By
implication, music has ‘the power to create, alter, disrupt or even destroy time
itself’ (Kramer, 1988: 5). Or, in Saariaho’s own words, music ‘builds and regulates
the experience of the speed of time passing’. While this is true of most musics,
the diminished role of tonal directionality in twentieth-century repertoire renders
directed, teleological listening less of an inevitability, and, by implication, offers
a wider range of compositional possibilities in which timescale can be explored.
Finding ways to control and structure the way time is felt to pass is a central
concern for Kaija Saariaho; she has explored a range of possibilities throughout
her career. In several formative works, the linear unfolding of time is vital,3
acting almost as compensation for the lack of clear tonal directionality. Vers le
blanc (1982, for tape) and Verblendungen (1982–84, for orchestra and tape), for
instance, both involve a single transition – from one pitch cluster to another in the
former; from loud to quiet in the latter – and in each, the gradual metamorphosis
of materials between two states becomes the primary formal process. Yet in
other (later) examples, Saariaho allows greater indeterminacy in the way form is
constructed. Indeed, she has asked quite explicitly whether ‘it [is] really necessary
to create dynamic forms’ (Saariaho, 1987: 132). This sentiment gives rise to rather
different works. For instance, in Mirrors (1997, for flute and cello, originally a CD-
ROM game), performers are given a series of musical fragments to be assembled
as desired; the only instruction is that ‘there should be always a mirror in one or
several of the following musical dimensions: rhythm, pitch, instrumental gesture
or timbre’ (Saariaho, 1997: 2). Therefore, the essence of Mirrors does not reside
in large-scale temporal directionality, but in small-scale time structures and their
capacity for pattern generation. While this does not prohibit the construction – by
performer or listener – of higher-level temporal narratives, it does break down the
need for goal-directed order.
But these works have fairly straightforward temporal structures: Saariaho uses
a single, governing principle in each. More often, her approach to timescale is
both more subtle and more sophisticated: she has developed a variety of means
to manipulate (and, at times, bypass) teleological listening. This in turn has a
significant impact upon the construction of musical narratives. In order to abstract
some of these processes and their effects, it is useful to focus upon a single
example: Nymphéa (‘Water Lily’, 1987), for string quartet with live electronics.
This piece is particularly interesting as it sits at the intersection of two series of
works. Firstly, it constitutes Part III in Saariaho’s Jardin secret trilogy. Secondly,
it is the first of three ‘Nymphéas’: Saariaho reworked the material of the original
in Petals (1988, for solo cello with optional electronics), and Nymphéa Reflection

3
  ‘Linearity’ is used here and throughout the chapter to mean a patterned succession
of events, whereby ‘earlier events imply later ones, and later ones are consequences of
earlier ones’ (Kramer, 1988: 21). Linearity is used in particular to define patterns wherein
each successive step moves further away from the point of onset (as opposed to, say, cyclic
organization, in which there is an underlying periodicity).
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 83

(2001, for string orchestra – and no electronics). Brief comparison of these works
will be valuable as the discussion unfolds, but first it is necessary to consider a
number of details of Saariaho’s musical language, for which examination of the
opening bars of the original Nymphéa will prove instructive.

Spectral Expansion: Harmony and Timbre; Harmony-Timbre

The opening of Nymphéa presents a rapid expansion of pitch space; ‘expansion’

implies the passing of time, as there is a definitively different ‘before’ and ‘after’.
Over the course of the first seven bars, we move from silence, to a unison A, to
a chord that spans 3½ octaves (see Example 5.1 overleaf). This opening out of
musical space is partly structured through intervallic symmetries: the A moves in
whole-tone steps (up to B in the second violin, down to G in the viola), and in leaps
(up a major sixth to F in the first violin, and [via a D] down a compound major
sixth to C# in the cello); D#s enter in inner parts, forming symmetrical tritones
above and below the initial A. Voices continue their rising and falling trajectories,
introducing additional pitches as they fragment into multiple parts.
Such patterns pervade much of Nymphéa, revealing a level of control that
reflects Saariaho’s careful approach to pitch organization.4 Yet these rarely feature
in the foreground as isolated phenomena: more often, pitch patterns develop
alongside other aspects of the music in order to create broader perceptual effects
and relationships. At the opening, individual notes are transformed through a host
of timbral and pitch-based manipulations: techniques such as playing sul tasto,
sul ponticello, with vibrato, or using glissandi, introduce a range of additional
artefacts and harmonics. Most significantly, performers are asked periodically to
apply additional bow pressure (see solid hair-pins above the staves in Example
5.1), resulting in gradual transitions into and out of noise. Finally, each voice
of the quartet is modified independently through live electronic manipulation,
which, at this point in the score, includes artificial phasing, harmonization and
reverberation.5
Discussion of pitch organization in isolation is therefore problematic, given
all the performance variations that in reality shape the sound; the listener is more
likely to perceive a broader gestural shape: sonic expansion. This expansion occurs
simultaneously across harmonic and timbral aspects of the music: not only do we
move from unison to chord, but also from silence to mf, from timbral purity to

4
  Damien Pousset has described some of these patterns, suggesting that Nymphéa
shares its harmonic material with Lichtbogen, a work completed shortly before (Pousset,
2000: 93).
5
  Phasing is a technique whereby a signal is passed through an oscillator in order
to create additional peaks and troughs in the frequency spectrum; harmonization alters
the frequency of a signal (in Nymphéa, harmonization values are less than a semitone);
reverberation is akin to an artificial echo.
84 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 5.1  Nymphéa – opening material

 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 85

timbral diversity, from simplicity to complexity. This type of parametric conflation

reveals the strong influence of Saariaho’s spectral research. In physical terms,
harmony and timbre are closely related phenomena. A ‘single note’ is, in fact, a
composite of a fundamental frequency – the pitch we hear most prominently – and
a series of quieter frequency resonances, or overtones. The timbral signature of the
overall note – whether it is heard as a trumpet or a flute – results from the relative
strengths of those overtones, and the way those strengths vary over time. As such,
harmony and timbre can be manipulated as mutually contingent dimensions.6 In
Nymphéa, not only does the opening gesture expand and diversify in harmonic
and timbral content, but there is a broader, synergetic expansion here of harmony-
timbre: the initial pitch class, A, has widened by bar 7 to a chord that includes the
pitch classes G¼@, G#, A¼# and B.7 The effect is a sullying of the initial unison
purity, a timbral distortion. Whether or not we perceive the specifics of this change
is not the point (and one might even posit that we are not supposed to hear the
specifics). Rather, it is the process that is important: changes in harmony can be
conceived of as changes in timbre. And given the extended performance techniques
noted above, changes in timbre give rise to changes in harmony.
The notion of expansion, of opening up a musical space, can be linked to
certain visual images that inspired Saariaho during her work on Nymphéa: ‘the
plant’s roots in the mud, the stem that brings the leaf to the surface of the water,
and the flower that reaches toward the sky’ (in Moisala, 2009: 56). Whether
or not one constructs such visual narratives during the listening process, there
is a directionality implied by states in expansion, and this, in turn, implies two
points between which that change takes place. The starting point in Nymphéa is
clear: silence, from which the purity of a unison sound tentatively grows. More
specifically, this gesture allows the string quartet initially to approximate the sound
of a sine wave, the purest possible timbre.
This principle of sonic purity (and impurity) formed an important creative
impetus for Saariaho in the 1980s, most notably in her Jardin secret trilogy; as
noted above, Nymphéa is the final part of that series. In each of these works,
Saariaho explores what she has called her sound/noise axis: a continuum of
sounds spanning pure sine tones at one extreme, and white noise at the other (see
Anderson and Saariaho, 1992: 617). One can easily see how such a conception
resonated with her spectral interests in parametric conflation. A sine wave is an
oscillation of a single frequency; a musical ‘note’ is a composite of several specific
frequencies (a fundamental and its overtones); white noise results from frequency
saturation. Thus whilst the purity and impurity of sine tones and white noise
respectively might be considered timbral extremes, they are, in a physical sense,
extreme harmonies.

6
 The opening of Tristan Murail’s Gondwana is a famous example: he uses an
orchestra to mimic the sound of a bell through careful selection of pitch, instrumentation
and dynamics.
7
  This is interlocked by a second cluster of C#, D and D#.
86 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Saariaho has explained that,

I began to use the sound/noise axis to develop both musical phrases and larger
forms, and thus to create inner tensions in the music. In an abstract and atonal
sense the sound/noise axis may be substituted for the [tonal] notion of consonance/
dissonance. A rough, noisy texture would thus be parallel to dissonance, whilst
a smooth, clear texture would correspond to consonance (Saariaho, 1987: 94).

If, in Nymphéa, we start from a position of purity and consonance, then there
is another dimension of expansion in the opening gesture: ‘outwards’ along the
sound/noise axis, as brought about by a change in sound density. But the end-point
of the initial expansion is not noise, dissonance, density saturation; we do not move
immediately to the other extreme of the axis. Rather, noise is used at a more local
level: performers are asked periodically to expand their sound into noise, then to
move back to a defined pitch. Again, the potential for visual narratives abound – a
flower straining to open, small steps upwards and outwards. Importantly, though,
noise is set up as a local tension within the overall sound-world, and not as a goal
of a uniform expansion process.

Growth, Life and Decay

The initial gesture of Nymphéa serves to populate an empty sound-space. That

population process ceases in bar 8 (see Example 5.1), from which point materials
are closely related to those already introduced: the pitch-class content of the next
ten bars is largely a composite of pitches added over the initial seven bars (with
the addition of a prominent melodic E, and, later, C); extended performance
techniques continue to dominate the perceptual surface; noise gestures continue
to phase in and out of (and between) individual voices. Each of these features thus
serves to prolong the sound-world of bar 7: harmonies and timbres slowly evolve,
but with no new goal.
But, as this second phase unfolds, pitch elements gradually start to coalesce
into melodic cells. Initially, these appear to have no consequence, and contribute to
the non-directional prolongation of the sound-world. However, from bar 17, these
cells combine to form a longer melodic line, and, by bar 21, this line dominates
the texture. Moreover, other voices drop out from bar 21, isolating this melody; it
quickly wilts by glissando on to a single D# (as earlier, symmetrical tritone to the
initial A). The opening expansion has thus been counterbalanced by a subsequent
contraction, and, again, that contraction covers several musical parameters: from
chord to single pitch; from timbral density to timbral purity.
Three distinct phases can therefore be heard over the initial 24 bars of Nymphéa,
defined loosely as growth (expansion), life (prolongation) and decay (contraction):
see Example 5.2. This notional shape offers an important mirror to the life cycles
of the natural world: the theme of nature hinted at in the title ‘Nymphéa’ is thus
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 87

Example 5.2  Nymphéa – growth-life-decay cycle

given musical expression. Moreover, the symmetries of the opening voice leading
are composed out through various axes of formal symmetry: spatially, a middle-
register unison expands its pitch content upwards and downwards, populating that
space through changing timbral density; temporally, that space later contracts to
another middle-register unison. Of course, these symmetries are not exact: the
unisons are different; the prolongation phase is not itself symmetrical about its
centre point; clock time durations are not mirrored exactly. Yet there remains a
conceptual symmetry here, the significance of which will be discussed later.
For now, this process begins to highlight the fundamental concern of this
chapter – the organization of time. ‘The speed of time passing’ (pace Saariaho)
does not follow simply from degrees of rhythmic activity. For instance, there is no
real sense of rhythm over the opening seven bars, yet we still experience a sense of
change, and, by implication, we are aware of time passing. It is change, then, that
is crucial. Both expansion and contraction – growth and decay – involve materials
in flux, motion between two points of definable difference. Prolongation, on the
other hand, involves exploration within an existent sound-world, a sense of free-
floating, non-focused discovery. Time – that is to say, linear, progressive time –
inheres in expansion/contraction gestures more prominently than in prolongation
gestures due to the extent of ordered directionality.
Saariaho’s approach to composition at the time of writing Nymphéa bears out
the significance of these observations: ‘in exploring the development of form, I
… found my attention naturally drawn to the significance of dynamism and stasis’
(Saariaho, 1987: 94). By setting up processes that involve transitions between two
states, Saariaho invites a sense of dynamic motion (even if the specific goal cannot
be intuited, as might be the case in tonal music). Conversely, prolongational states
set up a greater sense of stasis,8 for although gestures come and go, they do not

8
  Stasis is defined here following Lewis Rowell: ‘[Static] music is consistent,
continuous, and relatively unarticulated; it fails to imply a sense of progression, goal
direction, increasing or decreasing tension, movement hierarchy, structural functions,
contrasting rates of motion, culmination, phrases or other internal units that might suggest
a temporal scale of periodicities. It is, in a word, a “pool” of sound, a sustained aesthetic
88 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

combine into larger directional patterns.9 Perceptions of temporality follow on:

time can be felt to pass ‘more quickly’ in dynamic music than in static music – just
as it would in tonal repertoire – offering a means of building patterns of musical
time within clock time.

Anamorphic Impressions and the Construction of Form

If Nymphéa makes general reference to the theme of nature, then its title also
fosters a more specific association with the most famous series of artworks
concerning water lilies: the Monet Nymphéas. Over a period of roughly 40 years,
Monet produced some 250 canvasses of the lily pond in his garden at Giverny.
But, as art critic Andrew Forge has noted,

Increasingly as [Monet’s] understanding of the specific nature of his vision

matured, he came to see that his real subject matter was not so much the scene
in front of him in terms of its ingredients – trees, figures, boats, whatever –
as the ‘effect’, that is, the particular condition of light-filled atmosphere that
enfolded them all under the circumstances of the hour, making them all one
(Forge, 1975: 8).

If, in the Monet Nymphéas, details of form and line, composition and representation,
are subsumed under broader patterns of ‘light’, then one can see a clear parallel
with the spectral synthesis of musical parameters within a universal currency of
‘sound’. It is hardly surprising, then, that several prominent spectral composers –
Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, for instance – have drawn quite explicitly from
the work of Impressionist artists in their music.10 As such, Saariaho belongs to a
wider tradition of interdisciplinary pollination; she spent some time studying the
Monet Nymphéas prior to her own experiments (Moisala, 2009: 58), reinforcing
the significance of (this) visual image in her music.
In an interview with Thiébault-Sisson, Monet described in more detail the way
in which he approached his subject:

surface in which the beauty lines in one’s response to the surface itself, not in the syntactical
relationships among its components … The general illusion is one of a state rather than a
process, a music more of being than becoming, a continuous Now’ (Rowell, 1987: 184).
9
  Kramer has another useful analogy here: when on an aeroplane, one is largely
unaware of ‘moving’; the journey feels essentially static (Kramer, 1988: 13). But during
phases of take-off and landing – transition between two definably different states (land and
cruising altitude) – there is a more perceptible sense of motion through time and space; a
greater dynamism.
10
  See Malherbe, 2000, for more discussion of these parallels, and analysis of several
spectral works that draw upon Impressionist concerns.
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 89

I have painted these water lilies a great deal, modifying my viewpoint each
time, transforming the motif according to the season and according to the
different light effects that each season brings. Besides, the effect varies
constantly, not only from one season to the next, but from one minute to the
next, since the water flowers are far from being the whole scene; really, they
are just the accompaniment. The essence of the motif is the mirror of water
whose appearance alters at every moment, thanks to the patches of sky which are
reflected in it, and which give its light and its movement. The passing clouds the
freshening breeze, the storm which threatens and breaks, the wind which blows
hard and then suddenly abates, the light growing dim and then bright again – so
many factors, undetectable to the uninitiated eye, which transform the colouring
and disturb the planes of the water (Monet, in House, 1983: 162).

This description is remarkably similar to several images that inspired Saariaho’s

Nymphéa, as she outlined in the programme note for its premiere:

The image of the symmetrical structure of the water lily, yielding as it floats on
the water, transforming. Different interpretations of the same image in different
dimensions; a uni-dimensional surface with its colours, shapes and, on the other
hand, different materials that can be sensed, forms, dimensions; a white water
lily feeding on the underwater mud (Saariaho, in Moisala, 2009: 58).

In the Monet Nymphéas, lilies do not themselves form the primary foci; in the
Saariaho, there is no single lily ‘theme’ or sound-world. Rather, in each, lilies
are distorted by their surrounding conditions, and these conditions themselves
come to capture the attention of the observer/listener. Fineberg argues that this
type of anamorphosis is an important spectral technique, as it allows composers to
present fairly simple subjects (or processes) from different perspectives, distorting
them anywhere up to the point of non-recognition (Fineberg, 2000b: 109). While
variation technique is deeply rooted in Western music in general, the idea of
anamorphosis (change in), as opposed to metamorphosis (change between), has
a specific resonance here, given its parallel with the stasis/dynamism polarity
explored earlier.
Example 5.3 overleaf shows an anamorphosis of the opening sound-world of
Nymphéa, taken from later in the work (compare with Example 5.1). As can be
seen, both passages begin with a unison A, and both include exactly the same pitch
content in their rapid expansion of harmony-timbre. However, in the later extract,
we move further along the sound/noise axis: the goal of the expansion is as close
as a string quartet can come to producing unadulterated noise; the sound-space is
now populated to its maximum possible density. So where noise previously played
a non-integral role within the expansion process – fluctuations were less ordered –
it now functions as an end-point in a uniform growth phase. Saariaho thus inflates
the sound-mass further, yet does so over a comparatively brief duration; in fact,
a duration roughly the same as at the opening of the work. That we move further
90 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 5.3  Nymphéa – anamorphosis of opening materials

 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 91

over a similar duration invites a sense in which time is moving more quickly: there
is greater dynamism due to the greater distance – or dissimilarity – between start-
and end-point. And there is no doubt that this stage of the work is more dissonant
and dynamic than the opening: the metaphorical lily has been distorted by more
aggressive conditions.
The extract in Example 5.3 also differs from the opening in the way the music
proceeds after its initial expansion. Whereas, at the opening, the expanded sound-
world is prolonged, we now experience an immediate and partial deflation from
the noise of bars 157–8 to the interim state of bar 161, and it is this sound-world
– somewhere between sine wave (unison) and noise – that is prolonged. Over the
following bars, Saariaho presents a series of subsequent expansions to noise, and
partial contractions back to variants of that interim state, before events finally
contract fully on to a single pitch – C2 – in bar 208. So not only is the opening
material distorted, but so too is the path that material takes: its growth-life-decay
cycle is distorted. The basic shape of Example 5.2 is thus transformed into the
more complex pattern of Example 5.4, in which the density of sound – that is to
say the music’s position on the sound/noise axis – is now shown through shading.11
By implication, we are invited to experience different configurations of dynamism
and stasis from those of the opening, and thus perceive new patterns in the passing
of time. Overall, there is a greater sense of dynamism here due to the higher
number of uniform density changes: this phase of the work projects the strongest
sense of motion and directionality; the most vivid experience of time passing.

Example 5.4  Nymphéa – anamorphosis of growth-life-decay cycle

That this phase of the music is a variant of the opening implies its structural
discreteness, and, by implication, the possibility for divisibility in general. As
such, variations – or the various conditions to which the lily is subjected – are
articulated through the closed/cyclic nature of the shape: a state of rest expands
into a particular set of (musical) conditions, then retreats to the initial state. Time is
thus ‘captured’ (pace Saariaho) into discrete units. The parsing of time in this way

11
 The pitch-space extremes at the onsets of intervening sound-worlds are shown, as
are the initial and final unisons.
92 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 5.5  Nymphéa – captured sound-worlds; overall form

 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 93

gives rise to a particular conception of the work’s overall form: a series of varied
growth-life-decay cycles, as shown in Example 5.5. Immediately apparent is the
diversity of shapes into which the original cycle is cast. Some retain the temporal
and spatial symmetries of the original, while others deform this shape. At times
these are fused, at other times there are cycles within cycles.
Importantly, there is a close link between each shape and its content. As
described, cycle 5 (Example 5.4) contains some of the most dissonant timbres and
goes through a series of dynamic growth and decay phases. On the other hand, cycle
8 contains slow-moving, relatively consonant harmonies, giving rise to one of the
longest prolongation phases – and, consequently, one of the most static periods
– in the work. The variation process thus encompasses both form and content,
reflective of Saariaho’s conception of form in the 1980s: ‘When I say “form” I
mean precisely the idea that Vassily Kandinsky defined as the following: “Form
is the external manifestation of inner meaning”’ (Saariaho, 1987: 93). As each of
Monet’s Nymphéas presents a snapshot (an impression) of a particular moment in
time – a particular set of visual conditions encompassing both composition and
texture/tone – so each cycle in the Saariaho captures a particular set of musical
conditions. The stasis or dynamism of each part – its temporal form – is inherently
linked to the consonance or dissonance of its harmony-timbre – its content.

Symmetry as Temporal/Spatial Construct

I am very interested in the structures found in nature – especially the symmetry

of leaves and flowers … When composing, I often draw sketches of form about
the musical events moving in time. Formal structures often aim at either creating
symmetry and/or breaking it down. In both cases, the awareness of symmetry is
present in my works … [to a greater degree] than is generally the case (Saariaho,
in Moisala, 2009: 56 and 91).

Symmetrical structures have already been observed in various domains of

Nymphéa: the foreground swells into and out of noise; the opening voice leading;
the spatial and temporal symmetry of the original growth-life-decay cycle, and the
deliberate asymmetry of certain later variants. Moreover, as noted earlier, Saariaho
identified in her programme note the symmetrical structure of the lily as a specific
source of inspiration for the work.12
It is notable, then, that Nymphéa projects a two-part structure at the highest level
of formal organization (see Example 5.5). This is articulated primarily through the
use of silence at bar 262, the only complete decay and complete (re)growth aside
from the extremes of the work; its double bar-line is the only structural indication
in the score. Further, there are several correspondences between cycles from each

12
  Saariaho has also written of the significance of symmetry in the first part of the
Jardin secret trilogy; see Saariaho, 1987: 124ff.
94 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

part, giving rise to a notional symmetry (or, at least, equivalence) between the
two large-scale formal stages. The use of extreme noise in cycle 5 (complete with
the dynamism of its frequent growths and decays), for instance, is reproduced
in cycles 9 and 10, while the melodic fragments of the first cycle (and the static
prolongation to which their presentation gives rise) recur in the eleventh. The most
notable parallel, though, is between the sixth and twelfth cycles, both of which
require performers to whisper extracts from a poem by Arseniy Tarkovsky:

Now summer is gone

And might never have been.
In the sunshine it’s warm,
But there has to be more.

It all came to pass,

All fell into my hands
Like a five-petalled leaf,
But there has to be more.

Nothing evil was lost,

Nothing good was in vain,
All ablaze with clear light
But there has to be more.

Life gathered me up
Safe under its wing,
My luck always held,
But there has to be more.

Not a leaf was burned up

Not a twig ever snapped
Clean as glass is the day,
But there has to be more.13

Given the work’s title, and the growth-life-decay cycles of its form, it is
significant that Saariaho’s choice of text contains such prominent natural
imagery – summer; sunshine; leaf; light; life; twig. Moreover, for the present
purpose, there are implicit references to time: ‘summer is gone’; ‘might never
have been’ (negates the passage of time); ‘it all came to pass’; ‘there has to be
more’ (anticipation of the future). Importantly, these are references to clock time:
to the past and to the future. Up to this point, the focus of this chapter has been
primarily upon aspects of musical time in Nymphéa, which is to say (following
Clifton) the time the work evokes: dynamism, stasis; change, prolongation.

13
  Translation by Kitty Hunter-Blair, taken from the score of Nymphéa Reflection.
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 95

But clock time relationships also play a vital role here. That material originally
presented in cycle 6 returns in cycle 12 connotes the passage of time: repetition
is a temporal process. Likewise, the return of cycles 1 and 5 respectively in 11
and 9/10 projects an explicit sense of time having passed, as, in a more general
sense, does the very notion of anamorphosis.
Musical memory thus plays a role in creating higher-level formal narratives.
It is in this way that the two-part background form of Nymphéa can take shape.
As stated above, both parts are framed by silences at their extremes (see
Example 5.5), but both parts also contain their most dissonant/dynamic cycles
(5 and 9/10) at their centres. In each part, this central ‘swell’ is followed by
the texted sections, setting up an additional equivalence. The growth-life-decay
cycle is thus notionally projected to the background of the work, as shown in
Example 5.6. This formal shape has a certain symmetry, with two large-scale
cycles that have a degree of equivalence (note that the ‘symmetry’ here is
not a palindromic symmetry, but one borne out of repetition, similarity). But
there is also a certain asymmetry: Part I is itself asymmetrical, taking longer
to grow than to decay; Part II is a compressed version of Part I, as it lacks
an analogue to cycles 3 and 4 (see Example 5.5). Saariaho’s aforementioned
affection for symmetrical structures – and the distortion of those symmetries –
carries significant structural function here through the (a)symmetrical packaging
(capturing) of time. Moreover, the notion of anamorphosis is fundamental even
at this highest level of structural organization, further reinforcing the form–
content link so vital in much of the composer’s work.

Example 5.6  Nymphéa – background shape

A six-stage architecture thus begins to emerge: two parts, each containing

the three-stage growth-life-decay pattern. As such, it is notable that Saariaho
introduced a six-movement plan when she came to rework the piece as Nymphéa
Reflection in 2001 (see Example 5.7 overleaf). These movement divisions explicitly
articulate the six-stage grouping outlined in Example 5.6, and their titles point
to the expressive characters that prevail therein. Material in Nymphéa Reflection
follows closely that of the original, aside from a few expanded codettas at the
ends of certain movements. However, there are two substantial differences, both
of which have an effect upon background symmetry. Firstly, Saariaho completely
cuts cycles 3 and 4 from the original Nymphéa in the later version. As described
above, it is the presence of these sections in Part I of the original that gives rise
96 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 5.7  Nymphéa and Nymphéa Reflection – formal comparison

Nymphéa Nymphéa Reflection

PART I
Cycles 1 and 2 (bars 1–38) I. ‘Sostenuto’ (expanded codetta)
Cycles 3 and 4 (bars 39–148) [CUT]
Cycle 5 (bars 149–207) II. ‘Feroce’ (expanded codetta)
Cycles 6 and 7 (bars 208–62) III. ‘Dolcissimo’ (no voices; extra
materials)
PART II
Cycle 8 (bars 263–94) IV. ‘Lento’
Cycles 9, 10 and 11 (bars 295–362) V. ‘Furioso’ (expanded codetta)
Cycles 12 and 13 (bars 363–89) VI. ‘Misterioso’ (expanded codetta; ends
on C root)

to the overall asymmetry of Example 5.6; by removing this material in Nymphéa

Reflection, a more precise background symmetry now emerges.14 Secondly,
cycles 6 and 7 from the original are recast in the later version without the use of the
Tarkovsky text; what used to function as ‘accompanimental’ material to the voices
is now expanded to form the sole focus for this section. So while the cut of cycles
3 and 4 serves to tighten background symmetries, this second change disrupts that
balance, creating a greater sense of end weighting as voices are now used only in
the final bars of the work.
The six-movement architecture of Nymphéa Reflection functions as a spatial
framework within which to situate the perceptual present; the expressive quality
of each movement is captured in its ‘subtitle’, inviting expectation. Moreover,
the expanded codettas of this later work bring about a greater sense of finality
at the end of each movement, making it easier to perceive these subdivisions.
It is therefore fair to assume the possibility of large-scale directional listening:
the background symmetry can take shape during the listening experience through
evolving expectations. But in the original Nymphéa there are no such structural
clues, rendering the possibility for large-scale expectation less likely. For instance,
the implication from Example 5.6 is that bar 157 is somehow a large-scale goal of
bar 1. But is this really the case, or is it simply the peak in one of many local cycles?
In other words, does Example 5.6 grow over time – is that growth perceptible
during the listening process – or is it simply a spatial, conceptual plan, only to be
understood post-listening?

14
  Saariaho cuts the equivalent of bars 39–145 of the original. An expanded version
of bars 146–8 is retained in order that the first large-scale section can end on an A (rather
than G). The expanded codettas mentioned above are sufficient to counteract the ‘loss’ of
material from the cut. In fact, the later work is slightly longer.
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 97

Cyclic and Linear Time

That Nymphéa consists of a series of individual scenes or impressions implies a

kind of formal patchwork; a succession of variants. In this model, each variant
moves from a state of rest (unison) into activity (a particular ‘scene’), then back
to rest; the process repeats. I have been referring continually to each pattern
of growth-life-decay as a cycle. Yet I have presented these cycles linearly in
diagrams. This highlights a fundamental paradox in this piece (and, indeed, one
that recurs throughout Saariaho’s work): it is possible to hear Nymphéa as a series
of independent cycles – as in Example 5.5 – but it is also possible to construct
higher-level narratives by connecting up these phases. Two modes of temporal
organization emerge: cyclic time and linear time.
In the cyclic mode, each phase of activity projects a different musical scene;
a different set of conditions in which the lily is viewed (heard). But the cyclical
basis of that varied repetition is further reinforced by successive stages sharing
their interim points of rest: the G of bar 39, for instance, is the end-point of cycle 2,
and also the start-point for cycle 3. Cyclic renewal is important here. But how
important is its being a G? On one hand, the pattern A-to-G occupies multiple
structural levels: it is one of the first foreground changes we hear in the piece;
it occupies the middleground between the opening and bar 39; it is the primary
background change from the opening to the end of the work as a whole. Certainly,
then, this relationship is conceptually significant, providing a compositional logic
and a supplement to tonal pitch relationships. But how perceptually significant
is it? This will no doubt vary between listeners; what is important is that if one
does not make that connection, the G of bar 39 can be interpreted in its simplest
form: a unison. And if this is the case, then all interim points of rest are connected,
for all are unisons, or, at least, points of quasi-unison, consonance and purity. As
such, the form of Nymphéa (Example 5.5) might better be rationalized not as a
linear succession of cycles, but as a cycle of cycles (see Example 5.8 overleaf).
In this model, the central core represents a single state of rest, from which the
music expands into, and contracts out of, successive states of activity. As Saariaho
has noted, ‘a chord which is familiar [in this case, not a chord, but a unison]
somehow assumes the function of consonance’ (Saariaho, 1987: 122). The sound/
noise axis is thus given a more subtle expression: the further each cycle moves out
radially from that central consonance, the further along the sound/noise axis it has
travelled. Interestingly, there is something quite flower-like in the overall shape
of Example 5.8, another (albeit elaborate) expression of natural imagery in the
work, perhaps. Each stage is anchored to the common core, recalling Saariaho’s
inspiration, quoted earlier: ‘the plant’s roots in the mud … yielding as it floats on
the water, transforming’. Or, if the centre point is conceived to have some type of
magnetic ‘pull’, then the arcs of activity about that core are notionally comparable
to magnetic field lines, or solar flares. Given Saariaho’s apparent interest in these
themes – Lichtbogen, Solar, Notes on Light – such an interpretation may not be as
frivolous as it first appears.
98 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 5.8  Nymphéa – form as a cycle of cycles

Importantly, regarding issues of time, the process of continually returning

to similar states of rest results in a curious effect: this music never really ‘goes’
anywhere; returning sound-worlds reinforce this impression. There is no overall
linear journey on which the listener is taken: changing conditions cause motion but
not locomotion. It is as if the listener is rooted in the mud, observing, and stirred
by, a series of diverse conditions that pass him or her by, rather than being actively
transported between musical states. This sensation is remarkably common, at least
for this listener, in Saariaho’s work.
The cyclic understanding of Example 5.8 reinforces the notion of Nymphéa as
a series of discrete musical scenes. However, we have already seen several ways
in which cycles work together: correspondences between the sound-worlds of
certain cycles, and the consequent background shape of Example 5.6; the cycles-
within-cycles layout of phases 3 and 6 (see Example 5.5); the multi-level A-to-G
connections.15 And, as observed earlier, individual cycles are fused together through
their shared points of rest, leaving the move to silence at bar 262 (with its attendant
double bar-line) the only unambiguous structural division in the entire work.

15
 Interestingly, in Nymphéa Reflection, the final chord of the work is not rooted on
G, but on C, negating any multi-level A-to-G significance. Instead, this C reinforces the
importance of the C#-C sound-world used at various strategic points in both works. Likewise
in Petals – Saariaho’s 1988 version of the work – C functions as the primary pitch focus.
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 99

Example 5.9  Nymphéa – second cycle

100 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

In this respect, it is useful to reconsider the opening stages of the work. The
initial cycle has been described in detail: the unison A expands then contracts to
the D# of bar 24. However, when we consider the second cycle, bars 25–39, the D#
of bar 24 is now given a new context: it is the brief end-point of a glissando; it falls
to D$, which itself expands quickly to the sound-world of bar 25 (see Example 5.9,
which follows on directly from Example 5.1). This sound-mass then opens out
into the C#-C ‘climax’ of bar 31, before contracting more purposefully on to the G
of bar 39. In other words, the G between cycles 2 and 3 is a more stable point of
rest than the D#-to-D between cycles 1 and 2. There is therefore a higher level of
growth-decay that encompasses two lower-level cycles: the relative instability of
the D# means that the C#-C peak can be felt (retrospectively) as the climactic goal
of not only the second cycle, but also the first-and-second cycles. Middleground
patterns, themselves based on the growth-life-decay shape, thus begin to emerge.
Over the next few cycles, an increasingly forceful projection of rhythm
sets up an additional linear narrative. At the opening, there is no real sense of
rhythm and metre: even the melodic fragments from bar 8 initially seem like free-
time flourishes. But, as these fragments converge, a greater sense of rhythm is
established. From cycle 3, the listener encounters the first feeling of pulse (see bar
39 in Example 5.9 above). And by cycle 5 this ‘pulse’ has been taken to its extreme
through the use of tremolandi marked feroce (see Example 5.3). There is therefore
a large-scale process of growth in the rhythmic domain towards cycle 5.
This pattern of linear growth is also brought about in the harmony-timbre
domain. As shown in Example 5.10, the increasing rhythmic activity across Part I of
Nymphéa is mirrored by three successive climaxes. Each supersedes its predecessor
in volume – mp, ff, ff tutta la forza – and each moves successively further along
the sound/noise axis – the C#-C extremes of pitch space in climax one are followed
by semitonal clashes (D#/D, A/A@) at the extremes of climax two, and then full-
scale noise in climax three. So just as the C#-C climax acts as a point of focus over
cycles 1 and 2, climax two plays a similar role over the first four cycles: it is felt
retrospectively to be the most significant moment up to that point. Likewise, climax
three supersedes both its predecessors, giving rise to the background shape of Part
I, shown in Example 5.6. A fractal-like growth process thus emerges: the growth-
life-decay shape is echoed over successively higher structural levels. This process
of reduplication means that the growth of material gradually determines large-scale
form; as in nature, the plant grows into its shape through cumulative steps. The
Kandinskian conception of form as ‘the external manifestation of inner meaning’
can again be seen as vital in the way Nymphéa takes shape.
Importantly, such fractal-like growth-by-reduplication is inherently linear in
its temporal organization: one is constantly re-evaluating past musical events in
the light of present perceptions. Therefore, the background shape of Example 5.6
is more than a (retrospective) conceptual construct. It can be felt to grow linearly
over time, with successive stages in the fractal acting almost as middleground
connections between the local cycles and the developing background form. So,
despite the strong patterns of cyclic time seen in Example 5.8, there remains an
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 101

Example 5.10  Nymphéa (Part I) – fractal-like growth

102 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

important linear element in this music, albeit one that is more subtle and less all-
encompassing than might be the case in other musics.

Time and Narrative

Nymphéa demonstrates several means by which Saariaho manipulates the

passing and parsing of time: dynamism and stasis as a way of controlling how
quickly musical time is felt to elapse; reminiscence and variation as a way of
highlighting the passing of clock time; interactions between the temporal domains
of memory, perception and expectation; symmetry and asymmetry as a means of
perceiving (dis)order; cyclic and linear modes of temporal evolution, and their
effect upon the extent of directionality; teleological listening as one of several
possibilities. Saariaho finds ways of integrating processes that seem, on paper,
quite incompatible.
Of the wide-ranging influences that underpin Saariaho’s work – musical and
non-musical – it is useful to highlight two in which time plays a notable role.16 First,
Tim Howell has described the particular relevance of timescale in Nordic life:

… extremes of light and dark, and the very slow rate of evolution that takes
an entire year to achieve, undoubtedly affects human perceptions of how time
passes. Furthermore, this cyclic quality is offset by abrupt seasonal changes:
winter-to-spring happens in a couple of weeks – you can observe on a daily basis
how a tree moves from brown to green; the change back at the onset of winter is
no less dramatic (Howell, 2006: 276).

Howell goes on to argue that a range of Finnish composers – from Sibelius to

Saariaho – have turned to such variations in timescale for compositional inspiration
(Howell, 2006: 276ff). Given Saariaho’s Finnish roots – and the frequency with
which she looks to nature for inspiration (as she does in Nymphéa) – it is interesting
that the manipulation of time plays such a crucial role in her music; her view that
music ‘builds and regulates the experience of the speed of time passing’ resonates
with Howell’s interpretation.
Secondly, Saariaho’s move to mainland Europe in the early 1980s gave rise
to a host of new influences. Foremost amongst these was contact with Grisey and
Murail, and the spectral research of IRCAM. As Grisey has written, time plays an
integral role in spectral music:

Strengthened by an ecology of sounds, spectral music no longer integrates

time as an external element imposed upon a sonic material considered as being
‘outside-time’, but instead treats it as a constituent element of sound itself …

16
  See Howell, 2006: 203–5, for greater exposition of these influences.
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 103

whereby pleasure … is the result of a perfectly parallel relation between the

perceiving body and the conceiving spirit (Grisey, 2000: 2).

Since the work of John Cage, time (particularly measured/measurable time) has
frequently come to act as a (if not, the) primary ordering principle in music. But
in spectral works this takes on a particular significance: the initial motivation of
spectralists ‘to control the finest possible degrees of change’ (Murail, 2000: 7)
has, as Joshua Fineberg states, led this group of composers to ‘a central belief that
music is ultimately sound evolving in time’ (Fineberg, 2000a: 2).
These two influences clearly resonate with one another, and seem to find
expression in many of the processes described in this chapter. Exploration of
temporal organization – and how time might be ‘captured’ within a musical form –
can be found throughout Saariaho’s work, from early pieces such as Verblendungen
and Stilleben,17 up to more recent works such as Notes on Light. Importantly, the
way in which time is structured in each of these cases necessarily impacts upon
the construction of narrative: in the absence of consistent teleological processes,
the type of directed narrative proposed at the opening of this chapter becomes less
straightforward (in both senses of the word(s)).
In Nymphéa, the presence of two contrasting modes of temporal organization –
cyclic and linear – gives rise to the possibility for constructing multiple narratives,
depending upon the extent to which the listener connects successive cycles. This
is a question for the individual, and will vary depending upon a host of factors, not
least familiarity with the music: it is logical that subsequent listenings to a work
will give rise to additional linear connections, as memory will play a sharper role
in creating a spatial (a-temporal) model for comparison. But this balance between
cyclic and linear order does not reside fully in the listener, as Saariaho subtly
controls the relative dominance of these modes at different points: the re-use of
text in cycle 12, for instance, invites a sense of return by referencing memorable
events from the past. Yet this phase is also an independent cycle; one of many free-
standing growth-life-decay shapes. So while Examples 5.8 and 5.10 undoubtedly
stand in some type of theoretical opposition, they also work together. A useful
analogy is the idea of wave motion. In this model, there is both cyclic repetition
(as each wave constitutes a single period) and linear progression (insofar as there
is an overall passage through time). That Saariaho’s music somehow passes by in
waves of activity resonates closely with earlier observations, and offers a possible
interpretation of how the composer manages to offset and balance aspects of cyclic
and linear order.
Example 5.8 (the cyclic model), Example 5.10 (the linear model), and the
wave-like synthesis of the two, offer different narrative paths through the work

17
  Saariaho has described Stilleben, which literally means ‘still-life’, as a work that is
‘suspended in time’ (in Kankaanpää, 1996: 91). The implications for time (and timelessness)
in Stilleben, along with its references to the time-structures of Lichtbogen, are discussed in
Kankaanpää, 1996: 87–92.
104 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

based on different aspects of its temporal organization. And there are a host of
other possible narratives that have not been considered in detail: ‘ecological’ (the
way in which the work mimics sounds from nature), based upon the title; textual
(those relating to the Tarkovsky poem); genre-based (the extent to which Saariaho
plays with the genre of the string quartet); real/artificial (the changing balance of
acoustic and electronic timbres); and many others. There is no single route through
this music; Saariaho invites listeners to choose from a range of possible narratives,
each supported by its own musical logic.
Given this multiplicity of meaning, it is interesting that Saariaho, like Monet,
has returned to the subject of ‘water lilies’ at various points in her career. In the
Monets, ‘whole groups of canvases are identical in formal structure, but the
individual paintings are differentiated by endless variations in lighting and colour’
(House, 1983: 162). The same can be said of Saariaho’s Nymphéas: their differing
forces give rise to differing musical shapes, which, in turn, emphasize different
narrative routes. In Nymphéa Reflection, for instance, the presence of a full string
orchestra increases Saariaho’s options: effects that were generated electronically
can now be produced solely by acoustic instruments. In ‘reflection’, the six-
movement architecture offers a more extensive, spatial sense of form relative to
the original: clear subdivisions function as reference points between which the
listener can construct more wide-ranging linear narratives.18 But in Petals, the
reduced timbral palette (solo cello with optional electronics) leads to a work of
compressed dimensions. The same basic materials are used, and these remain
packaged in phases, but everything is simplified.19 Saariaho has described Petals
as a ‘petal of the water lily’ (in Moisala, 2009: 34); its narrative scope is thus
concentrated relative to the original Nymphéa.
Nymphéa, Petals and Nymphéa Reflection each offer a different perspective on
the same underlying subject, a creative recycling process common to Saariaho’s
work. Yet differences in context (as with Monet) bring a host of new narrative
possibilities to the fore. If a ‘narrative’ is understood to mean the intelligible
whole that governs a succession of events, then narrative and time are reciprocal
processes, as Ricoeur explains: ‘I take temporality to be that structure of existence

18
  Interestingly, the use of separated movements is a rarity in Saariaho’s early works;
rather, the types of evolving temporal patterns seen in Nymphéa are more frequently found.
Subdivisions are used more often in her later works, resulting in the predominance of more
spatial forms like that of Nymphéa Reflection. Clearly the balance between form as a noun
– a spatial construct – and form as a verb – a temporal process – is a carefully considered
issue in Saariaho’s music.
19
 Now, two types of sound-world alternate: static, sustained harmony-timbres,
and phases of rhythmic activity. But, again, there is a sense of linear connectivity: the
penultimate phase (bars 17–27) places a particular focus on a low, pizzicato C; this C acts as
a kind of ‘fundamental’ in the two sustained phases that surround this material. Moreover,
there is a sense of large-scale growth towards the end of the work, where noise features
most prominently.
 Capturing Time and Giving it Form 105

that reaches language in narrativity and narrativity to be the language structure

that has temporality as its ultimate referent’ (Ricoeur, 1980: 169). For narrative to
develop, time must have passed, and wherever disparate events unfold over time, it
is possible to construct narrative order. That Saariaho explores such intricate time
structures, through which there is such a multiplicity of interpretative routes, thus
makes a vital contribution to the communicative power of her music: ‘Each [of my
works] consists of sentences that somehow relate to each other and eventually tell
a story. This story does not have a concrete meaning, but it is a kind of narrative
with its own logic’ (Saariaho, in Moisala, 2009: 60). This logic – its form – is
deeply rooted in the capturing of time.
 Chapter 6
Whispers from the Past: Musical Topics in
Saariaho’s Operas
Liisamaija Hautsalo

The nightmare of modernism made some of us think that musical meaning, in any
ordinary sense, was finished. But all that is past. (Raymond Monelle, 2006: 273)

Although Kaija Saariaho is now recognized as a leading composer of opera –

her works are frequently performed throughout the world – it was far from clear
earlier in her career that this would be the case. Saariaho emerged in the early
1980s writing small-scale vocal and chamber works, while in the 1990s, her style
gradually started to change and she began writing more extensive orchestral and
vocal works. But it was not until the 2000s that larger stage works started to appear.
Her first opera, the five-act L’Amour de loin (‘Love from Afar’), was premiered
at the Salzburg Festival, Austria in 2000, and her second, the two-act Adriana
Mater (‘Adriana the Mother’), was unveiled at the National Opéra de Paris, France
in 2006. And since these two full-length operas, Saariaho has continued writing
works for the stage: La Passion de Simone, an oratorio for soprano, chorus,
orchestra and electronics, was seen for the first time in Vienna also in 2006; her
latest stage work, Emilie, is a monodrama for single soprano soloist and orchestra,
and was premiered at the Lyon Opera in 2010.
This chapter is divided into two parts: the first charts Saariaho’s development
as an opera composer, whilst the second considers her two full-length operas,
L’Amour de loin and Adriana Mater, in detail. In particular, the operas will be
examined from the point of view of musical semantics in a semiotic-hermeneutic
framework, applying Raymond Monelle’s theory of musical topics (Monelle, 2000
and 2006). This will reveal that Saariaho’s operas actually align in several respects
with the wider operatic tradition, despite the prevailing modernism of her style.
Importantly, this alignment goes beyond a shared genre: Saariaho frequently takes
traditional musical devices – topics that have been common since operas of the early
seventeenth century – and uses them as part of her contemporary language.

From Anti-Opera to Pro-Opera

In 1984, Saariaho stated in an interview that the symphony and, to an extent,

the opera were ‘outdated art forms’ (Lehtonen, 1984: 49). However, behind this
view lies a broader modernist aesthetic: one that dominated the generation of
Finnish composers born in the 1950s. In particular, it betrays two important
108 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

influences stemming from her time as a student in the 1970s. Firstly, Saariaho
was taught by Paavo Heininen, who was a strict modernist and serialist, having
himself studied with Zimmermann in Cologne, and later with Persichetti and
Steuermann at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Heininen actually
taught the vast majority of Finnish composers born in the 1950s, influencing
a whole generation, and acting as a link particularly with the European avant-
garde. Secondly, Saariaho was a member of the radical Korvat auki (‘Ears
Open’) society, founded as a mouthpiece for the Finnish avant-garde by the
younger generation.1 Following its European prototypes, the critical polemic
aimed at the Finnish musical establishment by Korvat auki was directed above
all towards opera, which was seen as an old-fashioned art form.2 This even gave
rise to the pejorative term karvalakkiooppera (‘fur-hat opera’), which has since
become used more neutrally to describe a Finnish national style of tonal opera.3
Despite Saariaho having argued for the outdated nature of opera, her attitude
differed from the strictest views of the Korvat auki activists. In the same interview
in 1984, she says that ‘as far as I myself am concerned, opera could perhaps mean
some kind of multimedia experience’ (Lehtonen, 1984: 49). And although Saariaho
chaired the anti-opera Korvat auki (1979–80), her personal relationship with the
genre was a more favourable one. For instance, her interest in Wagner’s Tristan und
Isolde – particularly while she was writing L’Amour de loin – was confirmed in an
interview in 2000:4

1
  Other members included Eero Hämeenniemi (the first chairman), Magnus Lindberg,
Tapani Länsiö, Jouni Kaipainen, Olli Kortekangas and Esa-Pekka Salonen. See Heiniö,
1995: 433; Korhonen, 2007: 174–5.
2
  See Heiniö, 1995 and 1999. A critical view of opera was taken in particular by the
European avant-garde. Boulez, for example, was famously provocative in his command
to ‘Blow up the opera houses!’ (Heiniö, 1989: 67). Likewise, in 1971, Ligeti expressed
his relationship with opera: ‘I cannot, will not compose a traditional “opera”; for me the
operatic genre is irrelevant today – it belongs to a historical period utterly different from
present compositional situation’ (in Griffiths, 1981: 248). Interestingly, Ligeti later wrote
the stage work Le Grand Macabre, which is in fact a parody of traditional opera. At the
same time, many composers did not completely abandon opera, but instead tried to look for
new forms of stage work that avoided the headline ‘opera’ (see, for example, Heiniö, 1989:
67; Stoïanova 2006: 110).
3
  The first operas to be called ‘karvalakkiooppera’ were Sallinen’s Punainen viiva
(1978) and Kokkonen’s Viimeiset kiusaukset (1975). See Heiniö, 1995: 434; Heinö, 1999:
32–7.
4
  Also in this interview – the first she gave on L’Amour de loin – Saariaho highlighted
thematic links between Tristan and L’Amour de loin. By ‘thematic links’ she was referring
to their similar plots, but expressed doubts as to whether there were any musical similarities
(Hautsalo, 2000a: 18). Just before the Helsinki premiere in 2004, the composer asked for no
connections to be made with Tristan in the programme notes. However, I suggest elsewhere
that there are in fact certain congruent musical elements in the works, such as their stream-
like flow of endless musical textures (see Hautsalo, 2008b: 180–88).
 Whispers from the Past 109

I have always loved Tristan and I cannot really say how much it has contributed
to my own music. I have had a page from Tristan hanging on the wall of my studio
since 1978 and I have glanced at it over the years with different eyes. When I
began writing Clémence’s music, I looked again at the faded page hanging on
the wall that was now twenty years old. On it, the lovers sing in German ‘Isolde,
Tristan Geliebte!’ At just that moment I was trying to internalize the places of
different vowels in my throat and I thought for a long time then about the high ‘i’
vowels Wagner had written (Hautsalo, 2000: 18; see also Saariaho, 2006: 131).

The fragment concerned is the beginning of Act II, scene 2 of Tristan, where an
ecstatic love scene between the principal characters begins. Clearly Tristan has
been an important influence on Saariaho since her student days.

Towards Opera: Multimedia

Although Saariaho was always interested in music and played a variety of

instruments in her youth, she had also been fascinated by the visual arts since
early childhood. She had synaesthetic abilities, seeing music as colours (Moisala,
2009: 2–4 and 55), as borne out in her earliest attempt at composing: a small sketch
called Keltaista ja hermostunutta (‘Something Yellow and Nervous’), since lost,
for solo guitar.5 The title of the piece thus shows how, already in her youth, the
musical, the visual and the emotional were essentially bound together. Saariaho
was educated at a Steiner school,6 which encouraged individual creativity, and,
before beginning to study composition at the Sibelius Academy in 1976, she also
attended the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. Additionally, Saariaho
was an avid reader of literature, and, with an absence of female composers as
role models, she was influenced by women writers such as Virginia Woolf and
Sylvia Plath (see Iitti, 2005; Moisala and Diamond, 2000). Thus three different
forms of media – musical, visual and literary – interact from an early stage
during Saariaho’s development.
It is telling, then, that Saariaho mentions ‘multimedia’ as a possible way
of approaching opera as an art form. Robert Morgan defines ‘multimedia’ as
a form that mixes vocal and instrumental performances with other modes of
artistic expression, such as acting, dance, mime, film and slides (Morgan, 1991:
448). Importantly, such a definition easily describes a variety of projects that
Saariaho undertook in the 1980s and 1990s: projects that variously combine
music, text, electronics, tape, video and dance. For instance, Study for Life
(1981) for female voice and tape calls for various theatrical lighting effects (of
particular interest given Saariaho’s synaesthetic ability); she also planned for

5
  Taken from an interview with Saariaho by the author, 29 November 2003.
6
 It is apposite that ‘the thing [Saariaho’s former classmates] remember about Kaija is
that she was always drawing’ (taken from telephone conversation with Suurla, 31 December
2007).
110 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

scents to be discharged into the auditorium during the performance.7 Kollisionen

(‘Collisions’, 1984), on the other hand, presents a different kind of multimedia
experience: a theatrical piece, written for percussion and live electronics (see, for
example, Nieminen, 1994: 73). Consequently, it is worth noticing that, almost
twenty years later, Saariaho planned multimedia elements for L’Amour de loin:
her sketches reveal that, even at a fairly late stage in the composing process,
Saariaho had planned to use video in the opera at the point of the sea voyage –
the word ‘film’ appears in the margin of a sketch dated 28 December 1997.

Towards Opera: Diatonicism

For a student in the late 1970s, where modernism was the prevailing aesthetic
ideology, and post-serialism the method used by the most predominant
composers, writing opera must have seemed impossible. But attitudes and
approaches gradually began to change, even among Saariaho’s peer group. The
move towards musical pluralism at the end of the 1980s and in the beginning of
the 1990s was mirrored by similar moves in other countries, and with it came
greater tolerance towards opera. In Finland, changes in attitudes were aided by
Paavo Heininen, teacher and figurehead of the younger generation, who began
composing opera himself in the mid-1980s. As Esa-Pekka Salonen concluded in
2006, the most important task of composers of his generation has been to find
ways out of the backyard of modernism (Salonen, 2006: 137).
In his discussion of operatic art after World War II, Paul Griffiths states
that ‘Thematic, diatonic music is ready ground for the narrative metaphor, but
there have been notable few successful atonal operas; those which exist have
generally found some alternative to diatonic harmony as fuel for continuous
forward motion, or have retained sufficient diatonicism to guarantee a certain
dynamism’ (Griffiths, 1981: 249). The new attitudes of the ‘postmodern’ age
allowed the re-introduction of such principles, and for Saariaho, her research
into timbre during the 1980s provided an additional and alternative source for
such quasi-tonal ‘dynamism’ (see Saariaho, 1987).

Towards Opera: The Soprano Voice and Melody

From a musical perspective, the key individual stimulus for Saariaho has been
the human voice; she prefers writing for female voice, because it is ‘[her] own

7
  Taken from an interview with Saariaho by the author, 29 November 2003. Other
multimedia projects include Piipää (1987), directed by Marikki Hakola, and composed
in collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Barrière; the text for the work was written by Jouni
Tommola. Piipää is actually described in Saariaho’s list of works as a ‘multimediashow’
(see <www.fimic.fi/Saariaho>). Saariaho also recorded music for Joakim Groth’s play
Skotten i Helsingfors (1983), for Kollisionen (1984), and for the sound installation La Dame
à la licorne (1993).
 Whispers from the Past 111

voice, a woman’s voice’ (Saariaho, in Hautsalo, 2000: 20). Most of her songs have
been written for soprano,8 and all four of her works for the stage composed in the
twenty-first century cast a soprano in the lead role or in a key supporting role. In
fact, her entire career as a composer began by writing vocal music for female voice.
According to Pirkko Moisala, at the beginning of Saariaho’s composition studies
she ‘could only compose songs and other vocal music inspired by literature and
poems, but her teacher [Heininen] insisted that she began to write for instruments’
(Moisala, 2009: 6). Nevertheless, her first publicly performed work was Bruden
(‘Bride’, 1977), written for soprano and percussion to a text by the Finnish-
Swedish modernist poet, Edith Södergran.
However, the most important trigger for future operas was the ballet Maa,
commissioned by the Finnish National Opera in the late 1980s, and given its first
performance in 1991. By writing for an opera house, it was possible for Saariaho
to familiarize herself with such a venue as an instrument of expression (Hautsalo,
2000: 17). There was also a change in Saariaho’s musical language in the vocal
works of the mid-1990s, starting with Château de l’âme (1995) and Lonh (1996):
melody was no longer a forbidden musical device. It is fair to say that by coming
to understand the opera house, and by developing the melodic dimension of her
musical discourse, Saariaho was now in a position to compose opera.

Past in Present: The Musical Topic

Before L’Amour de loin and Adriana Mater are examined in detail, it is useful to set
out the semiotic-hermeneutic theory of musical topics used in the remainder of the
chapter. Originally, the Greek word topos (plural: topoi) meant a place, a region, or
something commonplace. Used in a musical context, according to Fritz Noske, ‘a
musical topos may have a descriptive or imitative configuration’, but ‘it generally
communicates in a purely intellectual way, i.e. through persistent association with
a certain idea, a situation or concept’, and ‘is transmitted from one generation to
the next’ (Noske, 1977: 172).9 Musical topics thus make use of traditional and
recognizable rhythmic, melodic or harmonic figures (see Noske, 1977: 172; also
Ratner, 1980: 9), in order to orient the listener to particular semantic meanings.
Raymond Monelle refers to the ubiquity of such topics by pointing out that,

8
 Of Saariaho’s entire output of vocal music, only three songs have been written
for male voice (baritone); these appear alongside two songs for soprano in her Tempest
Songbook (1992–2004).
9
  During the Baroque period, a ‘doctrine of figures’ (German: Figurenlehre) had
already been developed in the German-speaking world. This partly corresponds to the
present-day Anglo-Saxon ‘topic theory’. A notable contemporary commentator on the
doctrine of figures is Dietrich Bartel (see Bartel, 1997); in this study, I shall refer to several
of Bartel’s ‘figures’, but for the sake of conformity I will refer to them as ‘topics’.
112 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Some topics are to be found throughout our culture, from the sixteenth century
through to the twenty-first. Although musical topics have acquired their specific
theoretical articulation rather late, it has always been possible to recognize
associative passages or patterns in music, which have been transferred from one
work or from one style to another (Monelle, 2006: 4).

As Monelle concludes, ‘Western music has signified through topical reference

throughout its history’ (Monelle, 2000: 40).
Originally, the theory of musical topics was intended for the semantic analysis
of Viennese classical instrumental music, and was formulated in the early 1980s
by Leonard G. Ratner (1980). From this, Monelle (2000 and 2006) has developed
his own semiotic application, based firstly on C.S. Peirce’s (1940) and secondly
on Ferdinand Saussure’s (1915) concept of the semiotic sign.10 Monelle’s starting
point is the idea that a musical topic parallels the concept of the sign. Following
Peirce, he demonstrates how a topic can therefore function either as an icon –
whereby sounds directly imitate a signified object (such as the musical imitation
of a cuckoo) – or as an index – whereby sounds imply associated meanings (as
a cuckoo might imply the onset of spring) (Monelle, 2000: 14ff). And following
Saussure, Monelle demonstrates that a topic consists of two dimensions – the
signifier (content) and the signified (expression) (Monelle, 2006: 22). Each of
these principles offers a different viewpoint from which to analyse a musical topic,
and, as the remainder of the chapter unfolds, they will be used variously.11
As topic theory was originally conceived to analyse tonal music, it is not
applied so frequently to post-tonal repertoire. Yet despite the lack of tonal
harmony in Saariaho’s musical language, her operas often make repeated
reference to recognizable musical gestures, passages and patterns; the structure,
form, direction, rhythm or instrumentation of these passages resonates closely
with certain standard musical conventions – or topics. At times these reinforce
textual content, but at other times they recur without any links with the text at all.
Importantly, these topics often have their precise equivalents in a tonal frame of
reference. Thus, the aim for the remainder of this chapter is to highlight the strong
cultural-historical connections whereby L’Amour de loin and Adriana Mater
continue the tradition of Western classical music and opera.

L’Amour de loin

Since the early songs, a central theme of Saariaho’s work has been that of love.
During the 1990s, her major vocal works – Château de l’âme (1995), Lonh (1996)

10
  Musical significance from the viewpoint of semiotics has also been examined
by Hatten (1994 and 2004) and Tarasti (1994), while topic theory has been applied by
(amongst others) Allanbrook (1983), Agawu (1991), Kallberg (1996) and Välimäki (2005).
11
  Gadamer (2004) exemplifies a similar approach. Monelle refers to his own musical
analysis as ‘topical hermeneutics’ (Monelle, 2006: 8).
 Whispers from the Past 113

and Oltra mar (1999–2000) – all focus on this subject. L’Amour de loin (‘Love
from Afar’) follows in this vein, and deals with the idealized, unobtainable love
between a man and a woman, mirroring the cultural-historical context and plot
of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. For like Tristan, Saariaho also focuses on love
in a medieval, feudal, social system; a love that ends unhappily with the male
lead dying in the arms of his beloved.
Set in the twelfth century, L’Amour de loin is based on the life story of a
troubadour – Jaufré Rudel, Prince of Blaye in Occitania, southern France. Weary
of his pleasurable but empty life, Jaufré hears from a Pilgrim about a woman
who lives across the sea – Clémence, Countess of Tripoli. On the basis of what
the Pilgrim tells him, Jaufré falls in love with the woman and, pretending to be
a Crusader, sets off to meet her. However, the troubadour falls ill on the voyage
and dies in the arms of his beloved when he reaches harbour. Clémence decides
to withdraw to a convent and devote the remainder of her life to God.
Commissioned jointly by the Salzburg Festival, the Théâtre du Châtelet in
Paris and the Santa Fe Festival in the US, L’Amour de loin was written on a tight
schedule between 1999 and 2000, although the work had been coming to maturity
throughout the 1990s (Hautsalo, 2000: 17). Its three lead characters – lyric
soprano, lyric baritone and mezzo-soprano – are supported by a female chorus,
representing the women of Tripoli who accompany Clémence, and a male chorus,
who represent Jaufré’s friends. The instrumentation follows that of a traditional
symphony orchestra, albeit with an expanded percussion section. However, this
is supported by pre-recorded electronic materials, which consist of 80 passages,
triggered by the pianist throughout the performance.12 The opera is cast in five acts
without an interval, and lasts for roughly two hours. It opens with an extensive
overture, which introduces the main musical elements of the opera and sets up the
musical dramaturgy in miniature. Subsequent events proceed largely in the form
of musical prose, using recitative-like dialogues or monologues.

The Historical Jaufré Rudel and the Medieval Background of the Plot

There are no precise dates for the life and death of the historical Jaufré Rudel, but
from various sources it has been possible to date his active days as a troubadour
from 1125 to c. 1148. Six of his texts survive – three of which deal with the theme
of ‘love from afar’;13 a short and partly fictional account of Jaufré’s life – Vida – also
survives from the thirteenth century, written after his death.14 Jaufré’s story and the

12
 All characters have their own electronic ‘chords’. As such, these chords function
almost as leitmotifs (Hautsalo 2008b: 46). For more technical details about the pre-recorded
material in the opera, see Battier and Nouno (2003).
13
  See, for example, Pickens (1978), van der Werf (1983) or Niiranen (1998). Some
sources suggest that seven poems have in fact survived (see Gaunt and Kay, 1999: 286).
14
 The author of Vida is unknown; it can be found in four different collections of songs
(see Pickens, 1978: 53).
114 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 6.1 Jaufré Rudel’s troubadour melody and its use in

L’Amour de loin

idea of an unattainable love have subsequently run through Western literary history,
appearing both in novels and in dramas. Petrarch (1304–74) mentions Jaufré in
his sonnets, while in 1575 Jehan de Notredame published the story in connection
with biographies of the troubadours. Jaufré’s story has been taken up and retold by
several Romantic writers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Giosuè Carducci,
Ludvig Uhland, Heinrich Heine and Stendahl.15 The theme is also touched upon
in Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda (c. 1626). The libretto for
L’Amour de loin is based on Jaufré’s own poem, Lanquan li jorn son lonc en may
(‘When the days are long in May’), and also on the thirteenth-century Vida.16
Four melodies by the historical Jaufré survive, including that of Lanquan li
jorn. Although Saariaho does not quote this melody directly, she does paraphrase it
in some of Jaufré’s material (Hautsalo, 2008b: 64–7 and 98). This lends a distinctly
diatonic, modal flavour to the sonorous identity of Jaufré’s material in L’Amour
de loin, despite the overall modernist idiom (see Example 6.1).17 Functioning like
a Wagnerian leitmotif, this imparts to Jaufré’s material a distinguishing sonorous
identity with respect to other characters: the music of the Pilgrim frequently
features a descending motif from piccolo to double bass; Clémence is frequently
set against high-register instruments, such as bells, triangle, piccolo, harp and
violins (Hautsalo, 2008b: 145–51 and 175ff).
L’Amour de loin opens with Jaufré composing a song and accompanying
himself on the lute while his friends try to interest him in entertainments that no
longer amuse him. In this situation, we hear a tarantella – originally a Neapolitan

15
  See, for example, Haapanen-Tallgren, 1925: 69–86, or Wolf and Rosenstein, 1983:
95 and 102–7.
16
  The Frenchman Jacques Roubaud was initially commissioned to write the libretto,
but subsequently withdrew from the project to be replaced at the last moment by the half-
French, half-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf (see Hautsalo, 2008b: 32).
17
  Noske’s concept of ‘sonorous individuality’ refers to the musical unity of an opera
character (see Noske, 1977: 19).
 Whispers from the Past 115

Example 6.2  L’Amour de loin – tarantella as topic

folk dance in 6/8 or 3/8 time (see Example 6.2).18 Because the tarantella imitates
another musical style, it can be deemed an indexical topic (see Monelle, 2006:
29). The tarantella in L’Amour de loin can be interpreted in many ways. For
instance, its sharp rhythm might be interpreted as a reinforcement of the text – at
this point, Jaufré’s friends are expressing their astonishment that he has changed,
and has stopped taking part in their shared activities. But from the signifier/
signified viewpoint, it is not simply the rhythmic dimension that operates as the
signifier, but also the presence of certain instruments. In particular, the use of
tambourine, which reinforces the rhythm of the tarantella, also loosely suggests
something ‘medieval’; it gives the scene the feeling of a specific place and time.19
The tambourine is the signifier of the tarantella topic together with the 6/8 rhythm.
The tarantella can also be examined from a wider perspective, whereby dance
topics can be said to parallel different social classes. According to Andrea Batta,
in Don Giovanni, Mozart brings out the social distinctions between people by
using the minuet to mark out the upper class – it is danced by masked guests Anna,
Elvira and Don Ottavio – while he uses the ländler for the servants’ dance (Batta,
2001: 348). Likewise in L’Amour de loin, the tarantella – which originates in folk
music –can be seen as making a distinction between Jaufré and his friends: Jaufré
is the lord of the manor, but his friends, despite their friendship, have lower social
status. This hierarchy is communicated above all through the music: the popular
‘folksy’ tarantella belongs to the subordinates, and stands in contrast to the music
of Jaufré himself, which follows the conventions of troubadour music in its well-
developed and refined nature.20

18
 It is also said that the name refers to the poisonous spider Lycosa tarentula, whose
bite is believed to inflict tarantism on the victim, an illness which causes the victim to move
about violently in a way that resembles dancing (see Schwandt, 2008).
19
 In the same way as the castanets used for the inn scene in Carmen suggest something
‘Spanish’.
20
  A similar contrast occurs in Act IV, scene 3, when Jaufré’s friends make fun of him
because they think he is afraid of the sea.
116 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 6.3 L’Amour de loin – the noble horse as lord-of-the-manor

texture

Chivalry played a key role in maintaining the status quo within the feudal
system of southern France in the twelfth century, and Jaufré’s status as lord of
the manor would have involved a range of chivalrous pursuits such as hunting.
Monelle draws particular attention to ‘the Noble Horse’ – a recurring musical
topic – wherein the signifier is rhythmic, directly indicating a galloping horse as
the signified (Monelle, 2000: 5). While the libretto for L’Amour de loin does not
mention horses, horsemanship or riding, Saariaho does allude to horses in the
music of the opera. Through the whole of the introduction to Act III, a regular
6/8 rhythm can be heard, written for marimba, vibraphone, harp and piano. This
sound-world is iconic of horses, and contributes to a ‘lord-of-the-manor’ texture in
the opera (see Example 6.3). Thus in L’Amour de loin we can hear a musical horse,
and we can imagine the fictitious Jaufré Rudel to be riding around his demesne,
engaged in chivalrous pursuits.

Despair and the Pianto

L’Amour de loin contains a good deal of dysphoric, negative emotion. Monelle

suggests that music has its own conventions for describing such states, the most
concrete and easily perceivable of which is the pianto topic – an interval of a
falling second, used as a sighing gesture to indicate tears, complaint, sorrow or
death (Monelle, 2000: 1, 17–18 and 66–79). The pianto (Italian, piangere: to cry)
can be traced as far back as the sixteenth century madrigal (ibid.: 66–73), but the
 Whispers from the Past 117

Example 6.4 L’Amour de loin – the pianto topic

topic also appears in contemporary music.21 Since the pianto is an imitation of

an actual phenomenon – a falling tear – it could be termed an iconic topic (ibid.:
17). From the point of view of the signifier/signified division, the falling second
acts as a simple signifier in its reference to a falling tear; the signified is just as
simple in its reference to a dysphoric mood.
The pianto contrasts with other topics Saariaho uses insofar as it occurs in
its original form despite the atonal surroundings in which it appears. In L’Amour
de loin, the pianto is written primarily for the chorus, whose role is to comment
on the events taking place in the opera. For instance, it is heard in Act II, scene
2, sung by the chorus, to indicate Clémence’s loss of her childhood for ever
(Example 6.4). Although the pianto topic usually appears in the context of text
dealing with complaint or sorrow, it can also be associated with hesitation and
concern. For instance, it accompanies the doubts that come into Clémence’s
mind in Act II, scene 2, when she begins to think about her own unworthiness in
relation to the troubadour.

Topics of Death

Jaufré Rudel dies with his love from afar still unrequited. A range of musical
topics – iconic and indexical – that refer to his death are used in the latter stages
of L’Amour de loin. Jaufré’s death in Act V is the central event in the opera, but
is referred to musically prior to this moment. The most evident topic of death
in L’Amour de loin is catabasis, originally isolated by the German theorists of
Figurenlehre (lately Dietrich Bartel, 1997). During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, catabasis referred, as Benestad (1978: 116) has argued, to death, the
grave or hell. Thus, this descending figure is iconic in nature. In L’Amour de loin,
catabasis appears several times, always as a descending scale, and always in

21
  For instance, Torvinen has demonstrated its use in Erik Bergman’s work Colori ed
improvvisazioni (Torvinen, 2007: 225–36). The pianto topic is particularly characteristic of
opera: for example, it appears in Don Giovanni when Donna Anna finds her father dead;
and in La traviata when Germont forces Violetta to relinquish her beloved (see Karbusicky,
1986: 66).
118 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 6.5  L’Amour de loin – catabasis

connection with text dealing with Jaufré’s death or dying.22 It appears first when
Jaufré and his friends face the storm in Act IV, scene 3, foreseeing the forthcoming
death of the troubadour (Example 6.5).
In Act V, scene 2, the dying Jaufré is carried to the castle; his passing is
presaged by a soft and slow 3/4 rocking rhythm, which is heard mainly on Jaufré’s
own instrument, the harp, softened by a faint string texture. The rocking cradle
song gently lulls Jaufré to eternal rest; to death (see Example 6.6). The berceuse,
or cradle song, is a recurrent topic in many musical cultures throughout the world,
usually heard in real-life situations where a mother sings her child to sleep. But
from the earliest examples, the cradle song has not only been associated new
life and childhood, but also with death. In ancient mythology, for instance, sleep
and death – Hypnos and Thanatos – are brothers (see Pentikäinen, 1990: 183).
Transferred to classical music, too, the cradle song frequently refers to death as
well as sleep, as occurs here in L’Amour de loin.23
As Jaufré’s death comes ever closer, the score is marked ‘cease playing, one
after another’ (bar 448) and morendo (gradually dying away) (bar 458). Thus
the music for the death scene represents the gradual ebbing away of life from

22
  There are two kinds of catabasis topics in L’Amour de loin: they either foresee or
frame the death (Hautsalo 2008a: 129–32).
23
  Particularly in Finnish opera, the cradle song often refers to death. For example,
this is the case in Armas Launis’s Kullervo (written in 1930 and based on the Kalevala
epic), Aulis Sallinen’s Horseman (1975), and Olli Kortekangas’ Daddy’s Girl (2007) (see
Hautsalo, 2010).
 Whispers from the Past 119

Example 6.6  L’Amour de loin – cradle song

the human body. As Jaufré exchanges his last few frail words with Clémence,
there is a steady repeating microtonal motif written for the first violins, which
remains within the region of B then likewise dies away (bars 438–62). A further
prominent icon of death is the rhythm-based ‘heart motif’, which is heard on the
timpani to suggest a beating heart: it ceases at the moment of Jaufré’s death (bar
461). The flute, too, is used iconically at this moment: a small gesture made by
blowing into the instrument imitates the snuffing out of a candle (bar 462).
Immediately after Jaufré’s death, the full chorus sings a chorale (bars 474–
519); its chant-like, Lutheran style acts as an indexical topic of death (Example
6.7 overleaf). The chorale proceeds in common time, or alla breve, with brief
3/4 interjections: there is a strong tradition of the alla breve chorale especially in
church music, often indexically signifying lofty, solemn or ponderous subjects.
Clémence’s material further supports a chorale interpretation, as she refers
explicitly to the context of Christian prayer: ‘You are goodness and mercy, you
are grace’. The chorus repeats the text, swapping it between registers. Saariaho’s
120 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 6.7  L’Amour de loin – chorale

 Whispers from the Past 121

reserved method of writing for four voices refers to the devout Lutheran chorale:
this music is pious, and it is sorrowful.

Adriana Mater

After the poetic L’Amour de loin, Saariaho wanted to write a work that would be
firmly planted in the stark reality of our own age (Saariaho, in Hautsalo, 2008b: 12).
In her second opera, Saariaho thus distanced herself from the romantic-nostalgic
idiom of its predecessor: Adriana Mater (‘Adriana the Mother’) tells a brutal
story of the ravages of war on the fate of individuals and, in particular, focuses
on women as victims of war. Act I follows the young Adriana (mezzo-soprano),
who lives with her sister Refka (soprano) in a village within a war zone. The home
defence forces are on standby, with Tsargo (bass-baritone), a former schoolmate of
Adriana, as one of its soldiers. Adriana fends off advances by a drunken Tsargo, but
he later comes back and rapes her as revenge. Nine months pass and a son, Yonas,
is born as a result of the rape. Act II takes place 17 years later, by which time Yonas
(tenor) has grown up. Tsargo returns home from the war, blind and crippled. Yonas
is told who his father is, and the circumstances surrounding his conception; at first
he wants to kill Tsargo, but then thinks again – after all, the man is his father. The
libretto – which was written by Amin Maalouf, Saariaho’s librettist from L’Amour
de loin – is not based on an existing story, and sets the opera in the present day
(‘an unprepossessing quarter before the war’).24 Like its predecessor, love remains
a central in Adriana Mater, but now it is an all-embracing maternal love: the love
between a mother and her child in exceptional circumstances.
Ivanka Stoïjanova points out that, in contrast to L’Amour de loin, Adriana
Mater is a musical drama with a strong moral dimension (Stoïjanova, 2006: 28). In
dealing with war as something grotesque, something that distorts people, Adriana
Mater is an anti-war opera with a clear political undertone. And in examining one
woman’s experiences of war, the work also takes a stand on behalf of women and
children: the opera is focalized from a woman’s viewpoint, and includes themes
that are rarely seen in opera, such as the intimate relationship between mother and
child, and the painful and taboo subject of rape. Saariaho has always tried to avoid
being labelled as a ‘woman composer’ or a ‘feminist composer’, preferring to be
known simply as a ‘composer’ (Moisala, 2008: 28–9), but by addressing themes
particularly associated with the female gender, this opera could be said to take a
feminist stance.
Written in 2004 and 2005, Adriana Mater lasts roughly two hours, and is
dedicated to the memory of Saariaho’s own mother.25 Its two acts further subdivide

24
 Maalouf has said in various contexts that the location for the opera could well be
the Balkans; the former Yugoslavia. See, for example, Hautsalo, 2008b: 12.
25
 It is also dedicated to Peter Sellars, who directed the premieres of Saariaho’s two
operas.
122 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

into seven ‘tableaux’;26 it can therefore be conceived of as a Stationendrama

(‘Station drama’) given its independent, episodic passages, which follow one
another in a loosely linked manner (Stoïanova, 2006: 27). Instead of the diatonic-
modal flavour of its predecessor, the musical idiom of Adriana Mater is extremely
dark and depressed. The four lead characters are supported by a mixed chorus
and an orchestra with an expanded percussion section. And like L’Amour de
loin, the sound-world of Adriana again includes electronic elements, but, on this
occasion, there is no pre-recorded material: sounds are edited electronically in live
performance.27

Topics of Lament and Cry

The overture of Adriana Mater differs from typical opera overtures: it includes
the chorus, which foresees the terrible events of the opera using the pianto topic,
as described in L’Amour de loin. The pianto is heard prominently throughout this
overture: the chorus sings the phoneme ‘A’, reinforcing the sigh-content of the
topic.28 Similar to the opening scene of L’Amour de loin, where Jaufré Rudel is
singing and playing, Act I begins with Adriana singing a song: ‘une sorte de vieux
rondeau’ (an ‘old rondo’). Her melancholic song refers to sensual pleasure, which
gives some indication of Adriana’s state of mind: Adriana is a girl on the threshold
of adulthood and hungry for life; she sinks into an erotic dream, failing to understand
the drunken Tzargo’s aggression. There is a static string texture in the background
to this song that creates a threatening atmosphere; the violas stand out from this by
repeating the pianto topic.
In fact, there are many instances throughout the opera of the pianto topic
appearing particularly on viola: this instrument is associated with the character of
Adriana. But wherever it is used, it is always associated with something negative –
sorrow, threat or death. For example, at the point of the rape, the lamenting pianto
topic is sounded by the chorus. As the extreme form of this topic, Saariaho uses
pure sigh – written in the score as ‘inhale and exhale’ – without any pitch (see
Example 6.8).

Topics of War

War is a psycho-material state in Adriana Mater that shapes the events, characters
and musical soundscape of the work. Historically, there is a genre of ‘war operas’:
Handel’s Rinaldo, with its Crusade theme; Berlioz’s Les Troyens; Prokofiev’s

26
  The opera is defined in a subheading as ‘Opéra en sept tableaux’.
27
  This technique is used particularly in the opera’s four dream scenes, where chorus
material is added to alter the spatial effect and to add a feeling of surrealism. Saariaho’s
subsequent monodrama, Emilie, also makes use of live electronics.
28
 A texture built up using a similar pianto topic is repeated later in Act I, at the
beginning of the dream sequence, where it leads into an oppressive nightmare.
 Whispers from the Past 123

Example 6.8  Adriana Mater – use of the pianto topic in its extreme form

War and Peace; and B.A. Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. Monelle offers extensive
analysis of the military topic in eighteenth-century music (Monelle, 2006: 113–
81). Although Adriana Mater is set on the edge of a battlefield, the war does not
have its own music or specific theme. Nevertheless, Saariaho describes the war
through an enormous sonority created by heavy orchestration, dark tone colours,
and dynamic extremes of tutti fff passages.

Example 6.9  Adriana Mater – execution topic

At the same time, war and violence are also given a more concrete expression in
Adriana Mater. One important example from the viewpoint of topic theory is the
use of a rhythmic theme for side drum, used in both acts, but in different contexts.
In Act I, scene 2, this tremolo-and-triplet figure has powerful and oppressive
associations, referring to military marches and even to the drum-roll often used to
portray executions in film. Thus, the theme could be called an execution topic; it
is indexical as it is associated with the wider genre of military topics (see Monelle,
2006: 113–60).29 In the first act of the opera, the execution topic is used to refer to
Tzargo and to his military rank: during the war he is the ‘Protector’, with the right
to decide who should live and who should die (Example 6.9).

29
 The execution topic can be found in other operas: for example, in Puccini’s Tosca, it is
heard in the third act when Cavaradossi is to be executed. It also appears throughout the whole
of the last tableau of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, when the nuns are executed.
124 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 6.10  Adriana Mater – musical icon of the rape

Icons of Rape

One of the defining features of Adriana Mater is its inclusion of a rape scene.
Although opera as an artform has historically been used to confront human
weakness, sickness, violence and death, rape has largely remained a taboo
subject.30 But in Adriana Mater, the rape is central: it is the point of departure from
which all subsequent events ensue. Although the libretto does not mention rape
directly, it is given its own musical expression in the work. First, the chorus senses
the approaching tragedy: the women’s chorus communicates despair with a pianto
topic written for the phoneme ‘O’ (bars 195–203). Then, in the rape scene itself, an
extremely loud mass of sound with a pulsating rhythm increases in density several
times to presage the act of sexual violence. The scene culminates in a musical
description of the rape itself: a series of blows marked sffz. We thus have a musical
imitation of the sexual act; a musical icon of rape (Example 6.10). As Tzargo rapes
Adriana, her singing voice metamorphoses into an uncontrolled shout of ‘Non!’,
for which no pitch is written in the score; the chorus articulates a shout of horror
culminating again in the phoneme ‘O’ (bars 392–6). The last ‘Non!’ by Adriana
and chorus is framed by the snare drum rhythm (bars 387–406) – the execution
topic – emphasizing the horrific nature of this moment.

30
  Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia (1946) is one notable exception, yet, even
here, Britten distances himself from the act of raw violence by placing it in the Ancient
Etruscan era.
 Whispers from the Past 125

Topics of Hope: Nightingale, Cradle Song and the Heart Motif

Despite the dreadful events in Adriana Mater, the work also contains elements
of hope. This is reflected in the subtitle of the third scene in Act I: ‘Two Hearts’.
Several months have elapsed since the rape, and there is a conversation between
Adriana and Refka about what has happened since: the young Adriana has been
left pregnant, but has decided to keep the child. Although one might think this is
a dark, depressing scene, it is in fact filled with hope, as suggested by a musical
gesture referring to spring and awakening nature. This takes the form of a trill
on the piccolo, iconic of birdsong (see Example 6.11); it can be considered as
an example of Monelle’s bird song topic, itself associated with the great pastoral
genre (Monelle, 2006: 235–6).31 The same scene also contains a musical reference
to the unborn child: the conversation between Refka and Adriana is framed by
fragments of the indexical cradle song topic (as seen earlier in L’Amour de loin). It
is used here without any connotations of death; rather, it symbolizes the lulling to
sleep of a child. Adriana has accepted the idea that she is soon to give birth.

Example 6.11  Adriana Mater – nightingale as topic of hope

A further topic that connects the two operas is the ‘heart motif’: it is used in
L’Amour de loin as a musical icon referring to death, but acts as a topic of hope
in Adriana (see Hautsalo, 2008a: 119–22). In fact, this motif is used frequently
in Saariaho’s operas, and was used for the first time in her orchestral work Du
cristal (Moisala, 2009: 102). The heart motif is a dotted rhythmic theme for
percussion – usually timpani – that imitates the beating of a heart; it therefore
functions as an iconic topic (see Example 6.12 overleaf). Saariaho has explained
that the idea for the heart motif emerged when she herself was pregnant with
her first child, and was thinking about the idea of two hearts beating inside a
woman’s body: the third scene’s subtitle, ‘Two Hearts’, comes from this idea
(Hautsalo 2008b: 15). This motif appears in several scenes, first when Adriana
is expecting the baby, and later when mother and son are together. Its first
appearance occurs in scene 1, where it leads up to Adriana’s song (bars 56–8);
it returns in the ‘Two Hearts’ scene, played by the bass drum when Adriana is

31
  Saariaho has used bird themes in the titles of several works, and frequently imitates
bird song in her music. Examples include the flute concerto, Aile du songe (2000–01), the
solo flute work, Laconisme de l’aile (1982), and … sah den Vögeln (1981), for soprano and
ensemble. In both operas, the piccolo refers iconically to the nightingale and indexically to
the awakening spring.
126 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 6.12  Adriana Mater – the heart motif

defending her right to keep the baby (bars 116–21) and when she describes how
she has heard the heartbeat of her baby (bars 127–43).
If the heart motif is heard as silent, cautious and hardly noticeable in Act I, in
Act II it occurs in a totally different manner. In scene 4, when Yonas accuses his
mother of not telling him the truth about his father, the heart motif is played loudly
and dissonantly by marimba, bringing the relationship between the two into focus
(bars 45–8). The motif now appears in fast quavers: Adriana is horrified when the
secret has been revealed.

The Dual: A Synthesis of Topics

Act II, scene 6 – ‘Dual’ – describes the 17-year-old Yonas’s first encounter with
his father, Tzargo, and brings together a range of topics heard earlier in the opera.
First, the side drum execution topic is used as Yonas addresses his father: Tzargo’s
answer refers to the past, at which point the topic is heard as a macabre echo
(bars 21–34). It is also heard later in the scene, when Yonas threatens Tzargo,
demanding to know if circumstances led to the rape of his mother. Hence, the
topic of execution performs two functions in Adriana Mater: it refers to Tzargo as
a murderer and as a rapist.
As in L’Amour de loin, death is written into the musical textures of Adriana
Mater: the most striking topic of death is again catabasis. Throughout Adriana,
Saariaho connects catabasis particularly to Tzargo, even though he does not
actually die in the opera. The most alarming statement is in Act II, scene 6 (bars
115–16), when Tzargo is talking about his own death (Example 6.13). This is
followed by a statement of the pianto topic (bar 124), as Yonas accuses Tzargo:
‘Que tu sois résigné à payer pour tes crimes ne fais pas de toi un innocent’ (‘Just
because you are willing to pay for your crimes does not make you innocent’). In
the end, Adriana is not the only victim: they are all victims, even Tzargo. Finally,
the heart motif is re-stated following the discussion between father and son, now
scored for the darker timpani and bass drum (bars 193–206).

Aspects of Love

Saariaho’s stage works consistently deal with themes characteristic of traditional

opera: love, God, hate, violence and death. As noted earlier, different aspects
of love form the central theme in L’Amour de loin: at the heart of the opera is
the love and longing between a man and a woman, a love that approaches the
transcendental. It is clear that Adriana Mater, too, is about a deep love, but now
 Whispers from the Past 127

Example 6.13  Adriana Mater – catabasis

this love is confused and contradictory. Adriana refuses the abortion since she
already loves her unborn son, even though the child is conceived as a result of
sexual violence. The sisters, Adriana and Refka, love each other, even though
Refka accuses Adriana for the rape. And Yonas loves his mother and also his aunt,
even though they did not tell him the truth about his father.
Most interesting of all is the relationship between Yonas and his father. Why
does the former stop from killing Tzargo, even though he now knows the truth?
Is that love? The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who has dealt with
questions of Otherness and love, says when discussing fatherhood that, ‘Paternity
is the relationship with a stranger who, entirely while being Other, is myself’
(Levinas, 2000: 91). This may be of relevance to Yonas’s state of mind: Tzargo, a
rapist and a murderer – and his father – is the Other, but also himself. By killing
Tzargo, Yonas would metaphorically kill himself. So in Act II, scene 7, when
Yonas finally confesses he could not kill his father, Tzargo, Adriana ultimately
feels relieved. The heart motif, played now on timpani, appears for the last time
(bars 596–600): it connects the mother and the son more tightly than ever before.
Consequently, this theme expands to become the all-encompassing core motif of
the entire work.

Whispers from the Past

At the start of a new decade, Kaija Saariaho is one of the most sought-after
composers in the world. She is regularly commissioned to write orchestral and
chamber music as well as works for the stage. Her success as an opera composer
is quite extraordinary, evidenced by numerous international performances and by
the positive reviews – almost amounting to eulogies in some cases – which she has
received. Adriana Mater, for example, has been seen in both Europe and the US,
and the premiere of L’Amour de loin led to some eight completely new productions.
In 2000, critics at both the New York Times and the BBC Music Magazine voted
128 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

L’Amour de loin the best opera of the year (see Hautsalo, 2008a: 2). How Saariaho
has come to reach such a successful position is worth reflecting upon, helping us
to draw some conclusions. As mentioned earlier, her compositional development
gradually shifted towards creating large-scale stage works, despite a long-standing
commitment to modernist and post-serialist concerns dating back to the 1980s.
On the other hand, even during that early phase in her career, Saariaho engaged
with multimedia, interdisciplinary approaches: painting, light, mime, text and
electronically modified material. Developing and fully integrating a narrative
element into her music made it possible for her to create larger, unified entities
for the stage.
These preoccupations with narrative concerns have changed Saariaho’s musical
idiom and expression. As this chapter demonstrates, the libretto is not the only
means by which these operatic works achieve a sense of narrative: musical topics
and icons also support and underline this process – sometimes even telling a story
of their own. Certain conventions in Western opera, such as love scenes, travesti
roles, or deus ex machina mechanisms, alongside semantic icons – pianto for
sorrow and crying, catabasis for death and the grave, for instance – have always
been in use. The musical topics within Saariaho’s works, often modified into the
musical language of our time, could be described as whispers from the past: a link
between tradition and the composer’s individual expression.
A musical-semantic analysis of Saariaho’s two operas reveals a solid
adherence to some of the historical conventions that have been in existence since
opera first emerged in the seventeenth century. Conveyed through the thematic
and musical structures she deploys, the purpose of this approach is not to identify
the composer’s intentions, but to interpret her works within a specific frame of
reference, in a search for musical signification and meaning. What is at issue,
therefore, is a particular perspective, constructed by and through this research: an
interpretation rather than any absolute truth. Topic theory offers the opportunity to
untie some of these musical knots. This opening up and increased understanding of
different historical layers is especially important within a genre where the musical
language remains relatively challenging for the listener.
Based on the modernist aesthetic of uniqueness, the musical language of
today is not necessarily well suited to operatic composition. Elements of periodic
structure, repetition and a predominance of melodic writing, alongside the requisite
emotional and dramatic dimensions of this music, are still the basic materials of
opera; yet in many ways these traits are at variance with post-war, modernist
ideals. Saariaho may be seen as a pioneer in this regard, preserving the essentials
of operatic conventions but without compromising the originality of her personal
aesthetic. Her musical language offers a blend of expressiveness and dramatic
tension; this forms a motivating, driving force in the operas.
‘The nightmare of modernism’, as Raymond Monelle has called it, no longer
monopolizes the aesthetics of contemporary music (Monelle, 2006: 273). Kaija
Saariaho seems to have brought us out from this nightmare, so that composers
do not need to see opera as being directly at odds with their musical language,
 Whispers from the Past 129

as did the generation of post-war modernists and their heirs. Rather, opera today
can be a highly effective platform for contemporary composers, allowing them
to create and experiment in a more pluralistic manner. Overall, it appears as if
these whispers from the past are now contributing to the operatic narratives of
the future, and they are doing so with a level of success that is appreciated by a
significantly wide range of audiences.
Dialogues
 Chapter 7
Dualities and Dialogues:
Saariaho’s Concertos
Tim Howell

Concertare: (i) ‘to contend, dispute, debate’;

(ii) ‘to work together with someone’.

The concerto is one of the most long-standing and enduring of all musical
genres. Despite the enormous changes of style and language that characterize its
evolution, an apparently infinite adaptability has ensured a continued relevance for
contemporary music. Whereas the ‘symphony’ is often shunned as being outdated
by those engaged with modernist concerns, the ‘concerto’ does not carry the same
historical baggage and many composers today still find new ways of approaching
concerto-like preoccupations. The attraction of the solo concerto – which pits the
individual against the mass, exploring issues of dramatic conflict, dialogue and
resolution – seems undiminished in its appeal; this is a genre that quite directly
‘speaks’ to its audience, often by evoking extra-musical associations. For Kaija
Saariaho, it has always occupied a special place in her thinking and thus provides
a useful focus for discussions of aesthetic conception, compositional process and
listener perceptions. In an article entitled ‘Some Thoughts on my Concertos’, she
speaks of the value of collaborating with particular performers – ‘the style of a
concerto is always born of a particular interest not only in the instrument but also
in a specific soloist’ – subscribing to a tradition that seems as relevant now as was
ever the case (Saariaho, 2005).1 The contradictory definitions of ‘concerto’ given
above are creatively synthesized in this process. Musical conflicts so central to the
genre are paradoxically the result of a concerted effort: combining forces with the
soloist to discover new possibilities. Duality in the actual composition arises from
dialogue in the act of composition.
Saariaho goes on to explain something of her aesthetic stance regarding
concerto writing:

Even though each work has extra-musical associations attached to it, this does
not mean that I strive to describe these things in my music. It has sometimes been
claimed in print that I need an extra-musical impulse as the seed for my music.
I would prefer to say that, in my consciousness, music is strongly connected
with other senses and that I am only partly aware of these connections. Human

1
 I am grateful to Andrew Bentley for translating Kaija Saariaho’s article, ‘Some
Thoughts on my Concertos’, which appeared in Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, 2005.
134 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

breathing, bird flight, continuous changes in light, the rhythms and smells of the
sea have all produced materials for my concertos, but when I process them at my
work desk they become ‘just’ the sounding materials, rhythms and pitches, with
which I operate (Saariaho, 2005).

This is especially significant for a composer who values titles so highly: ‘When I
feel I have the right title, I can focus my material. The title is very important for
feeding my imagination’ (in Beyer, 2000b: 6). Saariaho’s first concerto, Amers for
cello, ensemble and electronics (1992), is a good example; the title here means
‘sea-marks’ (more typically, ‘landmarks’), echoing the ‘rhythms and smells of the
sea’ as mentioned above. ‘It is a metaphor. I often make drawings when I start
composing and I was imagining the cello being a kind of boat moving in different
directions in this sea of sound of electronics and ensemble’ (Saariaho, 2001).2 More
directly, though, Amers is the French word for ‘navigation beacons’, strategically
placed along the coast for sailors, so the idea that the soloist negotiates some
kind of journey is significant here. Indeed, that metaphor recurs in Saariaho’s
recent cello concerto, Notes on Light (2006–07). Other connections include the
poet Saint-John Perse (1887–1975) whose book of verse dedicated to the sea has
the title ‘Amers’; his work inspired the extra-musical dimension in the later flute
concerto Aile du songe (2001).
As the first example of this genre, Amers deserves some further comment.
Like any concerto, the role of the soloist is crucial and here a microphone wired
to the cello allows each string to be amplified separately. Despite such super-
soloist potential, though, any traditional principles of duality are deliberately
eschewed in favour of a three-way discourse: soloist, ensemble and (computer-
generated) electronics. Amers clearly belongs to an earlier stylistic phase for
the composer, and it is interesting that as Saariaho moves towards more lyrical
and vocal explorations, an interest in concerto writing develops. This piece is a
crucial landmark in her stylistic development. Although its spatial qualities have a
three-dimensional aspect (given its three competing forces), the overall structural
layout is in two parts: ‘Libero, dolce, misterioso’ and ‘Sempre molto energico, ma
espressivo’. This concept – the second stage being an intensification of the first –
informs later examples; Graal théâtre and Aile du songe both adopt a similar binary
scheme, as discussed below. While the narrative shaping of events corresponds to
that of a journey, somehow the soloist remains hampered by his surroundings.3
This is a work of unpredictable disruptions and interruptions. However, there is
a sustained energy and intensity which, coupled with references to fundamental
pitch-centres (most notably E@), give both momentum and focus to this otherwise

2
 The CD-liner note for the 2001 recording of Amers (Sony-SK60817) includes an
interview of the composer by Martin Anderson, from which these quotations are taken.
3
  The male personal pronoun refers to the soloist for whom the work was written,
Anssi Karttunen.
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 135

fragmentary discourse. To challenge listener perceptions of musical continuity in

such a direct way is a recurrent preoccupation of Saariaho’s work.
The crucial role of titles can be seen throughout Saariaho’s concertos, feeding
her imagination and giving structural focus. Inspired by the writings of Jacques
Roubaud, Graal théâtre for violin and orchestra (1994/97) is no exception, the
composer being drawn to an unexpected combination of words. ‘Graal’ refers
to what is innermost, sacred – the Holy Grail; ‘théâtre’ to something extrovert,
dramatic – a concerto soloist – here portrayed as if a character in an abstract
musical drama. Such binary oppositions become embedded within the genre and
are reflected in a two-movement form: ‘Delicato’ (which portrays lyricism and
restraint through linear continuity) and ‘Impetuoso’ (where drama and conflict
are projected in block-like contrasts). These dualities – the pairing of opposites –
operate on a variety of levels in this piece, offering a number of listening strategies:
conflict, complementation, dialogue and resolution. Aile du songe (‘Wing of
Dreams’) for flute and orchestra pursues those ideas; the literary influences that
lie behind its portrayal of bird flight are conveyed through a precisely imagined
structure. This concerto is also in two parts: ‘Aérienne’ (‘Ethereal’) and ‘Terrestre’
(‘Terrestrial’) – air and land – titles taken from the Saint-John Perse collection of
poems that inspired it.4
Notes on Light invites us to (re-)consider the importance of visual stimuli.
The significance of light for Finnish composers in general, and to Saariaho in
particular, cannot be overstated. Extremes of light and dark (and the very slow
rate of evolution between them) condition perceptions of how time passes, for
both composers and listeners. Also, that cyclic quality is offset by abrupt seasonal
changes: winter to spring, brown to green, takes just a couple of weeks. The
differing qualities of light envisioned at each stage of this five-movement work
– ‘Translucent’, ‘On Fire’, ‘Awakening’, ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Heart of Light’ – act as
a powerful metaphor. Collectively they offer a vivid perspective on timescale.
Gradual evolution of light conveys a horizontal, temporal process, resulting
in an expressive continuity; sudden contrasts of colour exert a vertical, spatial
impulse, creating formal articulations. Mapped onto the concerto genre, an
inherent dialogue and duality is conveyed through these reflections on time and
space. Elsewhere, Mirage for soprano, cello and orchestra (2007) offers a new
outlook on the ‘double concerto’ idiom: ‘two interpretations setting out from the
same point of departure’, as Saariaho explains in her programme note. Rather than
being in conflict, these two soloists complement each other in a truly concerted
effort. The cello elaborates upon its vocal partner as both follow parallel courses
towards a final synthesis. This discourse between text and texture, word and
sound, highlights their relationship as a combination of forces which, in turn, is
set against contrasting orchestral sonorities.
Beyond this overview of Saariaho’s concertos, where each example makes
a distinctive contribution to the genre, lies the composer’s preoccupation with

4
  See Howell, 2006: 216ff, for more details.
136 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

treating a particular instrument as a focal point. Consider the flute in Lichtbogen

(1986), for instance: here it adopts the role of a protagonist, whose presence frames
the formal arch of the work, adopts three personas (alto, flute in C, piccolo) and
undergoes various transformations – ranging from the human and down-to-earth
to the surreal and distant.5 At the closing stages, the flautist recites phonemes taken
from one line of Henry Vaughan’s poem, The World: ‘I saw eternity the other
night’, again indicating the importance of the solo ‘voice’ within an instrumental
context. The diptych Du cristal …à la fumée (1989–90), two separate yet conjoined
orchestral works, deploys soloists (amplified alto flute and cello) in its second
stage only; they offer individual perspectives on the orchestral material, something
complementary rather than opposed. In this context of ‘pairings’ operating on a
number of levels, the elevation of two instruments is merely another facet within
an ongoing discourse and not intended as evidence of true (double) concerto
thinking. It is, however, part of a compositional mindset that clearly values the
personal ‘voice’ as a significant strand in communicating with the listener.

The Search for the Holy Grail: Graal théâtre (1994/97)

A special relationship between opera and concerto has long been recognized in
the history of music, especially as it informs the emergence of the concerto genre
itself. For instance, as Charles Rosen asserts, ‘Mozart’s most signal triumphs
took place where Haydn had failed: in the dramatic forms of opera and concerto,
which pit the individual voice against the sonority of the mass’ (Rosen, 1971:
185). Saariaho’s output suggests that such long-standing connections are still
relevant. Graal théâtre, even by its title, is a dramatic work embodying strong
music-theatre elements. Moreover, the composer sees her first opera, L’Amour de
loin (‘Love from Afar’), premiered in 2000, as the culmination of many aspects
of her work: ‘Actually everything I’ve written since 1983 is directly connected to
my opera, which uses borrowed material’ (in Beyer, 2000b: 6). Indeed, the highly
developed lyrical dimension of L’Amour de loin is directly foreshadowed by a
new preoccupation with melody that makes Graal théâtre distinct from previous
works. An individual voice striving to be heard is the common thread here. It is
also interesting that Saariaho returns to the genre of concerto immediately after the
opera: Aile du songe was her next major composition.
Graal théâtre, by being scored for violin and orchestra, offers a more personal
view of concerto conflicts. Saariaho was herself a violinist and something of a
compositional struggle is portrayed through the soloist’s role here: ‘I had a kind
of vertigo, a fear of high places, when I started this concerto. I played the violin as
a child and I loved many violin concertos passionately – and I was afraid to step
into this domain’ (Saariaho, 2001). Against a background of frustrated ambitions,
wistful hankering – and the sheer love of the genre – Saariaho has tried to move

5
  See Howell, 2006: 210–16, for details.
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 137

away from traditional virtuosity to delve into the soul of the instrument. In order
to help conquer her fear, she consciously engaged with the weight of tradition by
researching the repertoire and developing an interest in the violin concerto genre
per se (see Saariaho, 2005). While the final work is uniquely her own, some veiled
references to iconic examples may spring to mind: there are some intimations of
the Beethoven, for instance, not least because of a pitch-centre on D$. And, of
course, the violin concerto has a very special place in the history of Finnish music,
given Sibelius’s renowned contribution to the genre.
In this broader context, and with an emerging melodic lyricism that becomes so
overt in L’Amour de loin, it is fair to say that Graal théâtre occupies an important
place in Saariaho’s overall output; it also marks a turning point within her concerto
writing. Commissioned for the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1994) and premiered
at the Proms in 1995, the piece was composed especially for Gidon Kremer as
soloist. It was arranged for chamber orchestra in 1997 and this slight re-profiling
brings the soloist rather closer to the other instruments, though the violin part
remains unchanged. Comparing the two, it is striking that an essential concertante
dimension is fully preserved despite reduced forces. (This chapter refers to the
second version, as it is the more often performed and recorded.) Graal théâtre
typifies much of Saariaho’s aesthetic given her preoccupation with time and space,
expressed through the blurring of traditionally distinct parameters (such as timbre,
harmony, texture and dynamic) and an overriding sense of economy. Significant
characteristics include the slow transformation of evolving materials, the sculpting
of sound into fluid formal shapes, a highly individual emphasis on texture and
timbre and an underlying sense of narrative continuity.

Example 7.1  Graal théâtre (‘Delicato’) – opening material

Amounting to some 30 minutes in duration and 716 bars in length, its whole
conception is expansive. Indeed, a sense of spaciousness is immediately striking:
this is music that unfolds on a grand scale. Example 7.1 shows the opening materials
as these are the generator of subsequent events. Initial cadenza-like iterations run to
some 60 bars before any real orchestral engagement, and this quasi-dominant feel
138 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 7.2  Graal théâtre­ (‘Delicato’) – episodic overview

 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 139

is an early indication of how the soloistic writing may manipulate perceptions of

timescale. Anticipatory tension is paramount. Despite that expansiveness there is
also economy, as only a limited amount of material is deployed – and this is carefully
focused. A broad, expressive palette is the product of a deliberately restricted
range of elements and the tension of large-scale effects emerging from small-scale
gestures conditions much of the progress of this concerto. A fundamental trait of
counterbalanced oppositions is established at the outset, where the soloist dominates
but seems rather trapped. We question what is fixed rather than freely improvised,
discovering that the nature of improvisation may lack real direction, despite surface
activity and apparent motion. It seems as if the orchestra helps to free the soloist
from a slightly claustrophobic space, yet much of the writing for ensemble involves
repetition patterns (pedal points, ostinati, rhythmic cells) that are themselves rather
obsessive and potentially static. Such oppositional strategies are quite paradoxical –
offering a compositional potential that Saariaho is keen to exploit.

Oppositions and Tensions: ‘Delicato’

Tensions within this first stage of the piece arise from setting up a number of
oppositions, establishing their individual characteristics and playing them off against
one another.6 Any structural framework is informed by these processes, resulting in
a loosely woven tapestry of diverse episodes. Despite such formal freedoms there
are underlying levels of control as well. While a foreground sense of dramatic
contrasts is predominant (consider tempi, expression marks, timbre/orchestration),
middleground narrative (arising from solo/orchestra interaction and their struggle
for supremacy) and background continuity (emerging from larger patterns of tension
and release and pitch-class centricity) are also discernible. Typical of Saariaho’s
approach is an antithesis between two formal impulses: organic – music that unfolds
and finds shape over time, and architectural – a sequence of events sculpted in space.
Any relationship between them arises from a careful manipulation of timescale.
Example 7.2 groups the complex web of surface contrasts into ten episodes.
With frequent use of transitional material, any suggestion of separate ‘blocks’
is carefully removed: these episodes are phases of activity within a continuum.
Indeed, this synopsis shows considerable diversity, indicated by the number of
expression marks involved; larger groupings are correspondingly fluid – alternative
segmentations are equally valid – but at least some idea of how the listener may
perceive a formal shape emerges. Consequently, these ten episodes contract to
a sequence of five contrasting pairs; these alternate between predominantly
‘expressive’ (dolce, espressivo) and ‘energetic’ (energico, agitato) music(s). To
simplify further, the more lyrical and expressive music is associated with a slower
(meno mosso) tempo, while its rhythmically more active, dynamic counterpart
uses a faster (più mosso) rate of change: it is more energetic. Things are not quite

6
  Saariaho has said in the past that ‘of course the construction of musical form has
always used the principle of oppositions’ (in Saariaho, 1987: 97).
140 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

so simple, however. Within this spatial, architectural framework of duality is a

temporal, organic impulse: a dialogue. A glance at any particular episode reveals
the extent to which orchestra and soloist work in conflict with the prevailing mood;
though elsewhere, they combine and complement each other.
This ongoing narrative creates formal continuity. Listeners might engage with
the piece on a number of timescales, be it varieties of surface contrasts or their
grouping into a middleground discourse, but ultimately these events subscribe
to a background level. A sense of large-scale momentum generates a balanced
formal shape articulated by two climactic peaks (the culmination of episodes I–IV
and V–VIII), with the last two episodes (IX and X) offering a sense of closure
(albeit a temporary one, given the Impetuoso movement to follow). These waves
of evolutionary motion, where local activity subscribes to an ongoing sweep of
events, nevertheless make reference to principles of opposition. Both prolonged
climactic passages are offset in the ensuing episode (see V and IX) by their
expressive counterpart: static calmness (dolce). With such a dramatic interleaving
of diverse materials and two emotionally protracted climaxes, it is possible to
lose sight of the ‘Delicato’ title of this movement. However, as an exploration
of oppositional processes, these expressive extremes are being held in a delicate
balance. Additionally, the weighting between ‘expressive’ versus ‘energetic’
music – at least when measured durationally – is clearly in favour of the former; a
restrained lyricism seems to prevail in this (‘Delicato’) movement.
Much of the piece may be understood by the listener without reference to pitch
organization. By this stage in her output, Saariaho is so in control of patterns of
tension and release which hinge around a particular pitch-centre that her music does
not place huge demands on the listener. There is an instinctive coherence at work.
As stated in her programme note, ‘When compared to my other music, Graal théâtre
is the exception in a long row of pieces where I combine acoustic instruments with
some kind of electronic extensions. Unlike these earlier works, my starting point
here was the delicate violin sound and its interaction with an orchestra’. Such a
deliberately restricted timbral palette allows a particular focus on the violin itself
and the choice of D$ as the pitch-centre here, being one of the soloist’s open strings,
seems part of the mindset of a spectral composer: D is quite ‘fundamental’ on a
number of levels. The larger-scale formal continuities to emerge are positioned in
relation to the harmonic gravity surrounding this focal point. A final sense of closure
is underlined by the closing sonority of a D-major triad, scored for the soloist and
orchestral double-basses. It is something about the inevitability of that outcome, how
and when this centre lodges in the mind of the listener, that is so carefully handled.
Example 7.2 offers a brief summary of this process by charting the main pitch-
class referents as the piece unfolds, aligning these with the various levels of formal
process (episodic, oppositional and continuous) as part of an overall sculpting
of events. Initial materials centre upon the open strings of the violin and the first
orchestral entry to project a pitch-centre moves in descending steps from A to E (bars
32–42) – which is then prolonged (over bars 42–54). With fifths being highlighted
in this way, the orchestra extends upon this feature: the next phase is based on a B$
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 141

pedal. The principle of some kind of counterbalance – of fifths or thirds – either side
of a D centre allows for an ongoing momentum and equilibrium. Allowing this centre
to remain implicit for such a long time adds to the prevailing tension, especially
when at the moment of clear establishment (bar 173) it is immediately undermined.
The first climax being centred on a D pedal that gives way to C# (bars 173–86)
is a significant departure from earlier patterns and creates dramatic disruption.
Thereafter, the condensed and intensified build-up to Climax II involves more wide-
ranging reference points, more distantly related to D$ centricity. A main element of
final resolution is the prolonged return to that centre in the last two episodes, while
the contained (but very striking) use of chromaticism (and also microtones) over
bars 381–8, offers a degree of synthesis at this stage. Large-scale pitch referents
provide focus and direction in support of overall formal continuity.

Example 7.3  Graal théâtre (‘Impetuoso’) – opening material

Drama and Conflict: ‘Impetuoso’

The second ‘movement’ is both shorter and more dramatically eventful than its
counterpart; Example 7.3 shows its opening events. Temporal compression allied
to expressive expansion is highly effective and from the outset, where the soloist
repeats virtuosic material from earlier in the work, the listener is invited to measure
events here in relation to the first movement. Formal outlines correspondingly
amplify that model; an episodic scheme is retained but based on far more abrupt
and disruptive contrasts: soloist and orchestra explore new levels of conflict.
142 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 7.4  Graal théâtre (‘Impetuoso’) – descending figures

 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 143

Heightened drama brings greater distance between the two forces, with violin
virtuosity taken to an extreme. Soloist cadenzas are strategically placed – at the
opening (bars 445–59), following the main climax (bars 617–31) and at the end
(bars 698–716). For the listener, these passages play a significant part in any recall
of formal shape.
Moving from the furioso outburst of the first cadenza, through to the
espressivo lyricism of the last, these structural signposts mark notable stages
in an organic process: conflict gradually gives way to resolution. The ‘central’
statement needs further comment as it plays a crucial role in mediating between
extremes. After a climactic passage for both violin and orchestra, where at its
peak the soloist plays con ultima forza, disperato (see bar 600), the ensuing
cadenza combines materials of contrasting moods: energico/più dolce; agitato,
ma dolce. It finally projects an atmosphere of calmo, espressivo music. The next
episode, dominated by the orchestra, resumes the prevailing ‘Impetuous’ mood
but culminates in very striking material – marked espressivo, più dolce – that is,
exclusively associated with the full ensemble: see the descending figures of bar
649ff, shown in Example 7.4. As duality gives way to dialogue, this proves to be
a decisive turning point, paving the way for the final violin cadenza that replaces
virtuosic assertiveness with contemplative lyricism.
The pairing of opposites that has conditioned every level of Graal théâtre –
title, genre, large- and small-scale form, atmosphere, expression, texture, pitch
organization – is again manifest in our perception of this movement in relation
to the first. Such a process of comparison invites new considerations of how
to define techniques of variation and repetition. Indeed, events appear to have
come full circle as the closing moments so clearly recall those of the opening.
It is less a change of atmosphere – there are plenty of ‘delicate’ moments
within this ‘impetuous’ music (and vice versa) – and more a repositioning of
similar materials at a different time that is so effective. Saariaho’s interest in
variation processes that are essentially temporal are significantly advanced in
the structuring of this concerto.

A Visual Narrative: Notes on Light (2006–07)

…I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922)

As its soloist and dedicatee, Anssi Karttunen, concludes: ‘Notes on Light is a rich
voyage that leads us to the very heart of light’, and Saariaho’s quotation of T.S. Eliot
144 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

(on the last page of the score) makes that intention explicit (Karttunen, 2007).7 The
metaphor of a voyage helps to convey the narrative qualities of the piece and also
gives some insight into its shape; a destination that reaches the source of light –
silence – suggests a cyclic quality overall. The multi-movement phases of this
work, a scheme of apparent diversity yet implicit continuity, collectively explore
various qualities of light. Saariaho has explained the original idea of the piece
in terms of ‘light filtering in various ways through transparent sound material’
(in Moisala, 2009: 106). Ranging from absolute brightness to total darkness,
characteristics of transparency, reflection, diffraction, translucence, opaqueness
– and even the soloist being eclipsed – are all envisioned here. Along the way,
soloist and orchestra explore the relationships between light and speed that convey
horizontal continuities, and their specific qualities – colour and tempo – which
articulate vertical contrasts. Above all, this is an eventful journey that places the
solo cello in a range of different situations relative to the orchestra, allowing both
parties to assume many versatile roles. As Karttunen summarizes: ‘The soloist is
not just the hero of Notes on Light, he/she has to stand up for his rights, fight, lead,
collaborate with and sometimes submit to the orchestra’.
At first glance, the five-movement layout bears little relation to that of a
conventional concerto. However, the principle of duality can be seen to operate
on the highest level, with the grouping of contrasting pairs of outer movements –
each with its balance of oppositions – acting as a counterweight to each other. An
overall tripartite design emerges, supported by a durational symmetry between
its first two parts and a more extensive final stage (which the attacca indication
between IV and V helps to confer): see Example 7.5. Such fundamental concerto
principles also operate within individual movements and help the listener to
shape formal perceptions. Charles Rosen’s view of the classical concerto, that
‘the most important fact about concerto form is that the audience waits for the
soloist to enter and when he [sic] stops playing, they wait for him to begin again’
(Rosen, 1971: 196), holds good even in this contemporary context. The initially
mysterious (‘secret’) world of translucence – where light may be transmitted but
nothing is transparent – gains clarity through the relationship between soloist
and orchestra. From the outset, the cello establishes its soloistic credentials, but
in a ruminating, almost hesitant, quasi-improvisatory manner. Successions of
these recitatives are subject to varied repetition, where subsequent utterances
are always intensified; there is a rhetorical quality to this gentle articulation of
time passing: an essentially horizontal process. The orchestra, on the other hand,
gradually moves from early refractions of the cello line to a position of conflict:
sustained, vertical, block-like punctuations threaten to suspend time, interrupting
the flow. Nevertheless, these disruptive pauses create a sense of anticipation –
itself an inherently forward-moving impulse – as well as separating events in
musical space.

7
  This comment, along with others below, are taken from a programme note by Anssi
Karttunen (January 2001), published by Chester Music.
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 145

Example 7.5  Notes on Light – movement layout

Movement Title Duration Quality of Light Character

I ‘Translucent, 4:57 Translucent Misterioso,
Secret’ espressivo
II ‘On Fire’ 3:12 Blazing Sempre energico
III ‘Awakening’ 7:52 Colourful Dolce, languido
IV ‘Eclipse’ 4:22 [attacca] Darkness Molto calmo
V ‘Heart of Light’ 7:06 Brightness Dolce, espressivo

Embedded in this duality of solo and orchestra contrasts is an implicit potential for
dialogue that helps to articulate later events: the piece constantly re-evaluates soloist/
orchestra tensions and partnerships. Extreme conflicts characterize movements II and
IV; the fiery exchanges in the former prevent both parties from speaking at the same
time, while the soloist is eclipsed by the orchestra in the fourth movement, (though
it finally manages to break through the darkness by initiating – attacca – the closing
voyage towards light). In the intervening central movement, ‘Awakening’, combined
forces make a concerted effort to build broad and colourful gestures, and these will
be recalled in the final synthesis of the work: ‘looking into the heart of light, the
silence’. Extra-musical associations that have influenced the aesthetic conception
of the piece also inform the concerto idiom and its attendant formal shaping: both
architecturally – in space – and in terms of narrative continuity – of time.

Spatial Duality

The relationship between spatial duality and temporal dialogue is fundamental to

Saariaho’s engagement with the concerto genre and Notes on Light illustrates this
well. In order to chart this process, Example 7.6 overleaf summarizes the formal
scheme of its opening movement. These early stages of the work are important. An
initial sculpting of events into a larger design is both reflected in the layout of the
piece as a whole and refracted through each of its five phases. A carefully worked
balance between potentially opposing elements – instrumental forces, textures and
timbre, section lengths, dynamics, metres – lies at the root of this concerto. At its
most simple, an alternation of solo/tutti contrasts provides a basic framework, with
the closely related recurrences of orchestral material almost assuming the guise of
ritornelli. (There is something of a reversal of traditional practice here, as the work
begins with what is essentially an episode.) While horizontal/vertical contrasts mark
the most obvious delineation between the two forces, different metres underpin a
separation between dynamism (the cello passages are distinctively fluid) and stasis
(the tutti statements are consistently in 4/4 time). Even that balance is brought
into question, though. The soloist’s ‘dynamism’ is the product of a subtle sense
of translucence; it has a thoughtful, meditative presence that, when threatened by
146 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 7.6  Notes on Light (‘Translucent, secret’) – formal architecture

 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 147

orchestral outbursts of increasing intensity, retreats further into a contemplative,

more secretive world. Conversely, the ‘static’ tutti statements, limited in both activity
and duration, nevertheless gain a gradual dynamic and timbral impulse; the sheer
forcefulness of a full orchestral sonority becomes ever-more assertive as concerto
conflicts reach a crisis point (see B3: bars 53–8). The cello response is measured and
contained, though with deliberate references to cadenza-like gestures; the soloist
articulates a change of mood from intense and agitated to calm and mysterious.
Despite such a clear separation between potentially competing forces, there are
subtle overlaps as well. Orchestral accompaniments, especially at the end of soloist
episodes, frequently prefigure the blocks that follow: they are almost transitional.
Conversely, the cellist often has sustained single- (or two-) note gestures during these
passages, maintaining a presence but in a supportive role. Beyond these glimpses of
formal continuity are shared pitch-related materials that explore competing demands:
conflict and complementation. The supremacy of an F# centre (so particular to the
cello soloist) is undermined by an orchestral focus on C$, giving each element
its own pitch-space – a focal point; see Example 7.7 overleaf. However, when
viewed together, these are merely equal and opposite. Their tritone ‘polarity’ offers
some equilibrium: there is stability in a symmetrical division of the octave. The
most striking surface feature, yet one that also informs underlying, middleground
motion, involves semitone neighbour-notes either side of these centres: F#/F;
C/D@. A significant element here is the falling cello motive, countered by a rising
orchestral figure, with the cello chromaticism seemingly more decorative, relative to
an ascending motion that may assume a more functional (‘leading-note’) role. This
contrast between what may be ornamental or fundamental – and its potential for
constant re-definition – is reflective of the changing roles of tutti/solo contrasts in
the overall form. It is highly characteristic of Saariaho’s method that surface details
encapsulate larger structural issues in this way.
Chromatic gestures operate on different timescales. The four orchestral
statements (see Sections B–B3 inclusive in Example 7.6) outline a large-scale
semitone ascent: G–A@–A–B@; and its peak, which marks the crisis point of the
movement, is characterized by a chromatic descent (from B@ to D). Indeed, the
orchestral closing stages pursue that stepwise motion, falling in semitones to a
C$ ‘outcome’. Focal points within the cello ruminations revolve around a central
F#: exclusive territory for the soloist. It is during the orchestral ritornelli (see B1
and B3, for instance) that the cello assumes the pitch-space of its counterpart,
though personalizing and influencing that gesture: now an ascending C#–D
(that will eventually move via G$ to a final C). Indeed, the cadenza-like Coda
is a conciliatory passage with the cellist’s closing note offering compromise:
it capitulates in favour of a C$ outcome. Controlled chromaticism within both
soloist and orchestral domains is fundamental to patterns of tension and release
shared between them, and underpins the formal architecture of concerto conflicts.
With chromaticism representing the more opaque side of ‘Translucence’, the
presence of focal points and pitch-class centres offers transparency: a glimpse
of things to come in this journey to the heart of light.
148 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 7.7  Notes on Light (‘Translucent, secret’) – opening material

Fiery exchanges between soloist and orchestra define the next phase of duality;
‘On Fire’ is characterized by a deftness of pacing that sets it apart from anything else.
A reservoir of ideas that are strikingly simple in themselves is subject to a process
of complex manipulation; a uniformity of content is set within a variety of contexts.
The overall shape is informed by an initial discourse between cello and orchestra that
gives way to altercation, a subsequent exchange of materials, and a final – though
rather elusive – hint of resolution. Fundamental contrasts of mood dominate, and the
two forces never actually play at the same time. An overwhelming sense of atemporal
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 149

impulse (energico, tempestoso, furioso) that relentlessly drives the music onwards is
stopped in its tracks by a subito dolce contemplation from the orchestral strings (bars
63–7), itself the result of an earlier dolce episode (bars 54–6, for harp and celesta).
Time is suspended – it becomes space – and events seem to float in a motionless
vacuum as a new ethereal quality emerges. Though only temporary, given that the
soloist soon resumes his/her energetic outbursts, something of the unique register/
timbre associated with this momentary calm is subsequently absorbed by the cellist.
There is a paradox here. A relatively large degree of (registral) space occupies a very
small amount of (metrical) time and this challenges listener perceptions, especially
as this brief episode has long-term consequences. Despite a constantly articulated
temporal flow, there is little sense of progress; energy is divorced from motion,
activity from direction: events move onward but not necessarily forward. Even-more
compressed sequences of repetition patterns, now frantically alternating between
soloist and orchestra in ever-closer successions, add to the prevailing fieriness of
the (energico/furioso) Coda. Nevertheless, that fleeting sense of a registral exchange
between these competing partners offers a hint of resolution as deeper, more
mysterious forces intimate some degree of compromise.
Separation of materials within the concerto format is raised quite acutely again,
in the fourth movement – ‘Eclipse’. Quite literally the darkest point of these notes
on light, this correspondingly short – but far less fleeting – phase explores the same
conceptual discourse of transforming time into space. Everything is paired down
to absolute basics in a 38-bar reverie; the cello only proffers three statements: five
notes in total, using only two pitch-classes. It returns to an earlier semitone, rising
motive – C#-D – which marks the two complementary stages (bars 1–10 and 11–21)
of one larger formal block. Thereafter, from the misterioso of bar 22, the orchestra
eclipses the soloist whose final gesture (bars 36–8) is further reduced – to a single
C# – which then acts as a pivot into the last movement. Though characterized by an
appropriate stillness, the progress of this eclipse is subtly achieved. Initial string
sonorities refract the soloist’s timbral qualities in a slow dissolution of events
defined by their falling gestures and sustained sonorities. There is, however, an
underlying pulse, but this is deliberately a-rhythmic – merely marking time – as
it has no energy or momentum. Any suggestion of ‘rhythmic’ interest is illusory,
part of an aura of intensity as dynamic and timbre expand; there is some sense of
change evoked by this process, but rather than disturbing the prevailing stasis it
merely ‘colours’ it. While a degree of varied repetition defines an overall shape,
forming a sequence of timbral variations, local events are locked, fixed and inert.
The expressive impact considerably outweighs any evaluation of the events
concerned: it amounts to far more than the sum of its parts. This is Saariaho at her
most economical, using an absolute minimum to generate maximum effect.

Temporal Dialogue

The title ‘Awakening’ elicits a range of associations, suggesting that this central
movement occupies a critical stage on a journey to the heart of light. Certainly the
150 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 7.8  Notes on Light (‘Awakening’) – cyclic structure

 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 151

overall sonority is very different here, a new timbral palette bringing increased
anticipation. The orchestra opens with a wall of sound made up from shimmering
trills and sustained, repeated notes; set against this sonorous fixity is an agile,
repeated-note cello entry that acts as an upbeat to a truly vocal outburst (molto
espressivo). A struggle of the individual voice pitted against a mass of sound,
so central to the concerto aesthetic, is given new life. The transformation of
initial oppositions into a concerted effort gradually evolves over time, and it is
this linear unfolding of a formal impulse that distinguishes this ‘movement’ from
its surroundings. Rather than blocks of material grouped into an architectural
scheme, there are cycles of activity – some four in all – each a further reflection
of its predecessor in an ongoing discourse. This cyclic quality is rather special in
its concern for renewal rather than return, thereby generating a forward-moving
‘awakening’ of the inherent potential of its materials: it creatively re-cycles earlier
events. A sense of dialogue is the key factor. It is the relationship, not the conflict,
between solo and orchestral forces that conditions their progress through time.
Example 7.8 summarizes the layout of materials (though a spatial representation
of a temporal process has inevitable limitations). Nevertheless, a basic pattern is
immediately apparent: phases of materials are being rotated. However, the extent
to which Saariaho’s sheer invention disguises this framework should not be
underestimated. Through constantly evolving surface activity, slow, transformational
cycles using background pitch-centres are subtly projected here. The idea of wheels-
within-wheels is also present; the first cycle (of four) itself comprises four phases
(A–D) that form the basis of later developments. Issues of repetition, return, recall
and renewal are all in a state of flux, imparting a sense of continuity; nevertheless,
the use of pauses at the end of each cycle (literally at bars 97 and 121, and through
a sustained D@ over bars 52–5), has the effect of marking out passages of time.
Durations are of interest, not least because of a disparity between observation and
perception that arises. With Cycle III being a mere 24 bars, Cycle IV just 31 bars, a
glance at Example 7.8 suggests a drastic compression of initial events; indeed, added
together, these last two cycles exactly amount to the duration of the first: 55 bars.
On paper then, observing their combination may suggest a three-part formal
scheme in total. Listener perceptions are very different, though. Cycle III is
especially eventful with an increase in expressive intensity that is inversely
proportional to its compressed timescale: extremes of character, tempo and gesture
are tightly confined. Put simply, there is far more in this 24-bar passage than its
length would suggest, as temporal restriction has an emotionally expansive effect.
Moreover, the concerto-form conflict also reaches a peak: the soloist achieves greater
energetic momentum (see Più mosso, energico, bar 105ff) while, conversely, the
ensemble exerts more interruptive control. Balance and complementation remain
important; the soloist’s material builds on earlier gestures, while the orchestral
punctuations are a reduction of its ‘refrain’ element. A compromise is reached as
the cello is finally subdued into a (Più calmo) cadenza-like reverie. The last formal
cycle of the movement (from bar 122) has a suitably strong emphasis on recall,
if not return: its initial Tempo primo indication is significant. Of course, temporal
152 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

continuity remains paramount and there is a renewed burst of activity during this
phase, making the final sense of synthesis (bar 137ff) all the more satisfying.
The pedal points themselves – their presence or absence, pitch-class focus,
length and recurrence – help to articulate the cyclic constructions deployed. Given
the central image of ‘Awakening’, this is the point in the work most concerned with
‘colour’; an emphasis on ‘chromaticism’ has extra meaning, as timbre and pitch-
class complement each other. The semitone motion from C to D@ that defines the
outlines of Cycle I eventually is resolved as part of a chromatic descent, E@–D–
C#–C, during Cycle II, and is distributed again (though in a rather fragmentary way)
over the last two cycles. A pedal C$ was the first pitch-class centre projected by the
orchestra at the very start of the concerto and deployment of chromatic neighbour-
notes has been a recurrent feature throughout, operating on all levels. Establishment
of such a strong background degree of stability is offset by the use of Phase C:
episodic materials that have no fixed pedal points. Correspondingly, these passages
feel far freer, exploring the more improvisatory qualities associated with concerto
writing, though within the carefully-defined limits of this schematic shape. An
unpredictable balance between freedom and restraint, so fundamental to a linear
(rather than vertical) formal process, is engendered by these phases of activity; they
offer an essential sense of renewal within a cyclic unfolding of recall.

Example 7.9  Notes on Light (‘Awakening’) – soloist chromaticism

A few observations of surface-level activity help to confirm more immediate

perceptions of that rotational process: there are close connections between content
and form. Chromaticism within the soloist’s material remains consistent; the use
of a G/F# figure (given the associations surrounding F# in the first movement) is
particularly striking (see Example 7.9), though it is merely one of a number of
such semitonal gestures. Set against these cello recitatives is music that remains
distinctive to the orchestra (see Example 7.10) and is subject to recurrence: an
orchestral refrain. Consistently marked Grave (though it may be subito, più or
poco) and varied in directness, length and intensity, its developmental treatment
mirrors that of the soloist’s material. What remains exclusive is a strongly etched
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 153

Example 7.10  Notes on Light (‘Awakening’) – orchestral refrain

154 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

descending outline of non-chromatic elements, while the inclusion of chromatic

neighbour-notes offers a potential for synthesis between these two bodies of
material. The very last appearance of this refrain (bars 147–50) is one of its
most dramatic, though by now there is a strong sense of complement (rather than
potential conflict) relative to the cellist’s closing recitative. Overall, it is the use of
dialogue between these two forces that both conditions the surface activity here
and informs the cyclic nature of its formal scheme.

Structural Synthesis

As the piece reaches the final stage of its journey to the ‘heart of light’, issues of
synthesis become paramount. Following on immediately from ‘Eclipse’, where
the soloist is completely overshadowed by the orchestra, the re-alignment of
initially opposing forces into a concerted effort is all the more telling: both sides
of fundamental concerto definitions are brought into play. As the soloist asserts
a central position, there is a return to a block-like formal scheme that alternates
between the two forces; this directly recalls the opening movement, along with
a number of references to associated material. Such clear recollections offer
a degree of cyclic continuity that operates alongside block-like separations,
as both formal impulses of the work (organic and architectural) are brought
together. Balancing out these oppositions is the key element: contrast gives way
to complementation, segregation becomes synthesis.
Example 7.11 shows a ternary-form outline and its attendant sense of balance
operates on a number of different levels – formal subdivisions, solo/orchestra
partnership, tritone-related pitch centres – that collectively provide a sense
of resolution for this finale. A glance at this architectural summary reveals an
underlying framework: a journey that is precisely articulated in 12 stages. The first
section of this ternary form (bars 1–52) is itself in four parts and the first of these
(bars 1–23) is further divisible into four stages, suggesting that the systematic way
in which time is parcelled up into units of activity is a multi-levelled conception.
Initially the soloist part dominates proceedings, and the way in which it alternates
between two types of material encapsulates much of the oppositional momentum
that the rest of this movement pursues. Events may be summarized as follows:

A Bars 1–12: Recitative-like, vocal, melodically sustained cello

writing – Dolce, espressivo
B Bars 13–17: Cadenza-like, semiquaver flourishes in shorter
outbursts – Piѝ energico
A Bars 18–21: Varied reworking and, in the light of ‘B’ material – Con
forza, agitato
B Bars 22–3: Reworking of semiquaver flourishes – Piѝ, espressivo

While distinctive contrasts allow such subdivisions, an overriding process of

varied repetition provides continuity; the re-working of this ‘A’ material takes
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 155

Example 7.11  Notes on Light (‘Heart of Light’) – formal scheme

Section Bars Tempo Pitch-Centre

Dolce, espressivo; Più energico;
1–23 Focal pitch-class of C,
Meno mosso; Più espressivo
gradually emerges;
24–30 Più mosso, Dolce Tritone: F#-C thereafter;
Statement
31–41 Dolce, leggiero culminates on F# climax;
soloist moves back to C
Poco a poco più pesante; (bar 52)
41–52
Con forza; Energico; Calando
53–60 Meno mosso, Libero; Espressivo
Più mosso, Dolce, nervoso; rit.
61–6 C$ as sustained, overall
Libero
centre gives way to F#;
Development A tempo, Subito energico; Calando; other semitonal motifs add
67–77
Dolce; rit. Libero uncertainty
A tempo, energico; Dolce;
78–90
Lento
A tempo, intenso; Più libero,
91–5
Molto espressivo
A tempo, dolce; Lentissimo molto
96–103 Return to C$, supported by
libero
increased use of 5ths;
Synthesis A tempo, Misterioso calmo; eventual emergence of initial
Lentissimo molto libero; centre of the piece,
104–9
A tempo, subito più energico; F# as the goal of the work
Calando; rit. molto;
Senza tempo (follow the soloist):
110–17
Lentissimo molto libero; Misterioso

on something of the character of ‘B’ (and vice versa). A fundamental principle

of how apparent contrast and discontinuity may actually contribute to a sense of
ongoing dialogue is set up during these opening stages. Thereafter, the orchestra
refracts these materials and ultimately guides the soloist to the heart of light.
Antithesis leads to meaningful exchanges and ultimately both forces come to
engage in a concerted effort to find resolution: a temporal process.
Once again, perceptions of what may be ornamental or fundamental are
creatively brought into question. Thus, in addition to such balance on formal, genre-
based and gestural levels, issues of timescale – in terms of actual versus perceived
duration – support this architectural infrastructure in an organic way. The length of
each subsection is varied but with a tendency for compression as the form unfolds
over time. Characteristically, this is offset by an increase in the range, amount and
variety of activity within each of these blocks, adding to a sense of continuity and
momentum. Example 7.11 illustrates this, as suggested by the basic tempo/character
indications that Saariaho provides; perhaps the passage between bars 104 and 109
– a mere 6 bars – is the most obvious instance of a wide expressive range being
156 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

contained in a short period of time. Paradoxically though, there is a single, prevailing

mood despite that variety. This slow, still, calm, mysteriousness allows time to be
more and more drawn out as the piece reaches a close: at the heart of light, time
becomes space, music gives way to silence.
An architectural spatial design overlaid by an organic temporal process is the
ultimate balance that this movement holds in check. In doing so, this structural
synthesis encompasses many of the issues explored throughout the piece as a
whole. With the explicit duality of one level being countered by the implicit
dialogue on the other, a resolution is achieved. The basic ternary infrastructure
retains a degree of equilibrium. Each of its sections (Statement, Development
and Synthesis) is of remarkably similar duration if measured in clock time, with
a marginally shorter (but more eventful) central portion flanked by two equal
outer stages. Set against such arcane precision are varying degrees of formal
articulation, which work right through to a highly diverse surface activity:
interrelated levels that manipulate our perceptions of timescale. Any observation
of a controlling framework remains distant, given the listener’s experience of
fluidity of expression. All of this is underpinned by a systematic use of harmonic
gravity: focal pitch-classes are held in a balance between tension and resolution.
That equilibrium creates a real sense of middleground. These pitch-centres
subscribe to a large-scale abstract pattern, yet at strategic and audibly perceptible
moments they have direct impact on the listening process. The polarity – but
symmetry – of the C/F# tritone offers both tension and balance, fundamental
principles set up in the translucence of the opening movement that (re)gain
clarity here. Whereas the cello capitulated to a C$ centre at the close of the first
movement, the orchestra gives way to the soloist’s F# here. The initial F# of the
piece now stands at the heart of light, before fading into silence; its centrality
offers a final sense of resolution.

Conflict and Complementation

Several of Saariaho’s most characteristic compositional traits emerge from

a consideration of her concerto writing. Something about the very nature of
this genre suits this composer’s desire to communicate with her audience. The
concerto concept embraces abstract notions – of duality, struggle, dialogue and
narrative – yet demands that they be fashioned into precisely imagined formal
schemes, which embody those balanced oppositions in purely musical terms.
Also, there is a strong sense of a personal voice within each of these pieces
and this spills over into more general concertante instrumental writing in other
works, underpinning their individuality and aiding their appeal. Deployment
of both spatial duality and temporal dialogue through multi-level structures,
especially in the interaction between architectural and organic formal impulses,
is fundamental here. Indeed, the two distinctive definitions of ‘concertare’,
embracing conflict and complementation, are correspondingly synthesized as a
 Dualities and Dialogues: Saariaho’s Concertos 157

result. That kind of structural discourse both emerges from and subscribes to the
concerto principle: it acknowledges tradition yet offers renewal. Testament to
this composer’s creative ingenuity is the overriding sense that these distinctive
examples contribute to an ongoing development of the form. (Indeed, at the time
of writing, Saariaho’s latest work is a clarinet concerto, D’om le vrai sens, to be
premiered in September 2010.) The concerto remains one of the most enduring
of all musical genres and Saariaho’s highly imaginative contributions help to
confirm and reinforce its continued relevance for music of today.
 Chapter 8
Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and
Harmony in Revolution
Vesa Kankaanpää

In her writings on music, Kaija Saariaho proposes a dichotomy between timbre and
harmony, and explores the ways in which this interaction informs her ideas about
musical structure.1 In Saariaho’s view, harmonic tensions traditionally function
horizontally (that is, in succession) to shape musical form, while timbre constitutes
the vertical (or simultaneous) matter that follows this movement (Saariaho, 1987:
94 and 132). One of her ambitions from early on in her compositional career has
been to reverse this relationship: timbral processes come to generate musical form.
The idea of duality provides several fruitful analytical viewpoints into Saariaho’s
compositional thinking, not least because her theories of musical form are spurred
by the timbre–harmony dichotomy. Oppositions of upheaval and continuity – of
modernism and tradition – offer insights into Saariaho’s musical ideology. On
the one hand, she reinterprets the conventional roles of musical elements and
creates form with previously unavailable technological tools. Progressive ideas
are expounded, potential for form is seen where it has not been seen before, and
instead of tonal form, we have timbral form. Yet on the other hand, there is a
degree of continuity in the concepts describing the building blocks of music, with
clear links to tradition. As such, Saariaho’s more subversive ideas are placed in a
conceptual musical world of tonality, harmonic functions and even sonata-form
architecture. In this world, she applies familiar concepts in an unfamiliar fashion.
There is a further dichotomy in Saariaho’s approach to composition: a
duality between theory and practice. Saariaho’s compositions are supported
by innovative theoretical ideas that she explores in her writings. We thus see
the concept of composer as theorist: to compose is to explore, create, discover,
analyse. Commitment to the process of research is essential, and this is achieved
by constructing systems and theories. But Saariaho is also a composer for
whom that which is sensory – what is actually heard – is central. It is evident
on several levels that her theories provide inspiration and a framework within
which an intuitive approach can flourish. This is reflected in the titles of Saariaho’s
compositions, which hint at a number of associations and meanings, but fall short
of full explanations. Perhaps it is this intuitive character of her music that makes

1
  See Saariaho, 1987, and its revised version, 1991.
160 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

it so approachable to the listener: the sounds that are heard are interesting in
themselves; their sensory pleasure has as powerful immediacy.
This chapter considers three works in detail, each of which is based on a different
approach to the timbre–harmony relationship. First, in Im Traume (1980) for cello
and piano, Saariaho explores the idea of a stable backdrop of harmonic colour, against
which timbral and melodic gestures are set. Second, Jardin secret I (1984–85) for
tape, is a study in sound synthesis (Stockhausen’s Studie I and II come to mind), in
which the same abstract models are used for both timbre and harmony. This raises
the question of whether it remains useful – or even possible – to differentiate between
timbre and harmony when listening. Finally, in Lichtbogen (1985–86) for chamber
ensemble, Saariaho uses many of the compositional methods introduced by French
spectral composers, her computer-based analysis of several cello gestures generating
materials for the pitch structures of the composition. Plans and drafts provided by
the composer highlight the diverse aspects of her compositional process, and her
application of the theoretical ideas of spectral analysis.
By writing texts and composing music, Saariaho has participated in various
discourses on musical composition. But musical ideas and methods do not
develop independently of history, as creative innovation is an ideological gesture,
a comment on past and future music. A compositional technique or solution is
therefore situated in a particular musical-historical context, and that context is
important for the analysis of compositional process. Therefore, the goal here is not
simply to illustrate Saariaho’s techniques, but also to identify relevant musical-
historical contexts for her discoveries.

Harmony as a General Sonority: Im Traume

Im Traume, for cello and piano, is a composition in which harmony acts as a

stable ground: a static and relatively unchanging background against which the
composer sets sudden changes in instrumental colour and texture. Saariaho’s
aim was to establish musical form by contrasting two kinds of texture. In the
first group, she places sounds produced by traditional instrumental techniques,
and these represent stasis; in the second group are textures that employ extended
instrumental techniques, and these stand for tension (Saariaho, 1987: 97 and 104).2
But, in practice, the division between traditional and extended techniques is often
unambiguous: all piano textures that avoid use of the keyboard are presumably
‘extended’, and the cello hardly ever plays ‘traditional’ techniques. Further, Saariaho
does not elaborate why she considers traditional means of sound production as
representing stasis, or why extended techniques create tension. It is easy to accept
that the process of changing techniques creates variation and contrast, and this is
certainly significant for the structure of the composition. But it is more difficult
to appreciate how tension could be created per se by extended techniques: it is far

2
  See also Oskala, 2005.
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 161

from clear how this connection could spring from perception alone. However, an
explanation could lie in the fact that different instrumental techniques emerged
at different points in music history. Listeners are simply more familiar with
traditional techniques, and, as the instrumental forces of a piece become evident,
expectations begin to emerge as to how those instruments traditionally sound. But
the sounds produced by non-traditional methods are surprising, and listeners on
the whole have less capacity for expectation concerning how these techniques
will sound, and what other techniques will be presented as the work unfolds. The
contrast of stasis and tension thus hinges on musical-historical awareness, and on
the expectations created by the instrumental ensemble.
What, then, of the textural contrasts in Im Traume? It is possible to divide the
composition into five parts, each of which can be further subdivided. Taking Part
I as an example, this can be subdivided into six sections – A B A B A C – whose
differentiation results from specific kinds of instrumental technique:

A a mixture of traditional and extended techniques;

B only traditional techniques; only the piano;
C only extended techniques.

A pattern therefore emerges wherein mixtures of traditional and extended

techniques alternate with sections of extended techniques only, or traditional
techniques only. This could be one aspect of the ‘network of textures on several
levels’ that Saariaho sought to achieve (Saariaho, 1987: 104).
Given that many of Saariaho’s extended techniques produce sounds with
no definite pitch, textures that employ traditional techniques are responsible for
generating harmony in the composition. But as unconventional sounds occupy more
of the work than traditional sounds, most of Im Traume actually has no clear harmony.
The harmony that does exist is very static, and all harmonic elements are presented
in the opening few gestures of the work.3 As such, harmony does not seem to play a
strong structural role: differences in textural types are of primary importance. And
in the absence of change in the harmonic character of specific textures, the timbral
and gestural dimensions of the music take on a more dynamic, structural function.
But how perceptible is the dynamism between stasis and tension? The sounds
produced by extended techniques dominate the sounding image to such an extent
that the traditional piano and cello sounds are not easily perceptible as a separate
sonic category. As a purely timbral device, the contrast of traditional and extended
techniques thus remains more conceptual than perceptual. The dynamism between
stasis and tension is, however, evident when we consider the contrasts of textural
types. Textures in which the piano produces traditional sonorities represent stasis;
gestures created by timbral, dynamic and rhythmic means represent tension.
Crucially, these differentiations are achieved without recourse to harmonic
content: harmonies are static, non-continuous.

3
  See Oskala, 2005.
162 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Combining Timbre and Harmony through Sound Synthesis: Jardin secret I

In Jardin secret I, for tape, Saariaho’s goal was to use similar models for
constructing timbral and pitch structures: in particular, she divided the octave into
several different symmetrical scales, which she then used to synthesize timbre
and to determine harmony (Saariaho, 1983: 271; Saariaho, 1987: 124). There are
at least two different ways in which a scale can be symmetrical. A whole tone
scale is symmetrical because all the intervals are similar, as are scales where the
intervals repeat in some kind of pattern, for example the octatonic tone-semitone.
A different kind of symmetry is axial symmetry: a particular pitch acts as an axis
about which other pitches symmetrically align, below and above. The symmetry
in Jardin secret I is of the first type.
Using computers, a composer can arbitrarily determine the pitch system
with an unlimited number of symmetrical divisions of an octave. In seeking to
distance herself from traditional harmonic tensions and create new kinds of pitch
hierarchies, Saariaho created interpolations between different symmetrical scales,
gradually moving each pitch in a scale towards a pitch in another scale (Saariaho,
1983: 271; Saariaho, 1985: 165).4 Example 8.1 shows a spectrogram taken
towards the end of Jardin secret I that reveals the resultant blocks of ascending
and descending patterns.5 Each of the dots on the spectrogram corresponds to a
note, or an overtone of a note. Time progresses from left to right (hours : minutes
: seconds), pitch is indicated vertically (Hz), loud sounds are bright, soft sounds
dark. As can be seen, there seem to be similarities between the blocks: pairs of
parallel lines descending, remaining static, or rising are characteristic. A device
that probably is in use here is the expansion matrix: the blocks share the same
internal interval relations, while the distances between the lowest and the highest
notes vary.6
The use of symmetrical scales may at first seem to contradict Saariaho’s broader
aim of creating new pitch hierarchies. In symmetrical scales, all pitches tend to
have equal importance and harmonic tensions subside, whereas hierarchy implies
relations of dominance between elements: some pitches are central, others are
meaningful in relation to them. So when Saariaho moves between two symmetrical
scales, both of which are foreign to the listener, is hierarchy created? Perceptually,
this is doubtful, but that is not to say pitch structures are any less significant. What
we have here are group phenomena, like in Ligeti’s cluster music from the late
1950s and early 1960s. Volume is important, louder sounds dominate; movement
and changes in ambitus create a sense of direction.

4
 Here interpolation is a mathematical operation where new numerical values are
calculated between two known values.
5
  The spectrogram is taken from the recording A Portrait of Kaija Saariaho (BIS CD-
307). This and subsequent spectrograms are made using the software Acousmographe, version
3.4 (INA-GRM, 2003–07).
6
  See Saariaho, 1987: 128, figure 17.
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 163

Example 8.1  Jardin secret I – spectrogram of 7:50–9:50

Saariaho realized Jardin secret I at IRCAM using the CHANT programme,

originally devised for the synthesis of vocal sounds. An aspect of CHANT is its
use of FOF-synthesis,7 which can be used to simulate speech. There are several
fundamental differences between conventional speech simulation programmes
and FOF. In particular, speech synthesis is usually achieved by the filtering of
voiced sound sources using a filter that simulates the resonances of the vocal
tract. But in FOF-synthesis, these resonances are synthesized directly by using
oscillators that produce the waveform of a formant;8 if more formants are needed,
the number of oscillators is increased. A particular strength of FOF-synthesis is the
close connection between controllable variables and the perceptual, aural results.
These variables include manipulation of the centre frequency of the formant, the
amplitude, and the bandwidth of the formant.9 The results of these processes can
be seen clearly in Jardin secret I: Example 8.2 overleaf shows a spectrogram of the
opening, wherein vertical lines show the different formants. Note also the slight
changes in formant bandwidths (the vertical lines vary in width), and formant
centre frequencies (some of the lines tilt).

7
 FOF stands for fonctions d’onde formantique or formant wave function synthesis. See
Rodet, 1984, or Dodge and Jerse, 1985: 216.
8
  Formants are spectral peaks in the sound spectrum. Each vowel has a typical set of
resonance frequencies (see Fant, 1960).
9
  See Rodet, 1984: 9–10 and 14, or Dodge and Jerse, 1985: 216–17.
164 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 8.2  Jardin secret I – spectrogram of 0:00–1:55

In sound synthesis, timbre and harmony are closely related: both involve
identical interval structures in their construction. Using FOF-synthesis, the interval
structures of harmonies can be transformed into timbres by taking each note as a
centre frequency of a formant. The resulting timbres can be modified, for example,
by changing the formant centre frequencies or by changing the bandwidths of the
formants: when the bandwidths of formants are very narrow, we obtain the simplest
timbres, as each formant becomes a partial (Saariaho, 1985: 165). According to
Saariaho, symmetrical divisions of an octave underpin harmony at the beginning
of Jardin secret; towards the end, these same symmetries form the foundation
of inharmonic sound colours (Saariaho, 1987: 126–7).10 So, there is hardly any
difference between timbre and harmony in this kind of sound synthesis, for both
concern pitch structures. Any virtues of their distinction are thus drawn into question.
However, there are times when this distinction remains useful. Timbre as a
concept becomes relevant when a sound source can be identified, or, in this case,
when all sounds are synthesized, imagined. Saariaho points out that

In the first half of the piece the timbre itself follows an evolution which is largely
its own, from clear, abstract sounds to sounds which are increasingly noisy and
voiced. Here I used the identity or the referential capacity of the sounds as a
means of providing a formal punctuation (Saariaho, 1987: 126).

10
 Inharmonic sounds result from the presence of overtones that are not whole
multiples of the fundamental frequency.
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 165

Example 8.3  Jardin secret I – spectrogram of entire work

There are two main timbral identities at play here: voice and bell. Vocal identity
is created when the synthesized formants adhere, at least momentarily, to
recognizable vowel formants. Bell sounds occur when the inharmonicity of the
formant structure is connected with an attack–decay pattern characteristic of a bell.
Example 8.3 shows where these groups come to dominate the sound-world: darker
squares indicate the clearest vocal characteristics; the lighter square indicates bell
sounds. Passages with distinct note identities constitute further cases wherein a
timbre–harmony distinction remains relevant.
In Jardin secret I, it is quite difficult to determine aurally how many notes
there are at any given moment. The spectrogram does not help, either: it only
charts the distribution of energy in time and frequency space; it does not group
the sonic phenomena into notes (with a fundamental frequency and overtones).
Taking a section from the middle of the work as an example, a spectrogram shows
descending pitches, raising pitches; figures moving up and down (see Example 8.4
overleaf). That some of the lines are in parallel motion is suggestive of overtones
of a fundamental pitch, as would the simultaneity of onsets. We might expect to
hear a descending line, a note in ascending and descending movement, or a static
bass line. However, the listening experience is much more complex. The onsets
do create aural images of notes, but the impression is soon diluted by the complex
simultaneous movement of overtones. The fact that amplitudes change – overtones
or notes fade out – does not help either: it remains difficult actually to determine
how many different notes there are in this pattern. One notable exception is the last
three minutes of the composition (see Example 8.1 above), where Saariaho creates
166 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 8.4  Jardin secret I – spectrogram of 5:50–6:30

rather consistent note identities, resulting in a discernible contrapuntal movement.

Here, timbre and harmony can be meaningfully discerned: we have bell sounds
moving in polyphony.
However, for the most part, the aural image only hints at recognizable sound
sources, bells and voices. How, then (or why), should the listener be able to
decide whether a shimmering, bell-like sound is a complex inharmonic chord or a
timbre made up of inharmonic partials? We are therefore forced into questioning
whether the distinction between timbre and harmony is necessary or useful in
this composition: they are identical in terms of the work’s construction, and are
practically indistinguishable in its aural image. Jardin secret I thus represents
the kind of spectral composition wherein timbre as a distinctive musical concept
begins to lose all relevance.

Timbre as a Model for Harmony: Lichtbogen

In Im Traume, Saariaho connects timbre and harmony through the idea of a general
sonority, drawing parallels between harmonic colour and sound colour. In Jardin
secret I, the synthetic timbres and harmonies share similar interval structures. But
in Lichtbogen, for nine musicians and live electronics, Saariaho applied methods
that in many ways resemble the techniques of instrumental synthesis (synthèse
instrumentale), as developed by the French group, l’Itinéraire. The technique has two
important phases: the spectral analysis of instrumental sounds, and the simulation
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 167

of those sounds by an orchestra. While the analysis reveals the temporally changing
spectral structure of a sound, the simulation can consist of translating the movements
of partials into the individual instrumental parts of a score (Cohen-Levinas, 1991:
56). A vital aspect of instrumental synthesis is that the resulting orchestral texture
reflects the temporal changes of the analysed spectra. Microscopic, transitory,
sonic events expand temporally and become perceptible. Pitch structures in the
spectra provide material for further manipulation: harmonic spectra transform into
inharmonic spectra, for example (Wilson, 1988: 35 and 37).11
For the construction of harmonies in Lichtbogen, Saariaho analysed timbres
with the IANA computer programme. In devising this programme, Gérard Assayag
used Ernst Terhardt’s algorithm, which mathematically models the perception of
pitch.12 Terhardt separated two kinds of pitch perception: analytic and holistic.
An analytic perception focuses on the component pitches that shape timbre; a
complex signal may result in the perception of several spectral pitches. A holistic
perception focuses on determining a prevailing overall pitch, a virtual pitch; a
complex signal produces several virtual pitches.
The analytical process begins with a Fourier transform of a recorded sound in
order to establish its spectral components.13 IANA then transfers these components
into a tempered scale, the accuracy of which increases through numeric indications
of the extent to which actual pitches deviate from the tempered scale (Terhardt,
1982: 679–80 and 686). One hundred cents is equal to a semitone, so the actual
pitch of a spectral component can be 50 cents under or above a note from the
tempered scale. The programme also specifies the amplitude of each component
and provides an interpretation of the perceptual importance of each component.
Saariaho derived the harmonic material in Lichtbogen from analyses of several
cello sounds. Example 8.5 shows Saariaho’s spectral analysis of a cello F#: the
bottom row lists the perceptually important spectral components.14 Saariaho was
particularly interested in transitions between pure and noisy sounds. The first
analysed transition begins with a pure harmonic flageolet sound, followed by
the cellist gradually increasing pressure from the left hand while simultaneously
moving the bow in the direction of the fingerboard. The second analysed transition
was a glissando between two flageolet sounds (Saariaho, 1987: 129).
Changes in the spectral content of the sound during these transitions can be traced
by performing several analyses upon different stages of the transition (Saariaho,
1991: 436). The analysis shown in Example 8.5 overleaf provided ten perceptually
relevant pitches: under each note there are three numbers; if the bottom number
is zero, the pitch is perceptually irrelevant. Saariaho proceeded to modify the

11
 Additional information on such processes in Gérard Grisey’s music can be found in
Baillet, 2000: 67–74.
12
  See Terhardt et al., 1982: 679–80 and 686, and Saariaho, 1991: 445.
13
 A Fourier transform is a mathematical operation that produces a representation of a
complex sound as a sum of sine waves, thus revealing its overtone structure.
14
  Taken from Saariaho’s sketches and notes, 1985.
168 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 8.5 Sketch of Lichtbogen – analysis of cello F#

 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 169

Example 8.6 Sketch of Lichtbogen – rough draft of harmony

170 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

resulting pitch structures in many ways. First, she removed ‘undesirable’ intervals,
in this case the octave (Saariaho, 1991: 436),15 leaving pitch classes. Next, she
converted these pitch classes (originally at the resolution of one cent) into notes of
the tempered scale. The smallest change was the interpretation of F1 (+43 cents)
to F#1 (a change of 57 cents); the largest change was the interpretation of A#2
(-36 cents) to B2 (a change of 136 cents). Following these adaptations, Saariaho
arrived at a group of nine pitches – F, G#, F#1, D2, B2, E3, A3, C4, A#4 – which she
used in chords, arpeggios and melodic lines. The harmonic constellations of the
microtonally varied unison sequence at the beginning of the composition derive
from analyses of the performed sound colour.
Chord patterns in Saariaho’s sketches (see Example 8.6)16 match the chords
of the glockenspiel, grand piano and harp. The first chord (F#1, A#2, B2, G3 and
D4), for instance, is divided between these three instruments in bar 43, prior to
further chord changes in bars 45, 47, 48 and 50. The section starting in bar 42
demonstrates Saariaho’s idea of superimposing several textural levels. The strings
and the flute form one level, the piano, harp and glockenspiel another (see Example
8.7). The qualities of these groups are opposed in several ways: the first group is
capable of producing microtonal material, while the second can only sound notes
of the tempered scale. In addition, their onset characteristics are dissimilar: the
strings and the flute offer a great deal of control, whereas the glockenspiel, piano,
and harp are in this sense rather more limited (Linjama, 1987: 112). Saariaho has
also used the results of sound colour analysis in transitions, from glissandi, to
arpeggios, to melodic phrases: an example can be seen in the string texture starting
from bar 111. This texture, originally made up of microtonal glissandi, transforms
towards an arpeggio chord. Similarities between the analytical material and the
arpeggios are most evident from bar 127 onwards, as shown in Example 8.8.
Saariaho’s sketches and notes do not indicate the use of such techniques as
orchestral frequency modulation or phase shift, which are typical devices of
composers from the Itinéraire group: Tristan Murail (b. 1947); Gérard Grisey
(1946–98). Likewise, she has not been interested in the technique of orchestral
sound colour modulation (Klangmodulation mit einem Orchester, LeNaour,
1991: 11). In frequency modulation, summation and difference tones are calculated
between pitches. In phase shift, different parts of the spectrum are reinforced and
attenuated over time. Both techniques simulate electronic sound generation and
manipulation processes.17 What Saariaho did instead was to determine the dynamic
characteristics of instruments on the basis of the amplitude values of partials given
by sound colour analysis (Saariaho, 1991: 445).
The unity of timbre and harmony manifests itself in Lichtbogen through
their shared organizational principles. In particular, the sound colour transitions,
which form the basis of harmonies, are instances of Saariaho’s axis of purity

15
  See also Linjama, 1987: 114.
16
  Taken from Saariaho’s sketches and notes, 1985.
17
  See LeBaron and Bouliane, 1980/81: 433, or Wilson, 1988: 45.
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 171

Example 8.7  Lichtbogen – superimposition of textural levels

172 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 8.8  Lichtbogen – texture-derived sound colour analysis

of sound: pure sound (a harmonic tone) and consonance are parallel; noisy
sound (produced on the cello using excessive bow pressure) corresponds with
dissonance. Further, Saariaho combines timbre and harmony by allocating to
harmonic structures the same instrumental articulations from which she derived
the harmonies in the first place: a ‘tense’ chord is played with a noisy sound
colour (Saariaho, 1987: 130).

Musical Ideologies of Timbre and Harmony

Although Saariaho separates sound colour and harmony on a conceptual level,

their organizational principles in Lichtbogen are quite similar. The aesthetic
principle of unity of form and content is behind the search for the unity of timbre
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 173

and harmony (Saariaho, 1987: 124). It is conceivable that this unity is achieved
when the partial structure of a timbre – its internal harmony – corresponds with
harmonic and melodic structures in the composition. In this sense, melodic
and harmonic material is contained within the timbre. This conception of
compositional process as a dialogue between form and content, whilst neither
new nor limited to music, carried great significance as a modernist principle.
Saariaho’s specific source of inspiration for this type of structural thinking
was Kandinsky, who formulated the idea of the unity of form and material in
the following way: ‘Form is the external manifestation of inner meaning’ (in
Saariaho, 1987: 93).
It is rather surprising that Saariaho (writing in 1987) compares her thinking on
timbre and harmony with the structures of functional harmony (see above). Why
would she have felt the need to refer to musical principles so far removed from her
own work? In 1987, there existed a catalogue of music stretching back almost a
hundred years wherein the role of functional harmony had been called into question,
and in which sound colour had taken on a structural function. One only has to
consider the work of Stockhausen, Ligeti or musique concrète, for examples.
The explanation could lie in the aesthetic ideal of unity of form and
content. Theories of harmony that are rooted in the overtone series go back as
far as Pythagoras and his followers. In their system of thought, the numerical
relationships present in harmonic overtones were analogous to the cosmic world
order. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Hermann von Helmholtz’s work
on sound colour established acoustical and physiological connections between
tonal music theory and the overtones produced by musical sounds. More recently,
the central argument in Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style (1972) was that the
formal structures of tonality were not just abstract schemes, but a consequence
of the materials of tonal music (tonal melodies and harmonies). Saariaho’s
reference to functional harmony could therefore be understood as an attempt to
situate her own compositional principles within the larger framework of Western
musical composition. In functional harmony, Saariaho recognized ideals with
which she felt familiar, but as a modernist, she also sought something new: the
roles of harmony and timbre had to be reversed; a revolution. The reference
to functional harmony is thus a reflection of Saariaho’s compositional self-
image. She places herself within the historical continuum of Western musical
composition, but does this in a way that gives rise to a modernist interpretation
of that tradition.
The issue of form and content also articulates Saariaho’s affinity with spectral
composers. Saariaho has never adopted the approaches of integral serialists
and their version of form/content unification: for her, the expansion of serial
organization to encompass musical parameters besides pitch leads to a pointless,
musically meaningless organization; in her world, timbres have qualities that
make them inherently dissonant or consonant (Linjama, 1987: 112). Yet while
Saariaho wishes to distance herself from compositional procedures whose results
are beyond perception, she regards herself as part of a tradition of parametric
174 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

thinking: her music contains networks of simultaneous interpolation processes

between musical parameters.18
Leonard B. Meyer has pointed out this characteristic in integral serial methods
when criticizing Stockhausen’s ideas on the isomorphism of pitch and time (Meyer,
1994: 246 and 270–73). Meyer censured the confusion of phenomena that are
perceptually within different domains: rhythm (time) is a quantity, whereas pitch
is a quality. Composers of the Itinéraire group have found fault with the parametric
thinking of integral serialism, identifying discrepancies between compositional
organization and listener perception. In his manifesto for spectral music, Grisey
wanted to abandon all organizational models that were ‘outside music’ (Grisey,
1991: 298).19 Musical structures should only be based on properties of sound,
rather than taking inspiration from mathematical or physical models.
As such, it would be fair to expect the connections between timbre and harmonic
structure in spectral techniques of instrumental synthesis to be readily perceptible:
this is the crux of spectralist criticism levelled at integral serialism. However, there
are at least two problems. The perception and understanding of timbre is subject to
learning and cultural context: the nature of perception varies between individuals,
and is contingent upon situation. To understand and interpret timbre is an acquired
ability. Instrumental sounds are usually understood holistically, and the perception
of overtones requires that attention is directed specifically to this property. In the
case of harmony, the situation is different. At least for people raised within the
sphere of Western music education, the obvious way of understanding harmony
is rather analytical: harmonies consist of groups of notes (chords) and their
successions (chord progressions). If we characterize different listening strategies
by placing them on an axis from analytical listening to holistic listening, timbre
and harmony seem to occupy opposite positions. To comprehend the connection
between timbre and harmony implied by instrumental synthesis therefore requires
a rather special listening strategy.
Tristan Murail, who has written on the relationship between timbre and
harmony, argues that harmony can refer to any vertical structure of any sonic
phenomenon (Murail, 1984: 158–9). A texture or a timbre that reveals its
harmonic structure in computer analysis can constitute such a phenomenon.
For Murail, timbre and harmony offer alternative descriptions of sonic events.
‘Harmony’ highlights the separateness of components within a sonic structure,
whereas ‘timbre’ directs attention towards the sonic event as a whole. For his part,

18
  Saariaho’s letter to the author, 17 May 1995.
19
  Grisey has crystallized the aesthetic principles of the Itinéraire group as follows:
‘Nous sommes musiciens et notre modèle est le son et non la litérature, le son et non les
mathématiques, le son et non le théatre, les arts plastiques, la physique des quantas, la géologie,
l’astrologie ou l’acupuncture!’ [‘We are musicians and our model is sound, not literature;
sound, not mathematics; sound, not theatre, sculpture, quantum physics, geology, astrology or
acupuncture!’] Grisey wished to abandon all ‘non-musical’ principles of organization. See also
LeBaron and Bouliane, 1980/81: 426; and Baillet, 2000: 39–45.
 Dichotomies, Relationships: Timbre and Harmony in Revolution 175

Helmholtz contended that a sharp distinction between timbre and harmony was
unnecessary, arguing that it is possible to learn to discern the overtone structure of
musical sounds (Helmholtz, 1954: 24). The physical and physiological nature of
timbre and harmony was, according to him, the same. The listener has access to
two different listening strategies, and decides which to prioritize depending upon
his or her intention in each particular case.
The connection between timbre and harmony in instrumental synthesis appears
even more abstract when we consider the fact that the technique often begins with
the observation of sonic events lasting only a few milliseconds. In the analysis of
sound, a ‘sonic microscope’ is used to analyse such minute details; these events
are then transferred to the macro level of harmonies by temporal extension. Also,
the simulation by musical instruments of temporal arrangements of overtones
yields sonic results that are far more complex than the original analysed sounds:
each instrument comes with its own set of overtones. One could therefore argue
that the criticism the Itinéraire group directed towards integral serialism applies
equally to instrumental synthesis: in many ways, timbre is just as abstract when
used to provide formal and aural models for harmony. In Stockhausen’s music,
abstract theoretical constructions are used; in instrumental synthesis, models are
based on empirical observations of the microstructure of timbre. But in both cases,
the principles of construction are beyond the perceptual capabilities of a listener.
Stockhausen’s abstract parameterizations and instrumental synthesis offer two
different solutions to the modernist aesthetic axiom of combining form and content.
That both techniques provide musical results where the constructive principles of
structure are not aurally verifiable is problematic only if such a connection is seen
to be important from the point of view of compositional technique or musical
aesthetics. Saariaho has never tried to bring about recognizable connections
between a timbre and a harmony: the listener does not have to realize that
harmonies are derived from timbres. In fact, there are significant differences
between Saariaho’s approach in Lichtbogen and the instrumental synthesis of the
Itinéraire group. Saariaho approximated the results of sound colour analysis at
several stages, especially in transferring the analytical results into notes from the
tempered scale. Microstructures revealed in the analysis disappear in this process.
The transposition of pitch structures, too, disconnects the resulting harmonies
from the original analysis. Moreover, the results of sound colour analysis are
dependent upon the particular way in which the cello resonates according to its
own formant frequencies. Saariaho modified the analytical results by removing
some intervals – particularly octaves – and by adjusting the octave transpositions
of individual partials.
The connection between timbre and harmony in Lichtbogen is therefore highly
abstract. Harmonic structures are the results of a process that begins with a sound
colour analysis, but these harmonies do not exactly recreate the internal timbral
complexities of the source sound. Saariaho has clearly not aimed at creating a
psycho-acoustically verifiable connection between timbre and harmony, if, indeed,
such a connection were possible in the first place. It would appear that techniques
176 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

taken from instrumental synthesis are more a constructive principle, a particular

way of producing and controlling musical material in a somewhat coherent
fashion. The vistas opened up by the computerized sound analysis developed by
the Itinéraire group function simply as a collection of tools and techniques to
explore musical composition. In her writings, Saariaho never specifies whether it
would be desirable for timbre to act as a model for large-scale harmonic structures.
The three compositions under consideration here were composed within
a period of six years. During this time, Saariaho’s compositional thinking
evolved and developed in significant ways. Im Traume operates with traditional
instruments, with the dichotomy between timbre and harmony played out in
the contrast of articulations, textural definition and sound colour processes.
Computerized sound synthesis and analysis extended Saariaho’s compositional
techniques considerably, also because sound colour analysis was for her a new tool
in generating musical material. In Jardin secret I, she constructed sound colours
and harmonies using similar technical methods. The connection between timbre
and harmony is so fundamental that the conceptual dichotomy dissolves. Finally,
the compositional tools applied in Lichtbogen – the methods of analysing sound
and generating harmony – appear to have been central to many of Saariaho’s
subsequent compositions. The sonic imagery and formation of ensemble gestures,
for example, in Io (1987), Nymphéa (1987), Amers (1992), Solar (1993) and
Graal théâtre (1994) are clearly related to Lichtbogen. It would be an interesting
topic for future study to categorize, or define the prototypes of ensemble gestures
present in these compositions. A kind of impulse-resonance model would certainly
be a possibility: a system in which an impulse, a shock, is followed by a slow
decay; the resultant harmonic material is presented in the repetitive motions of
different instruments. In her later works, the harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary
is significantly different: pulsating rhythms and harmonic structures have their
reference points in a much earlier kind of modernism.
The development of Saariaho’s compositional technique within the six years
considered here has been informed by two important ideas. One was a modernist-
revolutionary way of thinking: the roles of fundamental musical elements in
composition had to be rearranged. The other was the process of research into
the details of sound, and the development and use of new tools and methods: a
blend of theory and practice. Saariaho took part in this development through her
writings and musical compositions. Her interest was not in the purity of methods
or ideologies, but rather in the pursuit of techniques that allowed her to develop
her own expressive language.
 Chapter 9
Networks of Communication:
(De)Crystallization and Perceptual Zoom
in Du cristal
Jon Hargreaves

The idea of networks has obvious import for communication in the internet age.
Central to it is the potential for expansion and flexibility: it is open to perpetual
redefinition. Networks provide a means of conceptualizing, and understanding,
music as communication; considering how networks might be manifest, the effects
they have on perception, and their implications for meaning, can illuminate the
visions, narratives and dialogues at play in Saariaho’s output. One might consider
‘network’ simply to mean ‘a set of connections’ in the sense that it is used here;
just as this composer’s output never ‘refer[s] to pre-established formal structures’
(Saariaho, 1987: 93), no fixed theoretical model is applied. Discussion concerns
the musical, semiotic and philosophical relationships – potential, imagined and
realized – that might be perceived in the listening experience of Du cristal (1989–
90). With a view to appreciating the broad range of meanings it offers listeners,
and the many ways it facilitates communication, various aspects of the piece are
considered in terms of how the composer’s input might relate to what the listener
is enabled to take away from the experience.
Saariaho quotes Kandinsky: ‘“Form is the external manifestation of inner
meaning”’ (ibid.). This is of general interest to those with a regard for her music,
although it is particularly pertinent to a sound-mass piece such as Du cristal –
the notion of ‘tapping-in’ to get at meaning is more than just a pun on the idea
of composition as sculpture (or on telecommunications, for that matter). In this
quotation, musical form is acknowledged as a medium for communication whilst
meaning itself is located elsewhere, and further, that significance lies somehow
‘inside’ form seems to imply that this composer considers music to be meaningful
at the level of content.
‘What is in this piece?’ is worth considering; it is an enormous question, of
course, and may it never be fully answered. Earlier in her article the composer
notes ‘the relationships of harmony and timbre in musical form’ (ibid.; emphasis
my own). Regardless of the parameters in question, the point here is that this
music is made up of relationships, rather than objects. Many of Saariaho’s pre-
compositional materials are dependent for their identity on perceptual synthesis.
To hear them is to recognize a whole transformation rather than a plurality of
178 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

attributes – take, for example, the glissando and multiphonic used as source
materials for Lichtbogen and Nymphéa (Jardin secret III) (Pousset, 2000: 93–4),
or indeed, the timbral trill that ends Du cristal. If pre-compositional decisions
influence later ‘notes-on-the-page’ ones, as their name suggests, then connection
is the very genesis of this music.
All of this is borne out: Saariaho frequently refers to the ‘network’ of interacting
musical parameters within which her works exist (Saariaho, 1987: 94, 97, 104, 107,
124, 132). Note that the pieces themselves are not considered to be networks. Rather,
they consist of superimposed curves of intensity in an external web of continua;
listeners hear the products of networks. Fittingly, in discussing how form might be
the external manifestation of inner meaning, the question ‘what is in this piece?’
leads to answers regarding ‘what this piece is in’. As testament to its significance
and value, Du cristal lies at the cusp of paradox; listeners are often presented with
activity in one parameter, only to find that significance lies in another.
The idea that things might traverse perceptual domains seems very important
to Saariaho. The childhood memories reported by Moisala at the start of her book
involve the stimulation of multiple senses: hearing birdsong, experiencing the
quietness of the house, feeling the warmth of the sun and the enjoying sunlight
(see Moisala, 2009: 1–2, 9). Later in life, studying composition under Heininen
was not merely musical training, but an experience which restored her confidence,
and ‘pulled [her] back to life … all those colours, seeing, hearing, and living in the
intermingling dimensions of all the senses, zooming in and out, making great free
associations; I had been there before’ (ibid.: 6). Clearly this is a person for whom
moments and periods of time can be characterized in multiple ways; the essence
of these memories seems to lie in the combination of sensory experiences. Again,
this evokes notions of internal and external: the senses are the channels through
which the body and mind internalize the outside environment. Cross-modal and
corporeal experiences are clearly of high importance to Saariaho as a composer,
one who became frustrated during her studies at Freiburg because of the emphasis
on intellectual pursuit, ‘“as if it were more important than other experiences,
expressions and ways of life”’ (ibid.: 9).
Embodiment, and the idea of what lies within and without, clearly played a
major role in inspiring Du cristal:

When she was writing Du cristal (From Crystal; 1989) for orchestra, she even
felt the powerful, physical presence of the musicians. At the time, she was
expecting her first child, and she became aware of having two hearts beating
inside her body, at first one of them beating much faster than the other. Over the
course of time, the heartbeat of the unborn child grows and slows down until the
two hearts have almost the same beat. In Du cristal the fast heartbeats became
the ticking pulse played by a triangle, accompanied by a much slower, low pulse
played by a timpani or bass drum. Toward the end of the composition, the fast
pulse becomes slower and eventually finds the same rhythm with the low pulse
(Moisala, 2009: 35).
 Networks of Communication 179

A narrative such as this is particularly interesting from the point of view of

communication. The eventual coincidence of the crotale (in place of the triangle)
and the bass drum at figure MM marks the end of the work, generating a feeling of
closure: the instruments fall into phase with one another before the famous timbral
trill in the cello leads into …à la fumée. This musical pattern is clearly appreciable,
although surely only highly primed listeners would recognize its biographical
connotations. The waves of the Pacific Ocean were another source of inspiration
(ibid.: 35–6), although, again, this plays a rather mercurial role in communication.
It is impossible to account for the listening history and knowledge of every person
who hears this music. Therefore, the focus of this chapter is on considering the
communication process from an analytical perspective: the subject for debate is
the information offered by the listening experience called Du cristal.
The names of many of Saariaho’s works bring together aesthetic beauty and
empirical study; often, they evoke literary or poetic imagery, as well as fascinating
phenomena for scientific study. The diptych Du cristal …à la fumée is certainly no
exception. Indeed, it is emblematic of this tendency: the title is an adaptation of the
cellular biologist and philosopher Henri Atlan’s essay, Entre le cristal et la fumée
(1979). According to him, all living organisms lie between two forms of death,
which correspond to smoke and crystal: ‘entre le fantôme et le cadavre’ [‘between
the ghost and the corpse’] (Atlan, 1979: 5). The book itself examines how living
cells self-organize, growing into complex systems as they multiply. Whereas from
a Darwinian perspective this growth is directed towards an end product, Atlan
argues that there are many more processes at play from the perspective of an
individual cell; for every development contributing to the chain of events that
results in the full organism, there are many other developments that do not. Thus,
the internal redundancy, or the ‘noise’ within a system – those events that do not
lead directly to the end goal – plays a huge part in the self-organization process
(see Batt, 1994: 44–6).
Atlan’s book in general, particularly the idea that noise might generate
meaning, but also the implications of his thought for temporality (the blurring
of linear cause and effect), resonates strongly with Saariaho’s music. Indeed, the
notion of a continuum with a solid and a gas at either end finds analogy with
the sound/noise axis. More pertinently, however, the adaptation of Atlan’s title
suggests that this diptych presents a single musical process: notionally, there is a
change from crystal (Du cristal, bar 1) to smoke (…à la fumée, double bar-line).
Indeed there is a sense of dialogue between the two pieces: the same materials are
subjected to contrasted formal processes, concerning integration (Du cristal) and
disintegration (…à la fumée) (see Metzer, 2009: 182–95). The two works can be
played separately, however, as well as forming a diptych. Nieminen quotes the
composer: ‘“To my way of thinking, Du cristal …à la fumée is a single work,
two facets of the same image, but both fully drawn in, living, and independent.”’1

1
 CD liner notes for Kaija Saariaho: Du cristal …à la fumée, Sept Papillons,
Nymphéa, Ondine, ODE 1047–2.
180 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Rather than discussing the nature of this contrasted pairing, the present chapter
is focused on the first work of the diptych only, in an attempt to consider the
communication process in depth. With that in mind, it is important not to forget
that, in so many ways, this music has its origins in the living body. It is fitting
therefore, to consider the immediate sensory impact of Du cristal.

From Crystal …

The evocative power of ‘crystal’ enables a wealth of information to be communicated

at the very opening moment of Du cristal. The network of associations facilitated
by the first sound play a primarily important role in bringing about the immediacy
with which this music communicates; instantly, for listeners primed by the title,
this chord sounds like crystal is thought of. The semiosis is simple: for a long
time, such ‘washes’ of sound as this have been associated with light and colour.
However, as Adlington points out, there is subtlety at play here: the orchestral
palette of Du cristal presents a spectrum of brightness, and the music occupies
positions between its two extremes – the bright triangle and glockenspiel, and the
dark bass drum (Adlington, 2003: 316). The simultaneous presence of different
‘shades’ within the palette enhances the visual metaphor: listeners are presented
with a deconstruction of light, rather than a mere representation of it – a musical
luminescence that transforms and evolves as the relative intensities of particular
shades are altered. Alongside and within this, ‘crystal’ connotes clarity and purity,
and the profile of this chord finds some analogy with those connotations in terms
of pitch and orchestration.
In terms of orchestration, the overall timbre becomes blended as the energy
of the initial impact fades. There are three bands of primary orchestral colour –
woodwind, brass and strings, each supported by percussion – and although the
high-pitched woodwind maintains its purity, the lower-register brass and strings
are mixed together. Paradoxically, the dissolution of this momentarily clear
division and homogeneity shows the composer’s intention to communicate notions
of clarity and purity; those ideas are expressed as points of departure, through the
introduction of impurity and blurring.
Another striking characteristic of this sonority is its pitch content. In
accordance with its banded orchestration, distinct and homogenous ‘intervallic
regions’ can be identified, as shown in Example 9.1. Each of these regions
radiates potential for tonal references, which are transitorily suggested, although
not realized, as different parts of the chord intensify. The perceptual effect is that
listeners can hear the chord ‘rotating’ in real time; various collectional affinities
are hinted at as tonal colours emerge and fade. This facilitates proliferate
and immediate musical communication. Given the historical importance of
tonality in Western art music, Saariaho presents a wide range of listeners with
a sound term with which they are in some sense well-acquainted, despite its
novelty; paradoxically, this distinctive sound is a mechanism for experiencing
 Networks of Communication 181

Example 9.1  Du cristal – opening chord

182 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

familiarity. Thus, at the outset, the piece presents an extremely clear, intriguing
and accessible idea, which illuminates the ensuing musical process. Given the
high regard this composer has for tonality (Saariaho, 1987: 94), tonal hearing is
clearly something she intends and invites her listeners to experience. Even more
information is transmitted by this distribution of pitches if it is considered from
a spectral point of view, however.
Within a ‘spectral chord’, one of the notes is presented as the fundamental,
implying that it projects a harmonic spectrum into which the other ones are
subsumed. Thus, the non-fundamental pitches represent, or, put more positively,
emphasize, different partials within that field of resonance. By implication,
therefore, when listened to spectrally, Example 9.1 is experienced as a single
composite sonority rather than as a vertical combination of intervals. Considering
the levels at which these pitches intersect each other’s harmonic spectra provides
a particular point of interest.
Despite notionally being subsumed by the spectrum of the fundamental, D@, in
actual fact, each note of the chord projects its own field of resonance – the mind
synthesizes these such that a single overall sound is heard. Thus, each pitch could
be considered to embody a particular, numbered <fundamental : distinct partial>
relationship with every other; C is the third partial of F, for example, where B@ is
the 45th partial of E.2 In a sense, this sonority is a network of intersecting harmonic
fields, because these relationships happen simultaneously. Notably, this is an all-
interval, and thus by definition an ‘all-overtone’ chord, which implies that all 24 of
these possible intersections are represented. In the first bar of the score, however,
only 23 out of those 24 intersections are realized; it is not until B¼# is added in the
second bar that the set is complete.
This kind of analysis reveals how the opening of Du cristal exploits the
qualities of the harmonic series, although it does not, perhaps, directly clarify
the communication process. Rare indeed is the listener who comments
authoritatively on the distribution of partial relationships on hearing this work,
and surely nobody would hear the first bar as incomplete, merely because a single
intersection is not realized. However, at some point Saariaho must have taken
a conscious decision to include the B¼#; indeed, the special importance of that
pitch is illustrated by its delayed entry. Notionally, the completion of the set of
<fundamental : distinct partial> intersections ensures that the sonority is wholly
integrated – a kind of spectral lattice. Evidently, despite the imperceptibility
of some of its details, spectral technique plays a role in the communication
process. The idea of integration seems to underpin the compositional thinking
at this opening moment, as is borne out by the spectral characteristics and other
manifestations of homogeneity explained above. It is surely significant that
Du cristal starts with an intervallically and spectrally ‘sealed’ sonority, since
this implies purity and clarity, qualities widely associated with crystals. By

2
 Harmonic numbers refer to the spectrum within the 24-step octave used by Saariaho
in Du cristal.
 Networks of Communication 183

implication, as the work continues and the chord is transformed, things can
only become less pure, less clear and less integrated – after all, this piece comes
from crystal, and moves towards smoke. From a less poetic viewpoint, self-
containment and ‘fixedness’ are central features of the physical structure of
crystals, as explained below.

Crystals and (De)Crystallization

Crystal. A solid with a regular polyhedral shape. All crystals of the same substance
grow so that they have the same angles between their faces. However, they may not
have the same external appearance because different faces can grow at different
rates, depending on the conditions. The external form of the crystal is referred to as
the crystal habit. The atoms, ions, or molecules forming the crystal have a regular
arrangement and this is the crystal structure.3

Crystal. Homogenous solid body of chemical element, compound or isomorphous

mixture having a regular atomic lattice arrangement that may be shown by crystal
faces.4

These definitions provide the same basic information, although there is a slight
difference: in the first, externally observable form is emphasized to a greater
extent than in the second. That subtle difference highlights their pertinence
to this music-analytic chapter: the defining attributes of crystals regard their
composition both at a large-scale, macro-level, and at the molecular micro-
level. The analogy is particularly strong with spectrally conceived music: just
as the eye sees the crystal habit rather than its underlying lattice structure, so
the ear hears a sound rather than a differentiated distribution of partials. The
idea that the first chord of Du cristal forms a kind of spectral lattice is hinted
at above. Theoretically, an imperceptibly complete set of spectral bonds holds
the chord together, just as the microscopic atoms in a crystal structure maintain
fixed relative spatial positions. That regular arrangement of molecules arises
as the unit-cell pattern repeats, generating symmetry in all dimensions, and in
turn that replication implies a process of growth. This is of particular interest to
the musically minded, because it suggests that crystal forms (as products) are
determined by the growth of their content (a process).
Named for Atlan’s essay on self-organization, Du cristal is not merely concerned
with evolution of musical material, but with evolution itself; as different aspects of
sounds intensify, different kinds of transformation are exposed. Thus, it presents

3
  Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry (4th edn), ed. John Daintith, 2000: 158.
4
  Chambers Dictionary of Science and Technology, ed. Peter Walker, 1999: 286.
(Other definitions are offered in electronics, glass and botany, although this one is the most
pertinent here.)
184 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

an ongoing relationship in which content emerges from formation, rather than

merely a process in which form emerges from content. With a view to discussing
how this is achieved, it is worth briefly considering the process in which crystals
are formed.
Crystallization is a change in the state of matter (‘phase’) resulting in the
formation of solid crystals, which occurs as the intensity of the energy applied
to a liquid (or sometimes, a gas) is varied. However, the process is not quite
as straightforwardly directed as this might suggest. ‘Interfaces’ – boundaries
separating the two phases of the medium – develop, located at (and constituted
by) the meeting points between solid crystal and the liquid solution in which
it is growing. As this continues, of course, the interfaces become larger until
the solution has yielded the maximum amount of crystal possible under the
conditions. Two related processes occur at the interfaces: in one – nucleation
– molecules cluster together, as the respective concentration levels of the
solute and solvent settle; in the other, some of these clusters reach a point of
critical mass, and become solid, as crystal growth occurs. Thus, in line with
Atlan’s explanation of the growth of living cells, dissolution is as inherent as
solidification to this process, as many nuclei fail to crystallize. This means that
there is an in-built resistance to the prevailing temporal momentum; overall, the
process could be thought of as ‘(de)crystallization’.5
The purpose here is not to propose a programme for the unfolding of form
in Du cristal, such that individual events relate to specific developments in
the formation of a crystal; the metaphor is more general. Taken as a whole,
Du cristal presents listeners with an uninterrupted 16-minute sound, different
parts of which come to prominence at different times. This gives the impression
that things emerge out of, and recede into, the composite sonority, just as
molecules solidify and dissolve in a crystallizing medium. In accordance with
Saariaho’s predisposition towards cross-sensory experiences, a useful metaphor
for the overall listening experience offered by Du cristal is that of watching
crystallization. There are a number of potential points of interest for the observer,
therefore, and as the eye follows activity in different parts of the medium,
attention might be more or less focused on different levels of detail. At times,
observers might attend to the evolution of small-scale clusters of molecules,
which combine to form interfaces; alternatively, the focus might be on larger-
scale shapes and patterns in the development of such an interface; and at other
times, the observer might perceptually ‘step back’ from the microscopic focus
to observe larger-scale patterns affecting the appearance of the medium as a
whole. In considering the auditory perception of this music, one might consider
analogies to that visual experience. As the eye can observe crystallization at a
number of levels, so can the ear hear Du cristal.

5
  See Rhodes, 2006: 38–9; and Callister and Rethwisch, 2010: 46–7 and 344–5, for
more information on crystal structures.
 Networks of Communication 185

Crystallizing Networks of Time and Space

The ideas above have important implications for the communication of notions
of time and space, as they suggest that this piece is an environment within which
listeners occupy different positions, and within which they might focus their
attention in different ‘directions’. This is quite distinct from imagining music to
be an object moving across a temporal field as it progresses from its beginning to
its end. To lend weight to this argument, it should be shown that the conventional
narrative passage from start to finish is somehow broken down.
The notion of progression from one moment to the next is brought into question
at the very outset of Du cristal, because, as mentioned above, different parts of
the sustained opening chord intensify independently. As they do so, the various
bodies within the overall sound can be perceived to infiltrate, to be subsumed by,
and to emerge from one another – their timbral and harmonic similarities give rise
to perceptual ‘connections’. For example, in the passage shown in Example 9.1,
the bass drum and timpani roll seems to protrude from the overall sound-mass,
just as the repeated triangle strikes ‘grow’ out of the high-register woodwind;
similarly, the horns’ surge in bar 2 sets the harder-edged brass sound of the
trumpets and trombones into relief. This obstructs any conventional sense that the
music is moving; rather than the passage of time being marked by recognizably
separate ideas, there is a single musical object here, which, in essence, remains
static. Further, the points of connection between the constituent parts of the overall
sonority can be manifest within different frameworks; a sound that initially brings
about contrast in terms of pitch might find a close timbral relation with another
sonority, to the extent that they might be perceptually grouped together. This can
be made clearer in a simplistic, abstract example.
Each of the circles in Example 9.2 represents a distinct part of the composite
sonority of Du cristal at a single point in time. As shown, they all have a
timbral, and most have a harmonic, aspect, each of which may be perceived as
the prevailing, identity-defining characteristic. Theoretically, therefore, either
of those qualities might form the basis for a perceptible relationship with the
surrounding parts of the work. Thus, listeners are enabled to perceive multiple
narrative routes through the form; this is a perceptual network, rather than a
linear, channelled progression (see Example 9.2). An example of the subtlety at
play in Du cristal is that the distinctions between its parts are blurred, and not
heard in so heavily structurally articulated a fashion as this diagram suggests.
However, the underlying principle still stands. The behaviour and characteristics
of particular parts of the overall sound-mass offer listeners multiple ways –
harmonic, timbral, amplitudinal change, or a higher-order combination of these
and others – of perceptually grouping the whole; just as, for molecules in a
crystallizing medium, connections might be made in various dimensions.
The conception shown in Example 9.2 has two interrelated implications for
perception, the first being the reining in of temporal momentum. Theoretically,
the multiplicity of ways a listener can ‘navigate’ from one moment in time to the
186 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 9.2  Perceptual network of harmony and timbre

next breaks down the sense that there is a single, channelled narrative. Thus, the
overall impetus is controlled by the composer, and drastically slowed down. The
basic material of the piece is static: a gradually, albeit at times suddenly evolving
sound-mass. Thus, the principal point of interest is located in the evolution of
given aspects of that composite sonority, rather than in deeper-rooted changes to
the mass itself. Saariaho’s concern to imbue formal dynamism with significance
(Saariaho, 1987: 94) ensures that such fundamental, global-level changes do
occur, although because they are so severely protracted, listeners hear differences
develop within an object rather than changes of object; the nature of perception
is spatial, rather than temporal.
The second implication of this multi-directional conception of time, with its
attendant lack of momentum, is that, metaphorically, Du cristal invites listeners
to mediate between changeable spatial ‘positions’ in relation to the musical
surface. As Example 9.2 shows, there is an emphasis on changes in the perceptual
frame in which sounds are perceived, be it harmonic, timbral or otherwise. The
fluid connections between different parts of the texture give rise to a situation in
which a single sound might be related to its surroundings because of its pitch at
one moment, and its timbre at the next. Thus, as transformations of the identity
of sounds are perceived, it is the frame in which listeners place information
that is altered, rather than the sounds themselves; notionally, the viewpoint
of the observer has changed, rather than the observed. Arguably, as the form
progresses, listeners mediate between different perceptual positions relative to
the musical material.
 Networks of Communication 187

Perceptual Zoom

Textural Hierarchy and Orchestrational Relief

The manipulation of listener perspective arises because the blurring of structural

hierarchy plays so intrinsic a role in how Du cristal communicates. As the identities
of sounds are continually recast, the perceptual unit is in constant flux, shifting
from one structural level to another. Indeed, insofar as a basis for constancy in
perceiving this work is possible, it consists of a flexible framework, which changes
alongside the relationship between what is texturally fundamental and ornamental.
At any given point in time, the composite sonority of Du cristal might be broken
down on three levels:

1. Details arising from single instrumental parts

2. Mid-level groups of sounds, which together subscribe to a single composite
identity
3. Sustained, background sonority.

Necessarily, this framework is loosely defined in order that it can be re-

contextualized and realized in diverse ways; effectively, it merely spells out
the notion that there is low-, mid- and high-level activity. However, such
approximation lies at the core of Du cristal. The list above implies a fluid
continuum through which materials move, rather than a rigid hierarchical
framework in which all materials have a fixed place: repeatedly, textural details
multiply, forming mid-level groups that may or may not grow to infiltrate and
pervade the background sonority. In fact, the smoothing over of these divisions
is the very process that constitutes Du cristal. Thus, the continual breaking down
of the distinctions named above is the mechanism through which this piece
communicates: just as molecules cluster together as interfaces in a crystallizing
medium, so minute musical changes might affect the behaviour of, or indeed
grow to become, larger-scale materials.
An implication of this disintegration of textural hierarchy is that not every
level may be apparent at all times. For example, the seemingly empty soundscape
at figure H seems initially to consist only of a background (see Example 9.3
overleaf). On closer inspection, it is clear that this is not merely a static sonority.
There are foreground details: the harmonic glissandi create undulations in the
composite sound, which are perceptible as a mid-level group. Thus, even at this
point, the hierarchy is not completely flat, although the perceptual levels are
clearly closer together than in the preceding environment, where the distinction
between foreground events and the more slowly evolving background state can
be heard. By implication therefore, the composer can manipulate the perception
of textural depth by controlling the extent to which the various parts of the
texture differ (be it in terms of rate of change, amplitude, timbre, pitch/register
and so on).
188 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 9.3  Du cristal – ‘empty soundscape’, figure H

 Networks of Communication 189

Subject Position and Perceptual Zoom

When listening to Renaissance choral music of, say, Victoria or Palestrina, it is

common for individuals to switch between two types of hearing in the course
of a performance: some of the time, they follow the counterpoint, and at other
times, they allow themselves to be absorbed by the musical aura as it fills the
acoustic space. The difference concerns listeners’ notional ‘position’ relative to the
musical surface. Hearing an aura, they might be considered to be inside the music,
as it flows around them.6 By contrast, when tracking contrapuntal voices, the
situation is more akin to their being located outside a musical object, observing the
relationships between its parts: to perceive lines moving together through musical
time and space is unintentionally to negotiate for oneself a position which is not on
any of the paths they follow. The distinction between these two ‘subject positions’
(Clarke, 2005: 91–125) lies in the extent to which listeners differentiate between
parts of the composite sonority. Arguably, this also applies to the perception of
noise as opposed to delineated harmony. Despite stylistic differences, contrapuntal
and ‘aural’ hearings of sixteenth-century counterpoint are related to the conflation
of harmony and timbre.
Perceptions of Du cristal might be considered to tend towards two kinds:
‘harmonic listening’, which is akin to tracing counterpoint, as listeners actively
discern concurrent parts of the sonority; and ‘timbral listening’, in which they
do not. These labels, of course, represent the extremes of a continuum; rarely is
perception purely of one kind or the other. To contend that particular textures lead
to particular kinds of hearing would be a failure to recognize the sophistication
at play in musical perception, on two counts. First, listeners might elect to hear
something as harmonic rather than timbral, or vice versa (for example, the
pitch content and the orchestration of the first chord of Du cristal are discussed
separately); the identifying characteristics of a given sonority are the product of
subjective judgement. Second, musical materials might invite (rather than require)
a particular kind of hearing. For example, the imitative entries in Palestrina invite
comparison based on the similarities of their pitch organization; other, less-
imitative passages of the same music might invite a timbral hearing more readily.
The way musical textures are heard is the product of an interaction between the
disposition of the listener and the characteristics of the material in question.
Resultantly, the very same sonority might be heard from either perspective.
The graph in Example 9.4 overleaf shows how listeners might perceive texture
in Saariaho’s music. It is not intended as an index for perception, but merely as an
expression of the ideas discussed above. The horizontal axis shows hypothetical
musical textures, ordered according to how they present the relationship between
background sonority and foreground detail: in the middle, there is parity between
what is fundamental and what is ornamental (in a solo melody, every note counts

6
  Indeed, the etymological roots of ‘aura’ lie in the Latin and Greek for ‘wind’ or
‘breeze’.
190 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 9.4 Orchestrational relief ‘graph’

 Networks of Communication 191

as it constitutes the entire sonority until the next note takes its place); further out
in either direction, the named textures are more readily divisible into detail and
underlying substance. Thus, at either end, the background is further back, and the
foreground is closer to the front. Notice also the circularity: ‘sustained chord’ and
‘sustained timbre’ could well refer to the same musical material, heard from a
different perspective.
The curves populating the graph exist simultaneously, representing timbral
and harmonic perceptions of the same musical environment (or, in the latter
case, harmonic material). Depending on the conditions, the sounds heard might
prompt a listener’s perception to jump vertically (or to skip horizontally across)
to the equivalent position on the other curve. For example, an individual might
be attending to the relative smoothness of a micropolyphonic texture, before
suddenly focusing on its pitch content due to a change elsewhere in the overall
sonority; on this graph, that listener would have ‘switched’ from the dotted to the
unbroken curve.
There are two more things to note here, relating to the perception of textural
depth, which in turn gives rise to the impression that things protrude from, or sink
back into, the musical surface. First, the composite sonority invites varying levels of
differentiation at separate times. For example, the texture might consist of sustained
string harmonics and bass drones, less sustained mid-register chords played by
brass, and an oscillating texture arising out of scalar figures in the woodwind. These
three ‘layers’ of sound correspond to background, middleground and foreground,
each one implying a different subject position. Elsewhere in the score, there may be
no background sonority, and elsewhere still there may only be a foreground melody.
Thus, the texture is invested with variable depth. This is certainly not unique to Du
cristal, although, arguably, the textural manipulation here turns the metamorphoses
between these ‘auditory scenes’ into meaningful processes. One might think of the
(fluid) textural hierarchy as being inflated and deflated.
Second, as musical materials grow from timbral detail to textural characteristic
or sustained chord, theoretically, listeners’ perceptions move from left to right
along the curves on the graph. Thus, subject position can be manipulated: as the
status of detail changes, listeners are invited to zoom in, or to zoom out and survey
things occurring over longer time spans at the background.7 Speculative though all
this may seem it is clear at first hearing that the process by which materials emerge
into the foreground and/or recede back again plays an important part in Du cristal
as a whole.

7
  Herein lies the relationship between tonal background structures and the kind of
textural background discussed here – in both cases the allusion to depth represents the
observation that certain patterns and cycles move more slowly than those around them;
listeners have to stand back (or zoom out) to take in all of the information. Just as sentences
are read from left to right, pages from top to bottom and books from front to back, so (in
essence) melodic movement is horizontal, harmony is vertical, and tonality implies a third
spatial dimension – depth.
192 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Observing Form; Forming Observation

To perceive musical form is to take a fixed perspective on sound events, such that
they can be understood to belong to a single pattern. Thus, it may seem paradoxical
to consider global unity, having discussed the continual renegotiation of subject
position in (or by) Du cristal. However, changes in the viewpoint of the observer
do not necessarily imply a lack of large-scale changes within the observed. The
perception of form usually implies the division of a stream of information into large-,
mid-, and small-scale sections and units, such that lower-level events are contained
on the next level up. The process of perceiving such global order is deliberately
confused in Du cristal, in two important ways. First, because listeners are presented
with a number of independent routes through the piece concurrently, there is no
single, form-defining narrative; the music is different for different people. Second,
the grouping together of discrete low-level events into units is disrupted; listeners
can easily perceive the growth of textural details as they pervade the background
sonority. Thus, the outlines of the underlying patterns are masked.
The problem of form boils down to the sheer volume of transformations occurring
at any one time in Du cristal. As Metzer puts it, ‘when sound incessantly changes
and music zips back and forth across a broad continuum, it becomes impossible to
insist upon specific positions and roles’ (Metzer, 2009: 185). Commentators have
taken different approaches to addressing this problem. Brech (1999) separates out
structural levels and explains activity on each one in minute detail, although this
leads her continually to qualify exceptions to that structural index. Pousset (2000)
takes the opposite approach, citing an introduction-plus-ternary shape at the highest
level. Rather than discussing details, he simply cites Stoïanova, who explains that
the piece ‘already contains an entire network of internal relations and temporal
equilibria of sonic materials and processes’ (Stoïanova, 1994, cited in Pousset, 2000:
100). The section divisions given by Metzer and Pousset are shown in Example 9.5.8
In all music, form is constituted by interactions between different parameters,
and this is made aurally apparent here; there is an ongoing competition for
prevalence. Clearly, Metzer and Pousset consider different aspects of the sonority
to predominate at different times within the form, given their section divisions;
overall, activity in no single domain holds any more significance than that in any
other. There are many ways of ‘measuring’ Du cristal besides those shown in
the table, although it suffices here to consider tempo, pitch and textural patterns.
Tempo is the most easily quantifiable of the three, and is discussed first.

8
  In the table, ‘M’ and ‘P’ refer to Metzer’s and Pousset’s analyses. Metzer identifies
his sections with bar numbers, whereas Pousset divides the score at 3’, 8’ and 14’. These
are allocated to the nearest rehearsal figure. Timings are taken from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s
recording (on CD Kaija Saariaho: Du cristal …à la fumée, Sept Papillons, Nymphéa,
Ondine, ODE 1047–2). ‘Infinite melodies’ describes pointillistic, register-traversing melodic
figurations scored for ‘clear metallic timbres’ (synthesizer, glockenspiel, vibraphone and
piano); this label originates from the composer herself (see Metzer, 2009: 189).
 Networks of Communication 193

Example 9.5  Du cristal – formal outlines

Analyses Tempo ‘Bass Description of Events
Fig Bar Time
M P (bpm) Pitch’ (Texture)
– 1 0:00 50 D@ Opening chord melts on repetition
A 12 0:48 60 D@ Opening chord has melted
B 19 1:02 I C# Solo violin breaks away from chord
N
C 27 1:26 C# (&C) Decay of W-wind lines join violin
T
D 35 1:47 C# (&C) first chord Hiatus: violins trill
R
E 39 2:01 O C¼# Oscillating w-wind texture
F 49 2:20 C¼#–G# ‘Infinite melodies’ enter
G 59 2:38 A (rit.) D Percussion throbs form aftermath of chord
H 65 3:01 48 D@–D¼@ ‘Empty’ string harmonic sound-scape
I 78 4:00 D¼@ ‘Infinite melodies’ enter
Occupation
J 88 4:22 B¼# W-wind occupy sound-scape, picc. solo
of abyss
K 94 4:39 (accel.) A Piano & low strings enter: wide intervals
L 101 5:01 60 (rit.) A@–D Strings ‘noise’ intensifies as flutes enter
A
M 108 5:19 48 D@ Chords alternate in hns and tpts/tbns
Hn./tpt.
N 122 6:06 D@ Cresc. as w-wind join strings’ trills
antiphony
O 131 6:36
bar (accel.) C¼# ‘Pointillist’ synth. interjections begin
126
P 142 7:11 60 C Division Timps erupt into solo material
Q 155 7:33 n/a of tutti Fls gliss. announces block-like texture
R 169 7:58 n/a fff strings herald new section of timp. solo
Timp. solo
S 183 8:26 48; 72 G@ Vast strings chord; gliss. clears pitch space
T 191 8:53 60 C#–A–F# Hiatus: oboes feature
U 201 9:16 G@ W-wind trilling & scalar oscillations
V 209 9:30 F# Timps & percussion intensify
W 218 9:50 F Tutti Trills & pulsations intensify behind perc.
B pulsations
X 227 10:02 74 A Tutti pulsation (full chromatic chord)
and rhythmic
Y 237 10:15 (rit.) A-C¼# Pulsations recede into strings gliss.
cycles
Z 250 10:39 B 60 C¼# Repeating mobiles come to fore
AA 261 11:02 C¼# Drums at apex of cresc. as flutes enter
BB 268 11:14 C¼# Drums cease; muted horn pulsations
CC 278 11:35 44 B¼@–A# Hiatus: vl. solo & w-wind scalar lines
DD 283 11:52 A¼#–A Stasis: flute ‘leads’ new chords
EE 291 12:16 B¼@–A# Flute-led stasis (harp & piano enter)
FF 300 12:45 D@
Alterations Tutti chord (prominent minor triad; stasis)
to tutti
GG 308 13:12 D–G Bell texture comes to foreground
‘medium’
HH 315 13:38 74 D@ Chord repeated; w-wind texture pulsates
II 323 13:58 D W-wind pulsations become lines
JJ 330 14:12 60 D@ Percussion eruption
A
KK 342 14:35 44 D@ Hiatus: ‘empty’ string sound-scape
LL 348 15:04 A1 D@ Pulsations within string sound-scape
Occupation
MM 354 15:32 D@ Bass drum & crotale enter
of abyss
NN 364 16:16 D@ Crotale and bass drum coincide, vc. trill
End 368 16:36 D@–(E@) Vc. timbral trill fades/leads to …à la fumée
194 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Tempo: Pulse Paths

The metronome marks given in the score form a network, consisting of three ‘pulse
paths’, through 60 bpm, which functions as a connecting hub (see Example 9.6).
This is not merely a convenient arrangement of numbers – it bears relation to the
compositional decisions taken by Saariaho. As shown in Example 9.5, there are
three clearly defined sections corresponding to these pulse paths. This would seem
to support Pousset’s introduction-plus-ternary-form assertion, since the first three
minutes of the form follow the 50:60 pulse path, and are thus set apart. However,
there is no recurrence of the 48:60:72 path to provide closure for the ternary shape.
Instead, the 44:60:74 path is engaged at figure T. Thus, purely in terms of tempo, this
is an expanding, open form: not only is there a lack of large-scale recurrence, but, as
time goes on, the difference between slow, medium and fast tempi grows.

Example 9.6  Du cristal – tempo network

Changes between pulse paths occur at points of rest or stability in other

parameters: at the onset of 48 bpm at figure H, the musical texture is made up of an
empty soundscape, and although D@ itself does not return, its approximate recurrence
(D¼@) is surely significant. Similarly, the switch to the 44:60:74 path (figure T) is
marked by relative stasis: a feature is made of the oboes within an overall hiatus.
It could be argued that this third pulse path is not actually engaged until figure X,
where it peaks at 74 bpm (60 bpm is common to all three paths). However, the tutti
pulsations suggest significant interaction between parameters at that point.
Within each of the three tempo-defined sections of the work, there are two peaks,
which, with their attendant troughs, seem to coincide with other significant events.
As a rule, the high points in the tempo curve correspond to those in other parameters,
that correlation being strongest towards the middle of the form: figures L, P, and X
all mark increases in tempo as well as points of textural intensification. At either
end of the work however, such structural markers do not coincide. For example,
the woodwind pulsations at figure HH are characterized by relaxation rather than
arousal, which is eventually provided by the sudden percussion eruption at JJ, the
mid-point in an overall slowing down. The troughs within the tempo curve seem to
concur with points of repose overall, for example at figures H, S, CC and KK. There
 Networks of Communication 195

are exceptions again, however; for example, with the return of 48 bpm at figure
M comes a more intense sonority. In addition to these textural effects, it is notable
that decreases in tempo seem to mark points of both activity and inactivity in pitch
patterns: the ‘bass pitch’ is stable at figures H, M, Z, JJ and KK, for instance.

Pitch: Shifting Grounds and Figures

‘[T]he tonal system is, in [Saariaho’s] own experience, the most effective means of
using harmony to construct and control dynamic musical forms’ (Saariaho, 1987:
94), and indeed the large-scale pitch pattern in Du cristal extends this reference; this
piece could be thought of as being ‘about’ the return to D@ (or one of its microtonal
approximates, D¼@ or C¼#). A number of features contribute to the feeling of tonal
centricity in general, and particularly on that pitch:

1. Du cristal begins and ends with D@ as the spectral fundamental.

2. The first two instances that the ‘bass pitch’ departs D@, A@ (V of D@) is used as
a staging point before returning.
3. D@ (or its equivalent), is by far the most ‘stable’, or sustained, pitch to be used
as a fundamental.
4. The most significant departure from D@ comes at figure S, where the tonally
related G@ has prominence.
5. The significance of G@ is established within 30 seconds of its establishment
as the bass note, as it is departed from, and returned to, passing through an
F#-minor triad.

It is no great surprise that there is more than a hint of tonal reference in this post-
spectral work, given the basic characteristics of the harmonic series (together, the
fundamental and partials two to six form a major chord). Therefore, regarding
communication between composer and listeners, it is all the more crucial to consider
the extent to which this is intentionally played upon. As well as intimations of large-
scale tonal shape, there are more direct, smaller-scale allusions. Soon after the start
of the ‘G@ episode’ there are clear references to functional chords in that key (see
Example 9.7 overleaf).
Such ‘tonal’ sonorities can sometimes be heard on the surface, although to consider
small-scale tension and release as a structurally bonding force is to deny a great deal
of the sophistication of pitch organization in Du cristal. An important difference
between the functionality of tonal centres and the implications arising from spectral
fundamentals is that where the former divide and direct time, the latter are primarily
spatial, serving to reconfigure the harmonic environment as they project fields of
resonance. At the background, movement between pitches forms a shape; at more
immediately perceptible levels, the manner in which pitch space is occupied shapes
the form.
Dynamic patterns of tension and release are brought about in Du cristal
because of patterns of distribution and density in pitch organization. Example 9.8
196 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 9.7  Du cristal – ‘tonal’ sonorities at figure U

 Networks of Communication 197

Example 9.8  Du cristal – reduction of pitch content, opening to figure E

*This B, an artificial harmonic, sounds two octaves higher than written here.

shows a reduction of the pitch content from the opening as far as figure E. Overall,
the process is one of thinning out to the sparsely accompanied trill after figure
D, although prior to that moment, the space is populated more densely, peaking
at figure B. The analogy with crystallization and changes in the state of matter is
fairly obvious: as microtones are added, pitches cluster together; the corollary is
that the clear outline and spatial distribution of the opening chord gradually melts.
Example 9.8 shows how the occupation of pitch space shapes moment-to-
moment continuity at the outset of Du cristal; evidence that this kind of thinking
is influential at higher structural levels can be seen in the passage between figures
R and Y. Example 9.9 overleaf shows the vertical sonority heard at each rehearsal
figure between those points; note that the absence of microtones allows for a
cumulative process which culminates in the presentation of the total chromatic
at figure X. The theoretical implication is that filters alter the ‘resolution’ – the
size of gradation – according to which the octave is divided; only certain pitches
are allowed through onto the score. A hypothetical list of these is given below:

1. Overtone-rich noise
2. Microtonal aggregates
3. The chromatic scale
4. Aggregates from other collections (diatonic, pentatonic, etc.)
5. Single fundamentals.
198 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Example 9.9  Du cristal – vertical sonorities at figures R to Y

If the 16-minute sound of Du cristal is considered to be a figure, then its pitch

content is perceived against the grounds named above. The list in itself implies
levels of zoom, naming a set of frames in which the sounds of the piece might be
perceived to be contained. To hear the ‘bass notes’ themselves as moving on one
hand implies a more zoomed-out frame still, in which harmonic, (referentially
tonal) centres move around. On the other hand, a change of spectral fundamental
implies not movement but change – that the texture is resonating in a different way,
rather than that a new step has been taken. Thus, pitch organization contributes
to the fusion of harmonic and timbral hearings of Du cristal even at the highest
level: in the former, the musical object moves through time; in the latter, the
configuration of acoustic space appears to change, as the perspective from which
it is perceived shifts from one spectral ‘viewpoint’ to the next.

Example 9.10  Du cristal – ‘background’ pitch structure

Should this discussion appear to avoid the role played by pitch organization in the
form of Du cristal, there is a clear background structure at play (Example 9.10
shows the pitch centres shown in Example 9.5). This pattern underpins the form,
although the nature and extent of the influence it exerts is brought into question
in the listening experience. Indeed, as it projects spectral resonances it provides
a platform for the transformation of pitch motion into timbral activity, rather
than dictating harmonic implications. Rather than containing events, this pattern
provides points from which the environments inhabited by the form can grow,
enabling various perspectives on the product of that process: at different times it is
a back-, further-back-, and still-further-background structure.

Texture: Open and Closed, Inside and Out

Traditionally, orchestration and texture have been seen as the dressing for musical
substance, itself defined by patterns of pitch or rhythm. There are inharmonic
and arhythmic elements in Saariaho’s music, however, and this could give rise to
 Networks of Communication 199

the argument that timbre is actually its most important unifying feature. Without
entering that debate, it is clear from the outset that timbral–textural patterns play
a role that is at least equal to those of other parameters in the form of Du cristal.
Nonetheless, discussing the use of this parameter as a structural force is problematic
on account of its multi-dimensionality: it is difficult to assign a definitive high and
low point to orchestral texture, because it is the product of numerous intensities.
A large-scale textural shape can be perceived, however, considering this work in
terms of orchestral relief.

Example 9.11  Du cristal – textural narratives

Metzer holds the view that the act of expression in this diptych is intimately
connected with the ‘raising of a voice’ (Metzer, 2009: 186ff), a process that comes
to fruition in …à la fumée, as the soloists provide a concerto element. To perceive a
voice is to be able to separate it out from the rest of the texture, and, as the graph in
Example 9.4 shows, there are a number of intermediate textural gradations between
the single sound-mass at say, figure H, and the highly differentiated texture at figure
P, where the timpani solo is accompanied by distinct blocks of colour. There is a
large-scale shape at play here, which provides both a sense of return and progression
(see Example 9.11). The integration of the sound-mass is brought into question in the
first half of the form; it is threatened in numerous ways, as the orchestral texture is
continually regrouped (see Example 9.5). The clear, distinct features of the opening
chord melt to become ‘melodic’ lines (figure B), which become concentrated
on a semitonal trill at figure D, before that energy disperses into an intertwined
woodwind texture that in turn melts to a smooth, blended though gently oscillating
sound-mass (figure H). Eventually, those oscillations grow and protrude from the
background texture, to the point that two foreground entities are placed in antiphony
with one another; the horns and trumpets (and trombones) answer each other’s
chords from figure M. Other groups of instruments are used to reinforce those two
bodies, for example the woodwind and string trills at letter N and the rhythmic synth
interjections at O. Eventually, what originated as a horn-trumpet dialogue becomes
over-populated, and the timpani emerge as a solo instrument, supported – or even
200 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

obstructed – by single, block chords in distinct sections of the orchestra (figure Q).
All this activity dies down, as a vast chord is sounded, heralding the end of the first
half of the form, at figure S (bar 183 in a 368-bar score).
If the first half of the work concerns disintegration – the cohesion of the
opening chord is challenged time and again – then in the second, by contrast, the
integration of the sound-mass is taken for granted. At figure X, the entire orchestra
comes together in the most uniform texture in the score; in a work with many
climaxes, these furioso semiquaver pulsations surely mark one of the, if not the,
most significant point(s) of arousal. Eventually, they are replaced by cyclic ostinati
(figures Y to Z) as percussion mobiles emerge from within the sonority, stopping at
figure BB. Following this, the sound-mass itself is continually modified: at figure
DD, the flute leads changes in the pitch profile of the chord, before the opening
sonority returns, its decay leading to a different texture with each reiteration.
Finally, the oscillating sound-mass of figure H returns at KK, providing an
environment for soft pulsations within the strings (at figure LL) and the meeting
of the crotale and bass drum to close the work (figure NN);this disintegrates into
the solo cello trill that leads into …à la fumée.
Texturally, on one hand, a composite sonority becomes divided and is then
reunified, closing a large-scale formal arch; on the other, the subject position
gradually moves from the inside to the outside of the sonority, forming an
open shape as changes occur at increasingly high levels within the textural
hierarchy. Perhaps this provides grounds for the simultaneous independence and
interdependence of the works in this diptych. At the end of Du cristal, listeners can
both experience completion and anticipate continuation.

Looking at Looking: Embodied Communication and Perceptual Zoom

Consideration of the network of visual imagery, empirical fact and musical

form evoked by Du cristal illuminates how the work communicates. Semiotic
associations with light are facilitated by features of its musical organization, which
in turn resonate with crystals: notions of clarity, purity and integration. Most
immediately, this is communicated through the orchestration and pitch content
of the opening sonority. Following that moment, larger-scale patterns of textural
organization bring about a shifting balance between divided hierarchies and
more consistent, fluid relationships between ornamental detail and fundamental
substance. The relation to crystallization is clear: the composite sonority
perpetually changes state as boundaries – textural interfaces – develop within the
musical medium; these either remain intact or melt as they either contain or are
traversed by musical materials. Further, this metaphor plays an important role
within the diptych as a whole, as it sets the conditions for, and is extended in the
form of, …à la fumée, where discontinuity mirrors the unpredictability of smoke.
The process of textural inflation and deflation manipulates certain elemental
features of temporal and spatial perception: as timbral and harmonic aspects of
 Networks of Communication 201

sounds intensify to the extent that they characterize perceptual identity, multiple
narratives arise within the form. Visual imagery – indeed the notion of vision itself
– is also evoked: the continually changing nature of textural division obstructs
listeners’ ability to perceive ‘edges’, according to which the evolving sound-mass
might be subdivided. In this way, subject position is manipulated, particularly
in terms of proximity, which in turn invokes the notion of perceptual zoom.
Metaphorically, on hearing so vast a sound-mass as this, listeners are sometimes
so close to the musical surface that its perceptual ‘outlines’ (the outer extremes
in terms of pitch, and oppositions within its timbre) are imperceptible, and at
other times they are allowed to perceive relations between its parts. Consider, for
example, the outer wall of a building: at a distance of 25 metres or so, the observer
can perceive the building and its surroundings; from very close-up, say 10–30
centimetres away, visual perception is saturated, and it is nigh on impossible to
grasp any sense of scale – although the observer is outside the building, his or her
vision is wholly contained by the wall.
As her quotation of Kandinsky suggests, notions of inner and outer play a
significant role in Saariaho’s music, although it can be difficult to see how ‘zoom’
relates to any kind of dialogue between composer and audience. However, listeners
lie at the heart of her approach to composition, unlike that of the traditionally isolated,
model ‘Composer’ (see Moisala, 2009: 4). Her ‘sound laboratory’ experiments
(see ibid.: 26–7) are genuinely pertinent to her music, which manipulates auditory
perception, offering experiences that are at least as sensory as they are intellectual.
Indeed, her output appeals to the most fundamental point of connection between this
composer and her listeners: both have bodies that inhabit (and constitute) physical
environments. Considered thus, it is inconceivable that notions of internal and
external – the basis of perceptual zoom – could not be meaningful.
It is all too easy to forget that the concept of zooming has its roots in the
eye, rather than in the camera, and in accordance with Saariaho’s cross-sensory
disposition, the fact that significance in her music arises principally from patterns
of sound rather than light is easily overlooked. The ears, in addition to being
instruments of temporal perception (used for hearing vertical synchronies within
horizontal counterpoint, for example, and of course for fundamental, survival-
related purposes), also have an evolutionary function as spatial locators (for
surviving in the dangerous outside world; Du cristal exploits this in a safe,
aesthetic one). Indeed, if aural perception is a means of gaining knowledge of the
surroundings – in this case, of the musical aura – it is easy to understand how the
oppositions between space and time posited in this piece can give the impression
that listeners mediate between being inside an environment, or outside an object.
Ultimately, the interactions between spectral timbre and tonal harmony engage an
internal dialogue in listeners, between physical sensation and perceptual synthesis;
in a sense (or in multiple senses), Du cristal facilitates the integration of body
and mind. In doing so, necessarily, it also invokes the separation of the two.
Paradoxically, and in line with Atlan, disintegration plays an important part in this
musical passage from crystal …
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 Index

References to music extracts and illustrations are in bold

acoustic processes Cage, John 103

Cendres 23, 27 Causton, Richard, Phoenix
Du cristal 198 analysis 37, 38
Graal théâtre 140 ‘Cantilena’ 38, 39
Nymphéa Reflection 104 dedication 38
acoustics 10 ‘Epilogue’ 39–40, 39
space 189 Celan, Paul 16
Alanko, Petri 69 CHANT voice programme 10
Anderson, Julian 37 FOF-synthesis 163
art cinders trope, Derrida 16
forms Clifton, Thomas 81
opera as 109 compositional process, see under Saariaho
in Saariaho’s music xv computer analysis 160, 162, 174, 176
music, Western 63, 64, 65, 74, 75, 76, concertos
78, 180 classical form 144
Saariaho, student of xvi, 6, 109 composition 156–7
sonic, music as 64 contemporary relevance 133
of time, music as 81 definitions 133
Assayag, Gérard, IANA computer dialogues xix–xx
programme 167 duality xviii, 144, 145, 156
Atlan, Henri, Entre le cristal et la fumée genre, emergence 136
179, 183 opera, relationship 136
role of individual instruments 136
Balzac, Honoré de, Séraphîta 53 Saariaho on 133–4
Barrière, Jean-Baptiste 76 Saariaho’s 133–57
Bataille, Georges 75 soloist’s role 134
Batta, Andrea, on Don Giovanni 115 spatiality–temporality xx
Bergman, Erik xxii titles, importance of 134, 135
body, the violin 137
and music 64–5 continuity
and performativity 65 formal 140, 141, 147
and production of space 79 linear 135
body–mind, integration, Du cristal ...à la musical xvii, xviii, xix, xxii, 135
fumèe 201 narrative 137, 145
Boulez, Pierre 22 Crition, Pascale 8, 10
Le Marteau sans maître 8 crystal, definition 183
and Saariaho 11
Bradshaw, Susan 22 Derrida, Jacques 15
cinders trope 16
218 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

works performance 79
Cinders 16 and speech 65
Shibboleth 16 Forge, Andrew 88
dialogues xviii, 133–76, 177 form
concerto xix–xx content
L’Amour de loin 113 aesthetic unity of 173
diatonicism 110 combining 175
Dolar, Mladen, A Voice and Nothing More definition 173
77–8 Du cristal ...à la fumèe 192–3
dreams Kandinsky on 93, 173, 177
Freud on 43, 45–6, 60 musical 177
grammar of 51 formants 163
L’Amour de loin 46–7 Foulkes, William David, A Grammar of
dreams–dreaming, Saariaho on 41 Dreams, influence on Saariaho 51,
52
Ears Open society 108 Freud, Sigmund 41
Eirola, Anne 69, 70 on dreams 43, 45–6, 60
electronics The Interpretation of Dreams 43, 45
Amers 134
Emilie 13, 122fn27 gender issues xxi, 71, 73, 79, 121
From the Grammar of Dreams 55fn14 Goehr, Lydia 65
Kollisionen 110 Griffiths, Paul 110
Lichtbogen 166 Grisey, Gérard xxii, 8, 9, 11, 88, 102
NoaNoa 67, 68, 80 spectral music 174
Nuits, adieux 51
Nymphéa 13, 82 harmony xxii
Petals, optional 104 Cendres 28, 29
Saariaho’s use of 11, 13, 23, 64fn1, Dérive 22
109 delineated 189
Simone 107 diatonic 110
Eliot, T.S., The Waste Land 143 functional 173
Jardin secret I 162, 164, 176
fatherhood, Levinas on 127 Lichtbogen 170, 172–3
Ferneyhough, Brian 9 internal 173
Fineberg, Joshua 103 rough draft 169
Finland Saariaho 12, 13, 195
artistic creativity xxi static, Im Traume 44–5, 55, 160, 161
Saariaho on 10 Terra Memoria 29
Finnishness xvi theories 173
Fisher, George and Judith Lochhead, and timbre 160, 164
‘Analyzing from the Body’ 64 blurring xvi, xix, xx
flautists dichotomy 159
performing tonal 201
Laconisme de l’aile 69–73 vertical 191fn7
NoaNoa 77–8 Western tradition 174
as storytellers 79 see also timbre and harmony; timbre–
flute playing harmony
and embouchure 65–6 Heininen, Paavo xxii, 6, 108, 110, 178
 Index 219

Helasvuo, Mikael 70–1 on dreams 41–2

performing NoaNoa 77–8 musicological 17
Hoitenga, Camilla 8 Saariaho
performing Laconisme de l’aile 71–2, inspired by 111
73 reader of 109
Howell, Tim 102 Lorieux, Grégoire 25

instrumental synthesis 174, 175 Maalouf, Amin 13, 46, 121

Lichtbogen 166–7, 175 Mattila, Karita 13
interdisciplinarity, Saariaho 88, 128 Messiaen, Olivier, St François d’Assise 8
IRCAM 22, 102 Metzer, David 192, 199
Jardin secret I, realization at 163 Meyer, Leonard B. 174
Saariaho at 10 modernism xviii, xx, xxii, 107, 110,
spectral research 102 128–9, 159, 176
Irigaray, Luce, on feminine sexuality 66 Moisala, Pirkko 31, 111
Itinéraire group 166, 170, 174, 175, 176 Monelle, Raymond 128
musical topics theory 107, 111–12
Kandinsky, Vassily, on form 93, 173, Monet, Claude, Nymphéas
177 approaches 88–9, 104
Kankaanpää, Vesa 25 and Saariaho’s Nymphéa 88, 89
Karttunen, Anssi 11, 143 Mozart, W.A., Don Giovanni, musical class
on Notes on Light 144 distinctions 115
Kramer, Jonathan 81 Müller-Siemens, Detlev 8
Kramer, Lawrence 42 Murail, Tristan xxii, 8, 88
Kremer, Gidon 12, 137 Gondwana 85fn6
on timbre and harmony 174–5
Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space music
79 as art of time 81
Leppert, Richard 74 art, Western 63, 64, 65, 74, 75, 76,
Levinas, Emmanuel, on fatherhood 127 78
Ligeti, György, Viola Sonata 31, 32 and the body 64–5
Lindberg, Magnus xxii, 7 and the natural world 15
listening and semiotics 112
Cendres 27, 36 as sonic art 64
directional 96 and time 103
Du cristal …à la fumèe 177, 179, 184, Saariaho on 81
189, 198, 201 topic in 111–12
Graal théâtre 135 see also spectral music
Jardin secret I 165 musical transformations
Laconisme de l’aile 71, 79 Cendres 23, 25–6, 27, 29, 33
NoaNoa 76, 77, 78, 79 Dérive 23
Notes on Light 156 Du cristal …à la fumée 12, 183–4,
Nymphéa 85, 102, 103 186, 192, 198
Nymphéa Reflection 96 Graal théâtre 137
strategies xviii, xx, 174, 175, 189 Lichtbogen 136
teleological 81, 82, 102 Laconisme de l’aile 63
Terra Memoria 33 melodic 42fn4
literature Notes on Light 151
220 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

Saariaho xvii, xxii, 177–8 Ratner, Leonard G. 112

Terra Memoria 36 Rautavaara, Einojuhani xxii
timbral 36 Rebelo, Pedro 75
Rosen, Charles 136, 144
narratives The Classical Style 173
Du cristal …à la fumèe 201 Roubaud, Jacques 135
musical, and literary plots 81 Exchanges de la lumière 52–3
Nymphéa 86, 97, 103 Rudel, Jaufré
Operatic 129 in L’Amour de loin 113, 115
Saariaho xix, xx, xxiii, 63–129, 82 in Monteverdi’s Combattimento di
and time 104–5 Tancredi et Clorinda 114
networks 177 in Petrarch 114
in Saariaho’s works 178 in Romantic literature 114
nightmares, Saariaho on 45 Vida 114
Nordic life, timescale in 102 ‘When the days are long in May’ 114
Noske, Fritz 111
Saariaho, Kaija
operas art forms, in compositions xv
concertos, relationship 136 art student xvi, 6, 109
Saariaho’s critical view of 108 and Boulez 11
war 122–3 childhood memories 178
composer as theorist 159
Paynter, John 15 compositional process xvi, xix, 12,
performance 15fn1, 29, 41, 110, 133, 160, 173
Adriana Mater 122 concerto composition 156–7
flute music 79 in Darmstadt 8
instrumental 109 dialogues xvii, 133–76, 177
Laconisme de l’aile 71, 73, 74, 76 on dreams – dreaming 41
Maa 111 electronics, use of 11, 13, 23, 64fn1,
musical 44 109
NoaNoa 78 family 3
Nymphéa 83, 85, 86 Finnishness xvi
studies 63 flute music, performance 63–80
performativity Freiburg 9–10
and the body 65 functional harmony 173
and sexuality 65 harmony 12, 13, 195
performer, and instrument, relationship identity, search for xvii
75–6, 78 influences on xxii, 102, 109
pitch organization 189 insecurity 5
Du cristal …à la fumèe 195, 197, 198 interdisciplinary approach 88, 128
Graal théâtre 140, 143 interview with 3–14
Nymphéa 83 at IRCAM 10
Plath, Sylvia literature
‘Paralytic’ 53, 55, 57 inspired by 111
The Bell Jar 53, 55, 57 reader of 109
Poulenc, Francis, Dialogues of the marriage 5
Carmelites 123fn29 multimedia, engagement with 109–10,
128
 Index 221

music war topics 122–3

aesthetic beauty 179 Aile du songe xviii, 13, 134,
sensual beauty xxiii, 3 135
on music and time 81 Amers 17, 25
musical electronics in 134
education 4–10 structure 134–5
influences 8–9 Bruden, text 111
transformations xvii, xxii Cendres 16–21, 23, 36, 37
narratives xix, xx, xxiii, 63–129, 82 analysis 17, 20, 25, 27, 28
on nightmares 45 characteristic material 24
opera, critical view of 108 concluding passages 21
personality 3 harmony 28, 29
post-spectralism xx listening 27, 36
privacy 13 mirroring of bass-note
schooling 4, 109 movement 28
at Sibelius Academy 6, 109 opening material 18–19
soundscape/s xix, xxii reduction of opening passage
Adriana Mater 122 26
Du cristal …à la fumèe 187, 188, source 17
193, 194 spectralism 27, 28, 36
spectralism xvii, 23, 85, 140, 160 timescale 17
on structures 93 transformations 23, 25–6, 27,
text, approach to 52, 60 29, 33
as theorist xxiii, 159 Château de l’âme 111, 112
on timbre–harmony dichotomy 159 Dérive
time, musical exploration of 82, 104–5 harmonies 22–3
timescale, approach to 82 transformation 23
violin playing 136 D’om le vrai sens 157
visions xvi, xix, 3–60 Du cristal ...à la fumèe 12, 17,
visual stimuli, influences of xvi, xix, 136, 177, 180–201
42, 135 acoustic space 198
vocal writing 52 body–mind integration 201
Wagner, interest in 108–9 composite sonority, levels 187
works ‘crystallization’ 184, 200
Adriana Mater xxi, 13, 107, 121–7 diptych 179
catabasis 126, 127 ‘empty soundscape’, figure H
execution topic 123, 123 187, 188
heart motif 125–6, 126 formal outlines 192–3
hope topics 125, 125 inspiration for 178–9
love 126–7 listening 177, 179, 184, 189,
overture 122 198, 201
performance 122 narratives 201
pianto topic 122, 123, 126 opening chord 181, 182–3,
rape icon 124 183
soundscape 122 orchestration 180
story 121 pitch content 180, 182, 195
structure 121–2 pitch organization 195, 197,
topic synthesis 126 198
222 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

pitch structure, ‘background’ timescale 139, 140

198 transformations 137
post-spectralism 195 violin part 137
progression 185 Grammaire des rêves 51, 57,
Saariaho on 179 59–60
soundscape 187, 188, 193, 194 depiction of drowning 58
spatiality–temporality 200 text 57
spectralism 182–3, 195, 198, Im Traume 60, 160
201 analysis 44–5
tempo network 194–5, 194, harmony, static 44–5, 55, 160,
197, 198 161
textural narratives 199–200, Saariaho on 44
199 stasis–tension 160–1
textural perception 189, 190, textual contrasts 161
191 timbre–harmony 166, 176
timbre–harmony, perceptual Jardin secret I 160, 162–6
network 185–6, 186 harmony 162, 164, 176
title source 179 IRCAM, realization at 163
tonal sonorities, at figure U listening 165
195, 196 overall form 165
transformations 12, 183–4, pitches 165
186, 192, 198 spectralism 166
vertical sonorities, at figures R spectrograms 162, 163, 163,
to Y 197, 198 164, 165, 166
visual imagery, evocation of symmetrical scales 162
201 timbre 164–5, 166
zooming 201 timbre–harmony 166
Emilie 14, 107 Jardin secret trilogy 82, 85
electronics in 13, 122fn27 Kollisionen, electronics in 110
From the Grammar of Dreams 51, La Passion de Simone, electronics
60 in 107
combined melodic line 56 Laconisme de l’aile
electronics in 55fn14 breathing texture 67
intensifying vocalise 54 flautists performing 69–76
‘Paralytic’ (Plath) 53, 55, 57 flute/flautist relationship 67,
The Bell Jar (Plath) 55, 57 73
text 55, 59 listening 71, 79
Graal théâtre 135, 136–43 Mirrors 82
acoustic instruments 140 opening 69
descending figures 142 performance 71, 73, 74, 76
drama and conflict 141, 143 secularization of flautist 71
episodic overview 138, speaking 67, 69, 70, 71–3, 79
139–41 text 69, 72, 74
listening 135 transformation 63
opening material 137, 141 L’Amour de loin xvii–xviii, xxi,
oppositions and tensions 12, 13, 46–50, 60, 112–21, 136
139–41 award, best opera 128
pitch organization 140, 143 catabasis 117–18, 118
 Index 223

chorale 119, 120, 121 whispering 67, 68, 76–8

cradle song 118–19, 119 Notes on Light 103, 134, 135,
death topics 117–20 143–56
dialogues 113 cello role 144
dreams in 46–7 cyclic structure 150
Freudian reading of 47, 48, Eliot quotation 143
49–50 formal architecture 146
‘Love from Afar’ theme 49 formal scheme 155
Noble Horse topic 116 Karttunen on 144
pianto topic 116–17, 117 listening 156
premier 107 movement layout 144, 145
recurring oboe melody 48 opening material 148
Rudel’s troubadour melody orchestral refrain 153
114 orchestral role 144
spatiality–temporality 47 soloist chromaticism 152
story 46–7, 113–14 spatiality–temporality 145–9,
structure 113 151
tarantella as topic 115, 115 structural synthesis 154–6
text 47fn9, 115, 118, 128 temporal dialogue 149–54
Lichtbogen xvi–xvii, 10, 11, 160 text 135
analysis of cello F 167, 168 timescale 135, 147, 151, 155,
chord patterns 170 156
electronics in 166 transformations 151
flute, role 136 Nuits, adieux 51
harmony 170, 172–3 dream episodes 52–3
internal 173 Freudian reading 53
rough draft 169 sources 52–3
instrumental synthesis text 52–3
166–7, 175 Nymphéa 13
spectralism 167 anamorphosis 89, 90, 91, 91
textural levels, superimposition background shape 95, 95
171 cyclical/linear time 97, 98, 98,
texture-derived sound colour 99, 100, 101, 102, 103–4
analysis 172 electronics in 13, 82
timbre–harmony unity 166–7, fractal-like growth 101
170, 172–3, 175–6 imagery 94–5
transformations 136 listening 85, 102, 103
Vaughan quote 136 Monet’s Nymphéas
Lonh 111, 112 association 88, 89
Maa, performance 111 captured sound-worlds 92
Mirage 135 narratives 86, 97, 103
NoaNoa 63 Nymphéa Reflection, comparison
electronic sound 67, 68, 80 96
flautists performing 77–8 opening 83, 84, 85
listening 76, 77, 78, 79 performance 83, 85, 86
performance 78 phasing 83, 86–7, 87
techniques 68–9 pitch organization 83
text 67fn5 sonic expansion 83, 85
224 Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues

sound–noise axis 85–6 sound, analysis of 175

spatiality–temporality 93, 96, spatiality–temporality
103 concertos xx, 156
spectralism 89 Du cristal …à la fumèe 200
stasis 87–8 L’Amour de loin 47
structure 93–4 Notes on Light 145–9, 151
Tarkovsky poem, extracts 94 Nymphéa 93, 96, 103
text 103 spectral analysis xxiii, 166–7, 168
time passing 87 spectral music xx, xxii, 26, 37, 85, 88,
Nymphéa Reflection 82–3, 95, 98fn15, 174
104 Cendres 27, 28, 36
acoustic instruments 104 acoustic processes 23, 27
listening 96 composers 88, 160, 173
Nymphéa, comparison 96 Du cristal 182–3, 198, 201
structure 96 post-spectralism 195
text 94 Grisey 174
Oiseaux excerpt 66–7 Jardin secret I 166
Oltra mar 113 Lichtbogen 167, 168
Petals 82 Nymphéa 89
electronics, optional Saariaho xvii, 23, 85, 140, 160
Près 17 and time 102–3
Stilleben 103 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 175
Study for Life 109–10 Stoïjanova, Ivanka 121
Terra Memoria 28–33, 36 structures, Saariaho on 93
analysis 29, 31–2, 32–3, 34, 36
bars 229–39: 35 Tarkovsky, Arseniy, poem, in Nymphéa 94
contrasted material, second section Terhardt, Ernst 167
32 text
harmony 29 Bruden 111
listening 33 and form xvii
memory 28 From the Grammar of Dreams 55, 59
motif 29, 30, 31, 32 Grammaire des rêves 57
opening, characteristic material 30 Laconisme de l’aile 69, 72, 74
reduction of opening and closing L’Amour de loin 47fn9, 115, 118, 128
passages 34 NoaNoa 67fn5
Saariaho on 28–9 Notes on Light 135
transformations 36 Nuits, adieux 52–3
violin/viola melody 31 Nymphéa 103
Verblendungen 10, 11, 82, 103 Nymphéa Reflection 94
Vers le blanc 82 Saariaho’s approach to 52, 60
Saint-John Perse, Oiseaux 66–7, 69 semantic 52
Salonen, Esa-Pekka 7, 110 theorist, Saariaho as xxiii, 159
Sciarrino, Salvatore 8 Tigerstedt, Eva 69
sexuality performing Laconisme de l’aile 73–4
feminine, Irigaray on 66 timbre
and performativity 65 and harmony 160, 164
Sibelius, Jean, legacy xvii, xxi blurring xvi, xix, xx
Södergran, Edith 111 dichotomy 159, 165
 Index 225

relationship 27, 160, 174–5 in Nordic life 102

Jardin secret I 164–5, 166 Notes on Life 135, 147, 151, 155, 156
timbre–harmony 177 Saariaho’s approach to 82
Du cristal ...à la fumèe 185–6, 186 topic, in music 111–12
Im Traume 166, 176 transformations see musical
Jardin secret I 166, 176 transformations
Lichtbogen 166–7, 170, 172–3, 175–6
musical ideologies 172–6 Upshaw, Dawn 12
time
clock, and musical time 81–2 Vaughan, Henry, The World 136
linear, definition 82fn3 visions xvi, xix, 3–60
musical 103 visual stimuli, influence on Saariaho xvi,
and clock time 81–2 xix, 42, 135
Saariaho’s exploration of 82
and narrative 104–5 Wagner, Richard
Nymphéa Saariaho’s interest in 108–9
cyclical 97, 98, 98, 99, 100 Tristan und Isolde 108, 113
linear 100, 101 Whittall, Arnold 32
passing 87 Wiesler, Manuela, performing Laconisme
timescale de l’aile 72–3
Cendres 17
Graal théâtre 139, 140 Xenakis, Iannis, Kokkos 8
musical xxii