Kaija Saariaho

Kaija Saariaho (Helsinki, 1952 – Paris 2023) studied with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy, where she was among the founders of the “Ears Open” group. She continued her training in Freiburg with the composers Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber, while attending the Darmstadt summer courses.

Her experience at IRCAM (Paris) started in 1982, and her study of the French spectralist composers, made electronic and computer-generated music a constant element in her music around this time. Works like Lichtbogen (1986) and the string quartet Nymphea (1987) testify to her ability to conjure new worlds of sound by interweaving acoustic instruments and computer technology connecting musicians, tape and live electronic sounds.

“My music arises from a continuous reflection on sound”, she said following the reception of the Frontiers of Knowledge Award. From the time she began composing, in the 1980s, this reflection translated as a focus on color and texture, apparent in her diptych Du Cristal (1989) and …á la Fumée (1990) or Orion (2002), for large orchestra.

She honed her skills of deep listening through her research into psycho acoustics, sound spectra and music perception. Her aim from the 1980s onwards was to evoke a “dazzling brightness” of “textural surfaces” and the “interpenetration of complementary worlds [and] shadows.”

The year 2000 brought her first venture into opera. L’Amour de loin, about the twelfth-century troubadour Jaufré Rudel, met with immediate acclaim. It also marked the start of a collaboration with writer Amin Maalouf, who provided the libretto for this and her next two operas: Adriana Mater (2006), about the Balkans war, and Émilie (2010), inspired by Émilie du Châtelet, mathematician, physicist and the first woman to establish an international scientific reputation.

In June 2023 she passed away at the age of 70, two years after the premiere of her last opera, Innocence.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category went in its tenth edition to Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, on the basis of “a contribution to contemporary music that is extraordinary in its individuality, breadth and scope.” From her earliest works, the jury continued, Saariaho exhibited “a seamless interweaving of the worlds of acoustic music and technology,” a quality which the new laureate remarked, after hearing of the award, had come to her quite naturally. When she started studying music at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, she was frustrated at the acoustics of the venues she would attend to hear live performances. Wondering if it was possible to alter characteristics like the volume of the instruments, she began recording them and processing the sound for subsequent playback.

In 1982, she moved to Paris to continue her training at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), where she came into contact with the leading exponents of spectralism. The spectralist technique of decomposing sound left a recognizable imprint on Saariaho’s writing in the form of electronic arrangements and computer-generated sounds. The combination of synthetic sounds, classical instrumentation and elements of nature shone through in early works like Lichtbogen (1986), inspired by the Northern lights. “Coming from Finland of course has made me more sensitive to nature,” she explained. “And this has a lot to do with the acoustics. When you walk through a big forest after the rain, the acoustics are very different, because the leaves are wet and that creates a reverberation. The forest is like a church. The same thing happens with snow, which creates a very particular silence. These childhood experiences are part of me and part of my music.”

Saariaho also acknowledged the influence of electronics and technology in her oeuvre to the extent that they helped her pursue her chosen direction. However she did not see them as the core element: “My aim,” she declared, “is that the listener doesn’t perceive the frontiers of the electronic component in my music. It is part of the orchestration. When there is something I cannot do with natural instruments, I turn to computers, then I complete the orchestration, the musical idea.”

For the jury, Saariaho’s music has “a unique quality that is almost as visual as it is sonorous.” And one that is steeped in imagination. As she said, “I have always loved music, as long as I can remember. My mother told me that at night when I was going to sleep, I would start to imagine that I was hearing music. So much so that I couldn’t fall asleep and would ask her to ‘turn off the pillow.’ Music has always been in my mind and my imagination.”

An opera debut meeting with worldwide acclaim

Saariaho initially thought that her music was not dramatic enough for opera. Nonetheless the idea stuck in her mind. The definitive push came with a Peter Sellers production of Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise, performed at the Salzburg Festival, which she described as “liberating,” and “a sign” that she could venture into the opera genre. “It was a lengthy process,” she recalled, “lasting about eight years in all. At first I didn’t know who would be interested or if I could do it. But finally the means came together to make it possible.”

In the year 2000, back at the Salzburg Festival, she was present for the world premiere of her first opera L’Amour de loin, with a libretto by the Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf. Its success, noted the jury, positioned Saariaho at the forefront of a world in which women have traditionally been underrepresented. Asked whether being a woman meant she had to work harder, she offered a meditated response: “It was undoubtedly an obstacle when I was a young composer trying to get a start, and it still is for many young women today. But now that I have made a name in music, I don’t experience it as a problem.”

She followed up L’Amour de loin with a further three operas, Adriana Mater (2006), Émilie (2010) and Only the Sound Remains (2015), all of which address themes she considers important for humanity. “Love is one,” she related, “and another is death. Both are great mysteries that form part of our lives.”

Saariaho was an eminently versatile author, known for her ability to switch genre. She wrote for soloists and chamber groups, and composed orchestral works, operas, oratories and vocal, incidental and electronic music.

Conductor Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, who directed every work of hers in a collaboration dating back twenty-five years, talked admiringly of how she carved out a path in a male-dominated profession: “It wasn’t easy, but she knew what she wanted and didn’t stop until she achieved it. She came over as very sweet and never raised her voice, but she had character and if she didn’t like something she said so. She was honest and forthright.”

Martínez Izquierdo admitted that Saariaho’s music is challenging, “but not because the score is very complex, as might happen composers like Boulez, but because you also have to grasp her musical poetics. Her music is more than the notes, it is also color. And to perform it, you have to coax that color from the sounds. Her approach to the orchestra starts from electronics, and she knows how to get the musicians to produce effects and sounds from that world, which she then fuses with actual electronics. The result is that both sounds merge so smoothly you cannot tell them apart.”

He also added that “as a writer she was always thinking of the performer, and was very loyal to those she worked with. She spoiled us, and gave us an unaccustomed degree of freedom. With other composers, you can feel like a metronome; she made you part of the creative process in a way very few authors do, which is why I cherished working with Kaija.”

Perhaps this freedom flowed from the importance that the Finnish composer accorded to creativity, the bridge, as she saw it, between science and culture: “All the great inventions come from creative minds, so there are obviously many meeting points between the two worlds. I follow scientific developments with great interest, especially in the domain of music and acoustics.”