Kaija Saariaho: Top 11 Works to Know

Kaija Saariaho, whose poetic and powerful compositions captivated audiences worldwide, passed away at the age of 70. Her language was also subtle and suggestive with words when discussing her work. She remarked on an early work, “Dazzling, different surfaces, tissues, textures,” and that could have easily been her style that spanned over 40 years. “Weights, gravity. To be blinded. Interpolations. Reflections. Death. The sum of independent worlds. Shading, refracting the color.”

Saariaho’s music shimmers and glimmers yet retains a powerful force; her lush and often ominous pieces evolve with the sinuousness and muscularity of snakes. Her music sends listeners into a trance, evoking staring at the sun and the slow and dizzying churn of depths of the sea.

From the beginning of her career to its early end, Saariaho’s focus was on guiding electronic and acoustic instruments into new alchemies of color, light, and mass in her compositions. She created a world of seething stillness, where seeming solidity crumbles quickly and turns into nothingness. The following 11 works introduce listeners to the sensuous yet sometimes forbidding world of Kaija Saariaho.

‘Verblendungen’ (1984)

Initially, Saariaho was trained as a strict serialist, but exposure to the sonic haze of spectralist composers such as Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey in the early 1980s and her time at the French institute of electronic music, Ircam, steered her toward exploring the relationship between acoustic instruments and electronic sounds. Saariaho’s “Verblendungen” is a complex composition that journeys from crushing density to spare, vibrating particles with both taped sounds and a live ensemble.

‘Du Cristal’ (1989)

Saariaho’s “Du Cristal” is half of a linked pair of pieces (with “ … à la Fumée”) composed for a grand symphony orchestra. Saariaho integrated both electronic and acoustic components into a single, shifting, and hazardous mass. The billowing cloud of sound in “Du Cristal” allows strands of solo instruments to emerge, all posed between meditation and violence.

An unusual composition, “Graal Théâtre,” is a haunting violin concerto that does not include any electronic component but instead showcases an exuberantly virtuosic mode. The calligraphic solo line in this composition moves in, out of focus, darting amidst soft droning bells. The accompaniment explodes towards the end, leaving the violinist alone in the final moments.

‘Miranda’s Lament’ (1997)

Saariaho ventured into composing for voice before her first opera, setting texts from “The Tempest” and other works. Her instrumentation for “Miranda’s Lament” is intimate and graceful, featuring a soprano line that is both expressively pained and simply lovely. Contemporary colors mix with medieval and Renaissance song formality, which long fascinated the composer.

‘Oltra Mar’ (1999)

Saariaho’s “Oltra Mar” is a seven-part, 22-minute work where the chorus’s sound hovers like bars of light, with slightly blurry edges. The meditative composition is otherworldly, with more of an existential than physical feel to it. “Memory of Waves” contains electronic sounds that rumble, while “Arrival” has a hypnotic unfolding that follows the theme of death in the penultimate section.

Working with writer Amin Ma

Author: OpenAI