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Kaija Saariaho: Laconisme de l’aile

für Flöte solo

(1982)

The possibility to move from secret whispers into clear, beautiful and ‘abstract’ sound was one of the starting points for Laconisme de l’aile, started in Freiburg and finished in Paris in 1982. Another important image on which I focused my mind when writing this piece was that of birds, not really their song but rather the lines they draw in the sky when flying. I had already started the piece when I felt the need to add a text in the beginning, which would in fact be the source for the musical material. The book Oiseaux (Birds) by St.-Jean Perse (1887–1975, a French poet and diplomat, Nobel-prize-winner in 1960) got into my hands in the public library of Freiburg, and I found a passage in this collection of poems that described somehow the images that I had in my mind: that of birds fighting gravity, flying away, secret and immortal.

The piece starts with enigmatic words from poet Saint-John Perse describing the flight of birds, that serves as a metaphor for the flute’s wandering melodic lines throughout the work:

»Ignorant of their shadow, knowing of death 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 traversed by a single thought. Laconism of the wing!«

Kaija Saariaho

Kaija Saariaho
© Priska Ketterer

Kaija Saariaho (1952–2023) was a leading voice of her generation of composers, in her native Finland and worldwide. She studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she lived from 1982 to her death. Her studies and research at IRCAM, the Parisian center for electroacoustic experimentation, had a major influence on her music, and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures were often created by combining live performance and electronics.

After her breakthrough piece Lichtbogen for ensemble and electronics in 1986, Saariaho gradually expanded her musical expression to a great variety of genres, and her chamber pieces and choral music have become staples of instrumental and vocal ensembles, respectively.

She rose to international preeminence as the composer of works taken up by symphony orchestras around the world, such as Oltra Mar (1999), Orion (2002), Laterna Magica (2008) and Circle Map (2012), as well as six concertos (including Graal Théâtre for violin in 1994 and Notes on Light for cello in 2006), and five major symphonic song cycles (e.g. Château de l’âme in 1995 and True Fire in 2014), all of which bear the mark of her relentless attempt to blend the scientific, technological and rational with an approach grounded in poetic inspiration and resulting in deeply sensorial and associative experiences.

Saariaho’s broadest public and critical recognition came from her work in the field of opera: L’Amour de loin (2000), Adriana Mater (2006), La Passion de Simone (2006), Émilie (2010), Only the Sound Remains (2016) and Innocence (2020), the latter of which was termed Saariaho’s ‘masterpiece’ by The New York Times, were all warmly received at their premieres, and have enjoyed the rare privilege of global tours and multiple stage productions. Their ever-expressive treatment of voice and orchestra, as much as their commitment to renewing the form and the array of stories being represented on the largest stages, have made these six very different opuses classics of 21st-century opera already in the composer’s lifetime.

Saariaho claimed major composing awards such as the Grawemeyer Award, the Nemmers Prize, the Sonning Prize and the Polar Music Prize and two of her recordings have received Grammy Awards. She was named ‘Greatest Living Composer’ in a survey of her peers conducted by the BBC Music Magazine in 2019.

Kaija Saariaho’s life was prematurely interrupted by a brain tumor in 2023. Her musical legacy is carried forward by a broad network of collaborators with whom she has worked closely over the years, and her publisher Chester Music Ltd.

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Kaija Saariaho: Laconisme de l’aile

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