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Susanna Mälkki began her three-year term as Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra this autumn. We asked her about the themes of her first HPO year and her thoughts about links between music and the cultural environment.

In this issue we explore the relationship between music and environment, both natural and cultural. What traces, influences and meanings of the environment do the people who create, consume and study music find in it today?

Radiopuhelimet has been performing “rural rock music” in Finnish for three decades. The visions embraced by the band are realistic, sometimes repellently so. Vocalist J.A. Mäki remarks that, even though humankind deserves it, nature does not take revenge. Nature merely is.

Cut off a piece of willow, construct a whistle and blow through it – this is as close as it gets to a perfect combination of the roles of musician and instrument maker. Although this kind of playing has not always been considered as music, folk wind instruments have gradually taken their place among contemporary folk music instruments.

Ten Finnish songs about or inspired by nature selected by Matti Nives.

“If you look far enough back in any culture, music is born out of many different aspects and influences, including the physical environment that you live in. This is the key for me, finding your own points of connection with your culture, whatever that might be,” says widely travelled multi-instrumentalist Nathan Riki Thomson.

“Music’s close relationship to nature can be seen precisely in the ways it alters and affects our relationship to the diversity of our surrounding world – and not only to itself or myself.”

Music is known to have a physical and psychological – and not just aesthetic and emotional – effect on us. But why is this so? This is one of the key questions in genetic and brain research on music.

In Finland, dozens of music events with strong connections to nature are organised each summer. Nature itself seems to form an integral part of a successful festival experience at these events. We discussed with music researchers Merja Hottinen and Juha Torvinen the relationships between nature, the environment, music and listening experiences.