Music unfolds in time and takes time – both to create and to listen to. A composition is a chance to meet the composer in an intimate way. At its best, it becomes an invitation and a journey into the composer’s inner world. I think composing is much like a journey into the unknown, where one cannot follow a path but must create a new one. Not in the sense that everything needs to be rediscovered or invented, but rather as a chef creates a new recipe from familiar ingredients, the composer creates a unique composition from already existing materials. Although much has already been discovered, there are still spaces to explore at the threshold of the parameters of sound.
I have always been fascinated by sound. I studied composition at the Sibelius Academy with Paavo Heininen as my professor. I remember vividly, when, after a couple of years relentless work on melodies, harmonies and to some extent rhythm, I began to discover timbre. It blew my mind how a single sustained pitch could contain so many subtle timbral changes, from different ways of filtering it to various degrees of saturation. That single pitch became my new melodic line, where timbral variation replaced variation in pitch content. I finally had a means of expression that was contemporary and not rooted in what I felt was the outdated world of classical music. Later, I came to understand that the technique of creating a satisfactory melodic line was essentially the same as when operating with timbre.
After finishing my master’s degree at the Sibelius-Academy in 2011, I went to IRCAM to deepen my understanding of sound, how to analyse and create it with the aid of computers, and how to combine electronics with acoustic instruments into mixed music. At the time I wasn’t receiving commissions or opportunities to write for acoustic orchestras or ensembles, so electronics filled that void. With just one computer, there was a huge number of possible sounds and expressive possibilities available at my fingertips. Mixed music became an integral part of my artistic practice, and I have composed almost one new piece every year since then.
My journey continued in California at UC Berkeley and at the electroacoustic music centre CNMAT, where I was able to continue my exploration in electronics. I also took courses in design and manufacturing, which led me to discover the DIY aesthetic and to start building my own modest electronic instruments. It was liberating to do all sorts of explorations at Berkeley, which – unlike Europe – seemed to warmly welcome all aesthetics and styles. Another path of more rigorous research at CNMAT was computer-aided orchestration, which I studied with Professor Carmine-Emanuele Cella – a path that has now brought me back to IRCAM.
Teaching undergraduate courses in music theory, electroacoustic music and sound studies formed an integral part of my graduate studies at Berkeley. For me, it opened up a whole new perspective on teaching, which at first seemed daunting, but soon became highly enjoyable. After moving back to Finland, I have continued teaching at the Sibelius Academy, where, among other courses, I also teach composition. How is it even possible to teach composition? It seems like a question that cannot be answered easily. I approach it with humble curiosity and a will to find out what my students are interested in, then support them in finding the tools and building the technique they need to create what they want to hear.
A composer’s sound contains their fingerprint and uniqueness. One of the most distinctive fingerprints belonged to Kaija Saariaho, whose music can be identified almost instantaneously when it begins to sound. It is a very sophisticated mixture of familiar ingredients, put together in the most ingenious way. Not only timbre, but also the unique combination of in-between states of harmony and timbre, melody and harmony, texture and rhythm, and so on. Even though many areas of music have already been explored and discovered by various composers, there is still a domain of unpredictable liminal spaces to discover on the thresholds between these different parameters of music. To me, these spaces sound both promising and contemporary. Exploring them further is, in itself, rewarding.
In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke advices a younger colleague on the importance of being patient and sincere when seeking one’s own voice. Rilke also writes about the solitary nature of creating, which I sometimes find even a little too lonely. However, I feel that his idea of creating distance between oneself and the surrounding world can also offer us solace in the troubled times we live in today.
"Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating."
As a human being living in this time, I can create music that, in some way, reflects the present. For me, bringing in elements from outside music itself is more intuitive than deliberate. It is very hard, for example, to compose music that is deliberately political. Instead, my reflection of the present tends to emerge from my own quite ordinary experiences of living in the contemporary world, how people are traveling or communicating, or the contemporary arts and architecture I saw. These elements get intuitively vowed into my compositions.
I usually don’t compose music based on a narrative, rather I let my intuition and the sounding ideas guide the way. For me, composing is a state of being that can only be obtained by putting everything else aside. The sounds and the act of composing them need to grow in my mind, and only once they are fully formed can they be released into the outside world. As Rilke pointed out, this takes patience and time, but also a lot of resilience and strength.
The passage from Letters to a Young Poet translated by Stephen Mitchell.
Featured photo Maija Hynninen.