June Read: Kaija Saariaho’s Sept Papillons

Stephanie Zi Yi Yang

In times where electronic idioms dominate our ears, how do we approach listening to abstract acoustic works?

“In a meadow full of flowers you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.” - Jonas Mekas

How should we approach listening to and thinking about contemporary instrumental works of music? In times where electronic idioms dominate our ears, how do we approach listening to abstract acoustic works? Here we examine the solo cello work "Sept Papillons" by the Finnish female composer Kaija Saariaho, to dissect the aesthetics of an acoustic contemporary piece of music.

Application of Instrumental Techniques

With hundreds of years of Western musical history behind us, the creation of contemporary works has seen considerable development in the realm of instrumental techniques - the possibilities of acoustic instruments have grown broader with greater experimentation and exploration over time. One of the missions of a contemporary composer is to transform and transcend these accumulated and developed instrumental sounds to convey their ideal inner sound world.

Kaija Saariaho's solo cello work "Sept Papillons" utilizes string playing techniques such as sul ponticello (playing near the bridge of the instrument), sul tasto (near the fingerboard), natural harmonics (light left hand pressure), left-hand pizzicati (plucking), senza arco (without the bow - the left hand makes a percussive sound on the strings), and explores pressure changes of the left and right hands to change the tone and textures of the instrument.

Tonal Painting

“Sept Papillons” is a depiction of butterflies - each of its seven movements has related instrumental techniques to depict the graceful movements of these delicate creatures. The most frequently utilized technique in the work makes use of alternating left-hand harmonics to create a fluttering effect. This creates a very light and ethereal tone; there is a kind of vagueness to this sound, like a close-up of a single or a few butterflies. The other primary technique utilizes the right hand to oscillate between different textures and tones with the bow; through the alternating use of near-bridge playing (sul ponticello) and near-fingerboard playing (sul tasto), as well as the use of overpressure (using the full weight of the bow to create a bursting effect), Saariaho creates the sensation of a large swath of fluttering butterflies.

Saariaho creates vivid sonic portraits of butterflies, conveyed through different instrumental techniques. These sonic textures, and the transformation between each of them, will remind listeners of the metamorphosis of butterflies.

Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer currently based in Paris. After studying composition in Finland and Germany, her research at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris marked a turning point in her music. Her characteristically rich, polyphonic textures are often created by combining live music and electronics.

Philosophical and Aesthetic Presentation

Over the centuries, composers have written pieces of music that grapple with human nature, personal emotions, social plots, and the natural world. Instrumental composers have often taken inspiration from butterflies, and utilized different instrumental techniques to draw out their ideas; 19th century French composer Gabriel Fauré uses a continuous bow to draw fast clusters in his cello and piano work Papillon, and 19th century Czech composer David Popper uses a fast separate bows to draw fluttering sounds in his own work Papillon. From the vantage point of today's sound world however, despite their ingenuities, these 19th century compositional techniques can seem monotonous.

Kaija Saariaho’s work "Sept Papillons" gives listeners a profound feeling of greatness and timelessness - while listening, one can feel the rapidly changing force of nature. The piece multifariously voices the movement of butterflies, the transformation of life, and even the interdependency of nature. In the work, the performer and the listener can subconsciously feel the "impermanence" of nature and time: every "instant" is different, fleeting, and impossible to replicate.

As many instrumental techniques have been widely used by compositional predecessors, composers after the 20th century have continuously tried exploring new techniques and even developing new rules of composition (for example, the twelve-tone system of Arnold Schoenberg). These sonic and structural explorations are often difficult to comprehend at first; to truly understand a work however, in addition to sensory training, it is necessary to think about its deeper meaning as a listener. Contemporary composers may be increasingly isolated in their efforts, however their achievements can be seen as all the more extraordinary.