Musical modernism draws its identity primarily from its audience’s understanding of what it means to be modern, as listeners exist in and pass through an audible time. I analyze Kaija Saariaho’s violin concerto, Graal théâtre (1994) through a theoretical lens that engages music’s temporal nature as a form of theatricality. The theatrical paradigm was proposed originally by Michael Fried to explain how minimalism promotes the absorptive attention of a viewer. Scholars expanded this notion beyond art to describe a creative use of anachronism that encourages even greater audience immersion in a work’s aesthetic. The discursive thrust of such anachronisms addresses the local temporal experience of listeners as well as “the monumental temporality of history” (Ryzhenko, 2022).
Graal Théâtre follows Florence Delay and Jacques Roubaud’s theatrical cycle which reworks medieval Arthurian texts into a complex tapestry. Both the original texts and Saariaho’s concerto treat genre as a form of historical enactment. Cyclical and linear time intersect, as literary and musical characters relive past dialogues and events. The concerto’s two movements reflect the two histories intertwined in its inspiration: the pagan Celtic world and Christianity. Like its inspiration, Saariaho’s concerto retains a personal and rigorous exploration of its models: from a focus on the D string and its harmonics to expressive markings that trace a circular narrative throughout the work. Viewing Graal théâtre through a theatrical lens links the internal temporality of the work with external signifiers, a commitment that anchors the multiplicities of modernism while reflecting its dialectical and self-reflexive character

In August 2022, Kaija Saariaho’s Study for Life (1980; soprano, tape, and light) was given its first performance in nearly forty years. Originating from her student years at the Sibelius Academy, Study for Life sets a text from the fifth section of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men and holds significance as her first stage work and only her second work to include electronics, making it an important early reference point for two of the most characteristic features of her mature compositional practice. Initially barred from publication by Eliot’s estate, Saariaho successfully reapplied for permission in 2018 and embarked on a comprehensive reconstruction of the work. This involved not only recreating the lost electronic part, but also revising the manuscript score for publication and designing a completely new staging.
Drawing on archival materials from the Paul Sacher Stiftung and my own interviews with Saariaho’s collaborators, this paper highlights the pivotal role that Study for Life played in her early compositional practice. Embracing what Nicholas Cook describes as the “emergent quality of multimedia” (1998, 85), this analysis delves into how soprano, tape, and light design are coordinated to critically engage with Eliot’s poetic conceit: the “shadowy fissure between conceptual thought and experiential materiality” (Day 2008, 236). Contrary to Eliot’s theistic modernism, I suggest that Saariaho deliberately crafts musical moments that challenge the human-machine distinction, drawing connections to to Donna Haraway’s subversive cyborg politics (2013 [1983]).
I conclude with a brief discussion of the reconstruction of Study for Life and its relation to the original work, focusing on how similarities between the two versions reveal some of Saariaho’s lifelong aesthetic priorities. In the preface to the revised score, Saariaho describes the work as “An endless ‘study’ that has indeed encompassed my entire artistic life” (1980). This paper substantiates Saariaho’s claim, revealing in this early student work evidence of Saariaho’s continual pursuit: the crafting of sound worlds that evoke the quintessentially human experience of navigating the enigmatic space between thought and experience.

The music of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) is widely performed all over the world. Her operas have been recognized as masterpieces for their research in terms of sound colors. Indeed theatrical production has been very important for her. The relation between her operas and her instrumental music is a very interesting topic to investigate. This paper aims to analyze the musical figures and the musical gestures that creates a hidden theatricality in the string quartets by Saariaho. Thus, the attention will be focused on her two string quartets: Nymphéa (1987) and Terra Memoria (2007). I will present a new point of view to investigate how we might read the musical material as characters on a stage and their interactions during the piece. In order to do this, I will take into consideration a geometrical view of the pieces’ harmonies; that is, present a graphic representation of the chords of the piece. Several scholars have already investigated this aspect in the last decades (Tymoczko, 2011), but the approach used in this paper differs from their approaches. This study begins with what has been done so in order to show how certain geometric figures derive from the analysis of chords. The harmonic chain of each piece will be described geometrically using figures such as triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons (a chord with three notes is represented as a triangle and so on). These chords will be represented graphically in different cylinders that represent the total musical space. Later, a graphic analysis will indicate where and how these figures change according to their characteristics. I will explain how the shapes of the figures reflect the characteristics of the chords. Such a study represents the first step toward a detailed and accurate theory of harmony explained geometrically. These figures can be seen as characters of an inner theatre; I will explain how the reaction between the chords leads to dramatic tension that is developed on a stage similar to by characters in an opera.