Lichtbogen (198586) for nine musicians and electronics
Composer: Kaija Saariaho (19522023)
Performers: Endymion Ensemble, dir. John Whitfield
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"Lichtbogen is the first work in which Kaija Saariaho used a computer in composing pure instrumental music. First she recorded harmonics produced by a cello so that the sound was gradually broken down as the bow pressure increased as it was drawn across the string. This string timbre a typical element of her music has already made its appearance in Verblendungen and was thereafter to be a feature of all her other works including a string instrument. The computer analysed the sound parametres, thus providing her with a model for the harmonic structure of the work. The rhythmic models, designed to achieve an imperceptible shift from one rhythm to another, were also produced by a program network of her own devising.

The music of Kaija Saariaho can always be viewed from two angles. The stimulus for the strict theory and technique of composition may have been one that is conventionally associated with the artist mystique, Nature. In this case it presented itself in Lapland in December 1984. The sky was ablaze with the Northern Lights. Anyone who has ever seen them will appreciate the sense of infinity elicited by the flickering rays as they leap across the sky, defying the eye, light as a feather. It is an experience that combines the infinite with speed, timelessness with the ticking of the clock. And what makes it so beguiling is the fact that it all takes place in complete silence a silence that cries out to be filled with sound, colour and movement.

Lichtbogen begins with a single sound, which gradually acquires additional shades, then other notes, tones. The sound becomes a texture, timelessness is anchored in time, music begins.
The flute is the protagonist of this piece, the initiator and terminator. At the end the flautist transformed by the computer into a surrealistic being recites phonemes as he plays. These are taken from the french translation of the poem The World by Henry Vaughan, "J'ai vu l'éternite l'autre nuit". According to Kaija Saariaho it is a vision of endless light, of space, beneath eternal light and peace goes time, in hours, days, years.

Time? The concept of time is a fundamental element of Kaija Saariaho's music, and Lichtbogen, more than any other work by her, provides the key. Movement is not the steady marking time of a clock, a calendar or a metronome. Time is tied to matter, and music that consciously strives to break away from the weight of matter towards nonmatter, pure thought, also dissociates itself from chronometric time. Kaija Saariaho does not, however, leave her music floating in a vacuum; she plucks it back into the world by an even beat on a glockenspiel. This gesture is as pleasing as it is essential."

~Risto Nieminen (translated by Susan Sinisalo)
Source: Booklet of "Lichtbogen; Io; Verblendungen; Stilleben"


"Lichtbogen [...], commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, was prompted by the Northern lights. It is an extremely sensitive, finely tuned and vibrant piece that is fundamentally static yet is constantly moving and alive. Various colours and noiselike sounds shimmer and undulate in a ghostly, nebulous musical space. There is also a more theoretical aspect to Lichtbogen. Saariaho used a computer in writing this work; this was the first time she used a computer with a purely instrumental work. The basic material consisted of harmonics played on a cello; when bow pressure is increased, the notes break up into noise. A computer analysis of this phenomenon generated the harmony and sound models that Saariaho then translated into music for the musicians to perform, complementing the sound spectrum with live electronics, i.e. electronic processing of sound in real time in concert."

~Kimmo Korhonen (translated by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi)
Source: Booklet of "Meet the Composer Kaija Saariaho"
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