Spirituality
Conveying the inexpressible
Rich Heffern interviewed composer Einojuhani Rautavaara by
phone in his home in Helsinki, Finland.
NCR: Music reviewers talk of the sense of
religious awe, wonder and enchantment in your music, which is very popular in
this country because of its “spiritual” nature. Where does this
spiritual influence come from?
Rautavaara: I’ve always been fascinated with the
metaphysical and with religious texts. “Vigilia,” a large choral work
I wrote recently, uses texts from the Russian Orthodox church. I have used many
Roman Catholic texts also, as well as shamanistic tales from the Finnish
national epic, the Kalevala.
Composers, of course, have always been interested in these kinds
of subjects and religious texts, but I don’t use, like my good friend Arvo
Pärt does, many Eastern meditative texts. My influences are more Western
European.
Your admirers say that your music is about the heart and
spirit, and that by contrast contemporary music has become so discordant and
intellectual that it is hard to listen to.
Music is always in crisis. There was a crisis in the 1950s when I
started to compose. The new methods of modernism -- 12-tone technique and
serialism -- were advancing. I was interested in those, of course. My early
symphonies used serialist techniques, but in the end this way of composing was
not my way; it wasn’t the road for me to follow. Though the 12 tempered
tones of serialism are the vocabulary of the century just past, my solution was
to seek for a synthesis of modernism and tonal harmony.
I still use the 12-tone technique. My seventh symphony,
“Angel of Light,” opens with a series of mostly minor chords with
always a new harmony in each bar, but the root notes of those chords follow a
12-tone pattern. This kind of synthesis of two different techniques is very
typical of my creation. I often read critics who say Rautavaara has been using
so many different styles in his output. I have certainly used many
compositional techniques, but always inside one personal style. Style and
technique are different things.
You have said that music is composed organically, that it grows
by its own laws and genetics. How does that work? You start with a phrase or
melody and the whole work is there like a tree is there in the acorn?
It happens in three steps. First, almost always there is some kind
of atmosphere or mood, which is for me the original idea or impetus behind a
work. I can find it in a poem, a text or a memory. Quite often in improvising
at the piano an idea comes to mind and it starts to grow. That idea dictates to
me the choice of certain musical material, which corresponds to the original
idea, some harmonic symmetry or certain motifs and themes. The genetic code of
the piece is there from the beginning. The chosen material seems to have its
own will, which I, the composer, must respect and follow.
I used to say to my composition students: “Don’t ever
force your music! Listen to your music, to your first ideas. Music is full of
wisdom.”
The second step involves environmental factors, the cultural
climate of the time, the zeitgeist. For example, being Finnish
influences my work, as do the things that are going on in the world. Then,
third, the ability of the composer and that composer’s experience in music
come into play.
In the end, though, the work of art is unpredictable and creates
its own laws. When it’s complete, then there is nothing to add, nothing to
take away. When the work is performed, I’m always full of admiration for
it. I ask: How is it possible for this to be born? I am not able to make
anything like that. It must have been somewhere, somehow in existence even
before I found it. I’m not really mother or father but the midwife. I am
just a nourishing medium for it.
Your music reminds me of the natural world, a representation in
music of the way nature is -- the way a landscape or seascape or a cloudy
autumn sky appears. One of my favorite works is “Autumn Gardens.”
It’s music that is full of peace, acceptance and reconciliation, just like
an autumn garden.
I am glad to hear that. For every Finn, nature is very close and
there is so much of it here. Nature, of course, is an organic thing. The
genesis of music reminds me of how nature works. I see in my own garden how the
trees and flowers grow; my compositions grow and build in the same way. A
composer is not so much an architect as a gardener.
Much of the new “spiritual” music is coming from the
Baltic countries like Finland, Estonia or Latvia. Why?
This part of the world is a crossroads of religious and cultural
traditions. I belong to the Lutheran church, but one of my key formative
experiences as an artist happened when my parents took me to Karelia, which
then still belonged to Finland. After the “Winter War” of 1939, it
became part of Russia. In the middle of Lake Ladoga is an island called Valaam
with an Orthodox monastery on it. We went to the island and stayed overnight in
the monastery. I had never seen Orthodox churches and services before; it was
strange to me. When we came to the island, I saw the onion domes and towers on
the chapels, painted with bright colors. The bells started to ring for the
morning matins. The universe seemed to be full of bright sounds and colors.
There were monks with dark beards and dour countenances, icons with
saints’ faces and candles burning everywhere. The sensuous mystery of the
place made a profound impression on me.
Fifteen years later in New York I was studying at Juilliard and I
found a book full of Byzantine icons. I composed a suite for pianos called
“Ikon.” Forty years later the Orthodox church in Finland commissioned
a large-scale choral work from me. I was happy to have that task, because those
bells and colorful towers were with me.
Many of your popular works refer to angels. What do angels mean
to you?
I have set several of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems to music. He
speaks of angels as terrifying archetypes common to all civilizations. My
conviction is that there are other kinds of realities, other kinds of
consciousness. They are real but beyond rational approach. If you want to use
words you can say “angel,” for lack of a better word.
Music is a language where we can probe those other realities,
without words. Besides immense pleasure, music gives to the listener
information. The information is not anything you can transcribe in words.
As a young man I went with a friend to a piano concert. The
pianist played very well. When we left the hall, my friend, who was a pianist
also, said: “Did you notice he did everything right, with very good
command of technique and style, but he didn’t really understand what he
was playing? He just played without understanding anything.” My friend
said he couldn’t put it in words but he could readily sit at the piano and
play what he meant. “It’s this,” he said … and he played
it, this specific information that could not be expressed in words. That was
the first time I came to this idea that there is another reality expressed in
music.
A scientist once wrote, “The existence of music is a
continuous intellectual scandal.” He understood there is a message in
music, and there are no words for that message. It’s from another
world.
In the newspapers recently there was a story about
archeologists finding a primitive flute -- a section of bear thigh-bone pierced
with holes -- in a hunter-gatherer site that was dated as 43,000 years old.
Music has been with us a long time.
Yes, and why did they play that flute? Because it conveyed to them
something that is inexpressible in words.
National Catholic Reporter, December 13,
2002
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