Kaija Anneli Saariaho (Finnish: [ˈkɑi̯jɑ ˈsɑːriɑho]; born Kaija Laakkonen; October 14, 1952 – June 2, 2023) was a Finnish composer who lived and worked in Paris, France. Throughout her career, Saariaho received commissions from many important organizations, including the Lincoln Center for the Kronos Quartet, IRCAM for the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the BBC, the New York Philharmonic, the Salzburg Music Festival, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the Finnish National Opera. In a 2019 survey by BBC Music Magazine, Saariaho was named the greatest living composer.

Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg, and Paris. She lived in Paris beginning in 1982. Her research at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) changed her musical style from strict serialism to spectralism. Her music often combines live performances with electronic sounds to create complex, layered textures.

Life and work

Kaija Saariaho was born in Helsinki, Finland. As a child, she played the violin, guitar, and piano. She attended a Steiner school for her elementary and high school education. In college, she studied graphic design at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, piano at the Helsinki Conservatorium, and musicology at the University of Helsinki. Later, she studied composition at the Sibelius Academy under Paavo Heininen. After attending the Darmstadt Summer Courses, she moved to Germany to study at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber. She found the strict rules and mathematical focus of her teachers in Freiburg to be limiting, as she explained in an interview.

In 1980, Saariaho attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses and heard a concert by French spectralists Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. This experience changed her artistic direction. Inspired by this, she joined computer music courses at IRCAM, a research institute in Paris, led by David Wessel, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and Marc Battier.

In 1982, Saariaho began working at IRCAM, researching how computers analyze the sound qualities of musical notes from different instruments. She developed methods for using computers in composition, experimented with musique concrète, and created her first pieces that combined live performance with electronics. She also used IRCAM’s CHANT synthesizer to compose her Jardin Secret trilogy: Jardin Secret I (1985), Jardin Secret II (1986), and Nymphea (Jardin Secret III) (1987). These works were created with the help of computer programs. Saariaho collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Barrière, a composer, multimedia artist, and computer scientist who led IRCAM’s musical research department from 1984 to 1987. She married Barrière in 1984, and they have two children.

In Paris, Saariaho focused on creating music with slow changes in thick layers of sound. Her first tape piece, Vers Le Blanc (1982), and her orchestral and tape work, Verblendungen, both use a single transition. In Vers Le Blanc, the transition moves from one group of closely spaced musical notes to another. In Verblendungen, the transition moves from loud to quiet. This piece also uses two visual ideas: a brush stroke that starts as a dense mark and becomes thinner, and the word Verblendungen, which means "dazzlements, delusions, blindedness."

During the 1980s and 1990s, Saariaho emphasized sound qualities and combined electronics with traditional instruments. For example, Nymphea (1987) is for string quartet and live electronics, with musicians whispering words from a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky. Saariaho used a fractal generator to create material for this piece. She described the process in an interview.

Saariaho often described having synaesthesia, a condition where senses blend together. She explained this in an interview.

Another example of her work is Six Japanese Gardens (1994), a percussion piece with a prerecorded electronic layer that includes Japanese nature sounds, traditional instruments, and Buddhist monks chanting. During a visit to Tokyo in 1993, she expanded her original idea into a partially indeterminate piece. It has six movements, each inspired by a traditional Japanese garden. In movements IV and V, she explored complex rhythms using a variety of instruments. She described this in an interview.

Musicologist Pirkko Moisala wrote about the indeterminate nature of this composition.

On December 1, 2016, the Metropolitan Opera performed L'Amour de loin, the second opera by a female composer ever presented by the company. This was the first opera by a female composer and the first conducted by a female conductor (Susanna Mälkki) in the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series. The Santa Fe Opera had previously performed L'Amour de loin in 2002 and Adriana Mater in 2008.

Saariaho supported the Helsinki Music Centre by funding a new organ with one million euros. She also chaired the International Kaija Saariaho Organ Composition Competition, which selected 11 compositions in April 2023.

In February 2021, Saariaho was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. She passed away in Paris on June 2, 2023, at age 70.

Her final work, HUSH, a trumpet concerto, premiered on August 24, 2023, at the Helsinki Music Centre with Verneri Pohjola and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Susanna Mälkki. Though the premiere was after her death, Saariaho heard the piece during a rehearsal in spring 2023. The work was inspired by her earlier concerto Graal Théâtre and includes text by Aleksi Barrière, her son and librettist for some of her later works.

Awards and honours

• 1986 – Received the Kranichsteiner Prize at Darmstädter Ferienkurse
• 1988 – Won the Prix Italia for Stilleben
• 1989 – Received the Prix Ars Electronica for Stilleben and Io; completed a one-year residency at the University of San Diego
• 2000 – Awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize for Lonh
• 2003 – Received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Arts, University of Turku
• 2003 – Received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki
• 2003 – Won the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for L'Amour de loin
• 2008 – Named "Musician of the Year 2008" by Musical America
• 2009 – Received the Wihuri Sibelius Prize
• 2010 – Invited by Walter Fink to be the 20th composer in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival; the second female composer after Sofia Gubaidulina
• 2011 – Received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize
• 2011 – Won a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording (L'Amour de loin)
• 2012 – Became a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
• 2013 – Received the Polar Music Prize
• 2017 – Awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Contemporary Music
• 2017 – Became a corresponding member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste
• 2017 – Became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2018 – Received an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki
• 2019 – Named in the BBC Music Magazine "Greatest Living Composer" survey
• 2021 – Received the Leone d'oro di Venezia at the Biennale della Musica Contemporanea
• 2021 – Named "Composer of the Year" by The New York Times
• 2022 – Became a foreign associate member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts
• 2023 – Received the Academician of Arts title from the President of the Republic of Finland

Selected recordings

• Graal Théâtre – Gidon Kremer ; BBC Symphony Orchestra ; Esa-Pekka Salonen – Sony SK60817
• L'Amour de loin – Gerald Finley ; Dawn Upshaw ; Finnish National Opera ; Esa-Pekka Salonen – Deutsche Grammophon DVD 00440 073 40264
• Nymphéa – Cikada String Quartet – ECM New Series 472 4222