Du cristal (2004)

Kaija Saariahos music obviously inhabits a different sound world from that of Joseph Haydn. Composers of today have to wrestle with basic questions about music that were taken for granted in Haydns day. What should it sound like? What is it for? What should the rules, if any, be? The 20th century rejected the orthodoxy of the past, replacing it with a lot of new orthodoxies to be rejected in their turn. Saariaho has embraced eclecticism and a number of different styles and milieus. Not long ago she told an English journalist that she became fed up with the post-serialist tradition because of all the things that it prohibited. You were not allowed to have pulse, or tonally oriented harmonies, or melodies, she said. I dont want to write music through negations. Everything is permissible as long as its done in good taste. (...)