Magnus Lindberg: Narratives of Time and Space

Abstract

The creative energy which has emerged from Finland over the past 25 years or so has generated a great deal of interest, not just in terms of scholarship but amongst the concert-going public at large. Magnus Lindberg is a leading, internationally renowned figure in contemporary music and his preoccupation with matters of musical timescale—and its relationship to his native homeland—forms the basis of this article. An analytical case study of his recent orchestral work Era gives a focus to more wide-ranging discussions of time, space, motion and continuity, while helping us to understand the broad appeal of this undoubtedly modern music to a refreshingly wide-ranging audience.

Keywords:

• Lindberg
• Finnish Music
• Time
• Space
• Analysis

Notes

1 I am grateful to Magnus Lindberg for agreeing to meet up (Helsinki, October 2013) to discuss his recent work in terms of both its broader cultural context and the specific compositional processes employed.

2 See http://www.tordgustavsen.com for details.

3 For my more comprehensive account, see After Sibelius: Studies in Finnish music (2006), especially Chapter 10, ‘Out of the Shadows’.

4 Lindberg agreed that there is plenty of truth behind the so-called clichés; he even felt that it was more relevant than ever, as the particular engagement with timescale by Finnish composers gives them a distinctive voice in the world of new music at large.

5 From Saariaho (2000, p. 111); see Moisala (2009, p. 54) and Howell, Hargreaves, and Rofe (2011, pp. 81ff) for a further discussion.

6 He also talked about deploying energy in his music as a reaction against the prevailing slowness of seasonal time-change, alongside his preference to compose in an environment where he has a view of the sea. The appeal here is that the sea is never the same from one moment to the next—it is an ever-changing constant—and this relates to his music in terms of its restlessness and a bubbling surface energy.

7 For a little more detail about the possible connections between the Finnish language and music, especially with regard to repetition patterns, see Howell (2006, pp. 278–280).

8 Cantus Firmus was written for a private performance to mark the retirement of Zarin Mehta as President and Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic (Summer, 2012); Acequia Madre (‘Mother Ditch’) refers to the ancient Hispanic aqueduct that still channels water in Santa Fé, New Mexico and was written for their Chamber Music Festival (2012).

9 While there are precise musical reasons for this, given Lindberg regards the ‘symphony’ as a compositional genre fundamentally rooted in tonality, he also confirmed more political motivations as well. Historically, joining the Society of Finnish Composers was conditional upon writing a symphony; he and Kaija Saariaho (as founding members of the anti-establishment, Ears Open! group of the 1970s) made a pact never to write a symphony and this is still binding today (even though the SFC has long-since updated its membership requirements).

10 As Eric Clarke asserts: ‘We all have the potential to hear different things in the same music—but the fact that we don't (or at least not all the time) is an indication of the degree to which we share a common environment, and experience common perceptual learning or adaptation’; see Clarke (2005, p. 2).