Rautavaara, in his own words, describes his life and his composition Cantus Arcticus, Concerto for Birds & Orchestra.
I was born 1928 - fortunately in Finland. Fortunately, because this is a country with dramatic destinies, situated between east and west, between Tundra and Europe, between lutheran and orthodox faith. It is full of symbols, of ancient metaphers, revered archetypes. Just listen to Jean Sibelius. He gave me the grant to study in Tanglewood with Rogers Sessions and Aron Copland, and also at the Juilliard in New York with Vincent Persichetti. Coming back I went to the very center of Europe, to Switzerland, to learn the avant-garde, and worked with Wladimir Vogel, later also in Cologne.
After the Wanderjahre I taught at the Sibelius-Academy to make my living, composing mostly at night, until 1990. The result up to now is eight operas, eight symphonies, eleven solo concertos, chamber music and choral works. I won my first composition contest prize 1953 in Cincinnati, later there were 14 first prizes at home and abroad. 1997 a Midem prize was given in Cannes for the 7th Symphony "Angel of Light" , and 1998 for the Violin Concerto. This victorious angel also got a Grammy nomination in the USA and the ABC prize in Australia.
But after all I agree with Carl Gustav Jung when he writes: "The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him." Since 1990 my life has been just great: I do nothing but compose, living in the center of Helsinki and being married to the most wonderful wife I could imagine.
Cantus Arcticus - composed in 1972
The Oulu University, close to the artic Circle, was preparing its inauguration festivities in 1972 and wanted to commission a cantata from me. Now for a composer to write a cantata for chorus and orchestra, probably to a poem commissioned from a poet, seldom is the most inviting task. Therefore I wanted to break with the academic traditions by means of this piece. I got off with a tape recorder to roam around the marshlands of the North - where I had spent many childhood summers. You may feel that with the orchestra I depicted the wavering twilight atmosphere of the North - barren, touching, on the boundary between the real and the imaginary - in which the song of the birds amid the forest murmurs forms a mysterious counterpoint, between familiar cranes and swans and other unidentifiable species, which the orchestral brass imitate with their own crane-like cries. To get the performers in the right mood I wrote in the performance notes at the beginning of the work: "Think of Autumn and of Tchaikovsky".
The tape material has been processed very little."The Bog" opens with a flute duet. Gradually the other woodwinds join in, followed by the sounds of birds in bogland in Spring. Finally, the strings introduce their broad melody, like the inner voice of a person wandering in the wilds. The second movement, "Melancholy", features the warbling of the shore lark, considerably slowed down and thus at a much lower pitch than the original. The concluding movement, "Swans migrating", ends in a mighty crescendo which on the tape is created by overdubbing the sounds of whooper swans so that they seem to multiply infinitely before disappearing into the distance.
Animated imagery by Liz Gill Neilson will be projected above the orchestra during the Cantus Arcticus. For preview and ongoing update of the images, visit PCO's artist-in-residence website:
