Kaija Saariaho (born 14 October 1952) is a Finnish composer. She is a style characterized by an ethereal, eclectic, picturesque style with an incredible command of orchestration and tone color and a harmonic vocabulary that is free flowing, built on emotion and never formalist. In her early career years she was influenced by post-serialism, but she grew to find it too restrictive: “You were not allowed to have pulse, or tonally oriented harmonies, or melodies. I don’t want to write music through negations. Everything is permissible as long as it’s done in good taste.”

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