By Sanna Iitti – IAWM Journal (2002)
This is the second of two articles on the music of Kaija Saariaho. The first presented a summary of the composer’s stylistic development and artistic principles (see the IAWM Journal 7/3 [2001]: 17-20). The current article focuses entirely on the genesis of her opera, L’amour de loin (Love From Afar), which will receive its premiere in the United States at the Santa Fe Opera in July 2002. Much of the information is based on interviews with the composer.
Saariaho’s fascination with the stage began about the time she was composing her ballet Maa (Earth) for the Finnish National Ballet in 1991. Attending a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise, directed by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival in 1992, furnished additional inspiration: Saariaho was now convinced of her ability to write in this medium.1
As early as 1993 Saariaho believed she had found the perfect plot for an opera—the legend about the life and distant love affair of the 12th-century troubadour, Jaufré Rudel.2 She did not begin work on the opera, however, until she was assured of a performance. Her negotiations with the Finnish National Opera lead nowhere. Then, Saariaho contacted the Salzburg Festival, where her Château de l’âme (Castle of the Soul, five songs for soprano solo, eight female voices and orchestra) had been a great success at its premiere in August 1996.3 The response of the artistic director, Gérard Mortier, was enthusiastic, and L’amour de loin was placed on the 2001 Salzburg Festival schedule. Saariaho began writing in 1999 but was obliged to complete the opera one year earlier than anticipated due to changes in the production schedule. The premiere took place on August 15, 2000.
The poet Jacques Roubaud had at first agreed to write the libretto, but he withdrew from the project. Peter Sellars, the director of the opera, then introduced Saariaho to the French- Lebanese author, Amin Maalouf, a specialist in depicting the medieval world. As librettist he worked intensively with the composer on details. Though discussions with Sellars were crucial, Saariaho met with him just a few times.4 She viewed composing to be her primary task, and she did not want to interfere too much with the staging.5
The cast of characters and performers in the premiere were Jaufré Rudel, Prince of Blaye and troubadour (Dwayne Croft, baritone); Clémence, Countess of Tripoli (Dawn Upshaw, soprano); the Pilgrim (Dagmar Peckova, mezzo-soprano); Chorus of Tripolese Women (sopranos and altos); and Chorus of Companions (tenors and basses); conductor: Kent Nagano; staging: George Tsypin; costumes: Martin Pakledinaz; lighting: James Ingalls. The opera is structured in five continuous acts, and the plot can be summarized as follows:
Act I: Jaufré Rudel, Prince of Blaye, has grown tired of the earthly pleasures of love and seeks a distant, spiritual love that would probably not be fulfilled. His old companions mock him, but when the Pilgrim arrives from Tripoli and describes Clémence, a woman who matches his ideals, Jaufré becomes obsessed with her.
Act II: The Pilgrim travels to Tripoli and tells Clémence that a prince has fallen in love with her and writes songs about her. Though initially offended, Clémence accepts his devotion, but questions whether she deserves it.
Act III: The Pilgrim returns to Blaye to tell Jaufré that Clémence is aware of his love and his songs. Jaufré decides to travel to Tripoli himself. Clémence, however, prefers a distant relationship.
Act IV: Jaufré is on board the ship, impatient to meet his beloved but fearful. He regrets having been so impulsive and is filled with such anxiety that he becomes ill. By the time he arrives in Tripoli he is a dying man.
Act V: The Pilgrim announces to Clémence that Jaufré has arrived but is mortally ill. Jaufré is carried on a stretcher to Tripoli’s Citadel; he regains his senses as he becomes aware of Clémence. They embrace, declaring their love for each other. Jaufré dies in her arms, and Clémence rails against heaven, blaming herself for his death. Clémence then decides to enter a convent. She kneels in prayer, but it is uncertain whether she is directing her prayers to God or to her “distant love.”6
Each character in L’amour de loin is distinguished by specific harmonic-melodic structures and instrumentation. Clémence’s melodies build upon seconds and thirds, and her sound colors are bright and translucent. The Pilgrim is customarily introduced with a rapid descending motif. Jaufré is depicted by straightforward, active rhythms as well as prominent fourths and fifths. Saariaho uses contrasting male and female voices effectively in her choral writing and refers to the conventions of Finnish operatic style of the 1970s, one that is characterized by conventional harmonic solutions and historical topics.7
L’amour de loin is Saariaho’s most ambitious work thus far, and its basic elements, especially its harmonic structure, can be traced through her entire output.8 Stylistically, one predecessor is the above-mentioned Château de l’âme. The intensive, broad-arching melodic idiom of the work influenced the music for Clémence. Oltra mar (Across the Sea, 1998-99; a 15-minute work for orchestra and mixed choir), commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, is closely related to L’amour de loin. While waiting for the libretto to be written, Saariaho wanted to work on material that she could use in her opera. Portions of the music in Act IV, where Jaufré sets out to sea, originate in Oltra mar.9
The composition that is the most closely related, textually, is Lonh (the Occitan word “lonh” in French would be “de loin,” “from afar”). As the text for Lonh (1996, for soprano and electronics), Saariaho used Jaufré’s poem “Lanquand li jorn,” originally written in the language of medieval Provence, Occitan. In the composer’s mind, Lonh symbolically established the prologue for the opera,10 and both the music and the poetry are quoted in the second scene of Act II of L’amour de loin.
Jaufré’s poetry, like that of most troubadour poetry, deals with the theme of courtly love. “Lanquand li jorn,” his most famous song,11 presents the memory of a distant love. In the opera, Saariaho uses four of the original eight stanzas, with slight modifications.12 A comparison of a modern edition of the song13 with the version in Act II14 reveals that although Saariaho clearly retains the idiom of the troubadour song, she uses the composition rather freely. She adds ornamentation, with trills, quick dynamic shifts and expressive pauses. Surprisingly, although the song was by Jaufré, his character in the opera does not sing it. Instead, when the Pilgrim arrives to tell Clémence about Jaufré’s love, he sings a song he says is by Jaufré, but blames his own bad memory for not remembering it correctly. He presents three stanzas in French, and Clémence finishes the song in Occitan with a fourth stanza derived from Lonh.
For Saariaho, integrating Jaufré’s poem into her opera was a challenge. She wanted to allude to Jaufré’s modal melody, yet not sacrifice her own musical style.15 Her version is an elaborate vocal line, reminiscent of secular medieval melodies, with a simple accompaniment based on fourths and fifths, and colored by sensitive orchestration.
Surprisingly, several features of L’amour de loin point to Romantic rather than modern operatic conventions; for example, the dream sequence18 especially “ordered” by the composer from the librettist, as well as the prayer section at the end of the opera, are common to a large number of Romantic operas.19 Saariaho revealed in an interview with Liisamaija Hautsalo that a page from Tristan and Isolde has been hanging on the wall of her study since 1978.20 She, like Wagner, has been inspired by medieval legends, one of which rendered the title for her violin concerto, Graal théâtre (1994). Two links between Tristan and L’amour de loin are the prominence in both operas of the crossing of the sea and the obsessive, unfulfilled love that ends in death. Furthermore, the arresting chord that is heard in the opening of L’amour’s orchestral introduction, Traversé (The Crossing), and recurs in different variants throughout the work,21 may be associated with the famous Tristan-chord. The chord in L’amour possesses symbolic meaning for Saariaho; she explains that it is a combination of Jaufré’s and Clémence’s respective chords.22
The five-act structure of L’amour de loin reflects the tradition of French grand opera; the work’s intimate nature, however, unites it with 20th-century French operas—Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, for example, and Olivier Messiaen’s St. François d’Assise. The central action in these works takes place on a psychological level. Pelléas, like Tristan, deals with the theme of forbidden love, and Messiaen’s Christian “anti- opera” describes the spiritual love and the death of St. François. Minimizing external dramatic action and creating, instead, a spectacle that examines the human experience and mysteries of love are characteristic of both Saariaho’s and Messiaen’s operatic idiom.
It is worth noting that during the genesis of the opera, the composer initially planned a “Mozartian” combination of five characters. Peter Sellars, however, realized that each time Saariaho related the story, she mentioned only three characters. As the collaborative planning of the opera progressed, the composer, the director and the librettist together retained this nucleus of three; a divided chorus, with separate groups of female and male voices, replaced the “soubrette” couple.23
L’amour de loin is an intriguing work that inspires multiple interpretations. I suggest that they can be separated into three main categories: psychological, cultural and religious.
1. Psychological interpretation:
L’amour de loin examines closely the thoughts and feelings of its characters, who struggle with their desire for and fear of love. Each lives in a state of longing: the Pilgrim yearns to see the Holy Land; Clémence yearns for her childhood and her home in Toulouse; and Jaufré longs for a spiritual love.24
The characters are fearful, proud and vain. Clémence is at first offended by Jaufré’s distant love; then Jaufré is offended when he learns of her reaction. He does not behave like a Romantic superhero but more closely resembles a modern man as, for example, during the sea journey when Jaufré admits his lack of courage: “I am afraid of dying, Pilgrim, and I am afraid of living. Do you understand me?”25
The leading characters are afraid to meet each other. Clémence calls Jaufré a madman when she learns of his arrival, since it will destroy her cherished fantasies, which she prefers to a genuine meeting. She states: “His songs are more than caresses, and I do not know whether I would love the man as well as I love the poet.”26 Peter Sellars’ opinion is that while the Pilgrim falls in love with the “real” Clémence, Jaufré falls in love with an image of her created by the Pilgrim. The Pilgrim uses Jaufré’s song to describe his own secret feelings for Clémence, frightened to confess them,27 and the melancholic Jaufré turns inwards and becomes obsessed with his own vivid fantasy of the woman.28 L’amour de loin suggests that the difficulty of encountering another person arises from fear, which is why fantasy often replaces reality.
2. Cultural interpretation:
Saariaho, a Finn living in Paris, could easily identify with Clémence, who stays in exile far from her birth place, Toulouse.29 It is also noteworthy that the librettist, Amin Maalouf, emigrated to France in 1976 after the violence in his native Lebanon began to tear the country apart.30 Together they created an opera that introduces the theme of displacement and touches on the issues of cultural typecasting and even colonialism.
The fear of encountering another person can also be considered from an inter-cultural perspective. For Jaufré, Clémence is captivatingly exotic, and he conceives of her as an Oriental woman, not knowing that she is a Westerner who lives in the Middle East, having been taken there from Toulouse at the age of five. His anxiety, leading to his death, suggests that cross-cultural encounters seldom succeed because of negative stereotyping and projections.
On the other hand, the Pilgrim’s restless wish to travel associates with the early Western colonialism encountered during the Christian crusades. The Pilgrim wants “to gaze” with his “own eyes on the strongest things the Orient holds, Constantinople, Babylon, Antioch, the oceans of sand, the rivers of ash, the trees that weep tears of incense, the lions in the mountains of Anatolia, and the dwelling place of the Titans.”31
3. Religious interpretation:
That two of the three characters possess names that symbolically associate with the Christian religion reveals the strong spiritual undertone of the opera. The Pilgrim is the archetypical Christian believer, whose greatest wish is to see the Holy Land. Clémence, too, gains a religious connotation due the name’s French meaning: “mercy.” During the genesis of L’amour de loin, Saariaho even considered choosing “Clémence” as the title of the opera.32 Clémence may be deemed an allegorical figure; she is the object of both Jaufré’s and the Pilgrim’s love, but she may also represent a metaphor of Christian piety and forgiveness, and may even symbolize the Holy City of Jerusalem or the Virgin Mary.33
Embracing “Clémence,” or mercy, at the moment of his death, Jaufré states he now has everything he desires.34 Both their passion and Clémence’s final prayer that obscures the distinction between God and love evoke the ecstasy of the medieval saints, in which the religious blends with the erotic.
Gender representation, too, suggests that as a study of love, L’amour de loin does not express just a single meaning. The Pilgrim’s character, a male role written for a mezzo-soprano, belongs to the category of “trouser-roles”: women playing men on stage. Also, in L’amour de loin, the discrepancy between a masculine role and its feminine performer on stage creates some intriguing tensions.
The Pilgrim and Jaufré speak frankly to one another as “man to man.” Their friendship is exceptional for Jaufré and has replaced his old relationships with his comrades. “If any man in this world below has any rights over me, it is you alone,” Jaufré confesses to the Pilgrim.35 Obviously, they both love Clémence. They discuss her virtues condensed into the recurring sentence: “beautiful without the arrogance of beauty; noble without the arrogance of nobility; pious without the arrogance of piety.” This love for the same woman binds these two “men” together.
On the other hand, the Pilgrim’s love for Clémence is implied only indirectly in L’amour de loin, which is complicit with the “forbiddenness” of a woman-to-woman relationship that trouser roles have suggestively evoked on stage.36 “It was to you whom God gave beauty, Countess, but for the eyes of others,” says the Pilgrim. He observes Clémence unnoticed,37 and after they converse, he hides behind a pillar in order to watch and listen to her again.38 One may infer that Clémence is the object of the Pilgrim’s silent gaze and desire; momentarily, the stage performance erodes the heterosexual gender roles coded into the libretto’s text.
Unlike Jaufré and Clémence, the Pilgrim was conceived by Saariaho as an “abstract” character representing the fate that “weaves together two separate fabrics.”39 The creation of a trouser role instead of the planned bass role40 may be considered equivalent to the abstract nature of the Pilgrim’s character and reflects the role’s function in the opera. The Pilgrim joins the masculine and feminine protagonists, Jaufré and Clémence, together by acting as a messenger who leads them into a consciousness of each other’s existence as well as to their final union in love (and death). On the other hand, the fact that the Pilgrim is simultaneously a man and a woman on stage creates an androgynous character symbolizing the unification of masculinity and femininity in one individual.41
When analyzing a composer’s works, musicologists and theorists often tend to link the composer to a certain school or stylistic trend. Saariaho’s music has customarily been placed within the stylistic framework created by “the French spectral school,” also known as the French “timbre” composers, who were working at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in the 1970s.42 Global formal principles and unique timbral solutions were a characteristic of their music, and are a characteristic of L’amour de loin, too. This suggests that Saariaho retains some of the “timbre” composers’ stylistic principles, although her present personal style cannot be classified as being in one single stylistic category
I suggest that Saariaho’s first opera could be described as one that combines modernist stylistic features with a postmodern aesthetic attitude. The core characteristic of musical postmodernism is reflectivity, according to Mikko Heiniö (1995).43 The consonant nature of the opera’s harmonies and the beauty and intelligibility of its melodies further suggest that L’amour de loin is not a purely modernist opera, despite the composer’s background in the Central-European avant garde. The demands of the traditional genre have simplified her musical language, which she has enriched by allusions to medieval modality and the elegiac songs of the troubadours.
1. Anthony Tommasini, “A Prince Idealizes his Love From Afar.” The New York Times (August 17, 2000).
2. Telephone interview with Kaija Saariaho, May 28, 2001.
3. The work will receive its New York premiere in a performance by the New York Philharmonic, May 22-24, 2003, according to an announcement in The New York Times (January 9, 2002). Further, the Finnish Music Information Center informs that Saariaho is currently working on a monologue opera for the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila. The opera has been commissioned by the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Saariaho has also been commissioned to write a new opera for the Paris Opera to be premiered in 2005. Both librettos will be written by Amin Maalouf.
4. Interview with Kaija Saariaho, Helsinki, June 12, 2001. (Saariaho visited Helsinki to receive the Helsinki Day Medal in honor of her artistic endeavors.)
5. Pierre Michel, “Kaija Saariaho: de subtiles connexions entre lumière et son,” Le Monde de la Musique 8 (2000): 52.
6. L’amour de loin, synopsis, published by Chester Music, 1999. I have used the second version of the score, published by Chester Music in 1999 [Acts I, II, III] and 2000 [Acts IV, V]. It may not represent the composer’s final intentions, since it states “only for perusal.” Note that the measure numbering for each act always starts with measure 1.
7. The prominent Finnish operas of the 1970s were known as “fur cap operas” due to their traditional style as well as subject matter. The best known composers were Joonas Kokkonen and Aulis Sallinen. The composers of Saariaho’s generation perceived these operas as too conservative and vigorously opposed them. My observation about the traditional nature of Saariaho’s choral idiom is supported by Hautsalo, who suggests (my translation): “From the Finnish [influences] rather than the modernists Heininen or Erik Bergman, one encounters repercussions of Kokkonen and the dream visions of [his opera], The Last Temptations.” See Liisamaija Hautsalo, “Kaija Saariahon L’amour de loin-oopperan suhde tradition: aiheet, tyylipiirteet ja muukalaisuuden idea.” Congress presentation at ICMS 7, Imatra, Finland (June 10, 2001), 4. (My best thanks to Ms. Hautsalo for a printed copy of her presentation.)
8. Telephone interview with Kaija Saariaho, May 28, 2001.
9. Liisamaija Hautsalo, “Kaipuu, rakkaus, kuolema,” Rondo 4 (2000): 20.
10. Ibid.
11. Elizabeth Aubry, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 1986), 7.
12. Unlike Lonh, the first stanza of the poem is not quoted. The Pilgrim begins with stanza V, according to the editions of Jaufré Rudel’s songs by Alfred Jeanroy (1974) and George Wolf and Roy Rosenstein (1983). In the text provided for Lonh in the CD “Private Gardens” (Ode 906-2) the stanza is placed as II.
13. Quoted in Aubry, 189, and Plate 2 of The Poetry of Cercamon and Jaufré Rudel, edited and translated by Georg Wolf and Roy Rosenstein (New York & London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1983).
14. Act II, scene 2, mm. 374-572.
15. Interview with Kaija Saariaho, Helsinki, June 12, 2001.
16. Hautsalo 2000, 18.
17. Pierre Michel, “Music to be Heard: On Kaija Saariaho’s Oeuvre,” trans. and adapted by Steven Lindberg and Herbert Glass, Salzburger Festspiele program, 2000.
18. During his sea trip (Act IV, scene 2) Jaufré awakens claiming to the Pilgrim that he saw Clémence while dreaming. His dream materializes on stage: Clémence appears by the seaside in a white robe gesturing to Jaufré and singing about his love that fills her mind.
19. Hautsalo, 2001, 5.
20. Hautsalo 2000, 18-19.
21. Michel, “Music to be Heard: On Kaija Saariaho’s Oeuvre.”
22. Telephone interview with Kaija Saariaho, May 28, 2001.
23. Ibid. The score indicates that the two choruses can sing on or off stage.
24. The Magic Flute, among Mozart’s operas, deals with the idea of spiritual love, and seems to belong to the corpus of operas that may subconsciously have stimulated the composer during her creative process. Saariaho said that while composing L’amour de loin, she saw the Magic Flute a few times with Dawn Upshaw appearing as Pamina; it may be noted that Upshaw also sang the role of the heroine in the premiere of L’amour. Furthermore, before working full-time on the opera, Saariaho composed Liisan Taikahuilu (Liisa’s Magic Flute), a miniature piece for her favorite instrument, the flute. Telephone interview with Kaija Saariaho, May 28, 2001.
25. Act IV, scene 1, mm. 358-61. It is also noteworthy that at the beginning of the opera Jaufré mocks himself by saying, “Women once looked on you with terror, and men with envy....Or was it the other way around? Men once looked on you with terror, and women with envy” (Act I, scene 1, mm. 201-13). This suggests that Jaufré conceives himself as somewhat effeminate.
26. Act III, scene 2, mm. 592-97.
27. This interpretive suggestion originates from a remark Peter Sellars makes in the recent French documentary film, “Kaija Saariaho ou L’amour de loin,” produced by AGAT Films & Cle/INA/Arte G.F.L.F./YLE TV 1 in 2001.
28. The critic Hannu-Ilari Lampila conceived this psychological projection in Jungian terms while reviewing L’amour de loin. Lampila suggests that Clémence is the male troubadour’s feminine self, anima, which opens a path to his own creativity and subconsciousness. See Hannu-Ilari Lampila, “Kaija Saariahon L’amour de loin—ooppera lumosi yleisönsä,” Helsingin Sanomat, August 17, 2000.
29. Interview with Kaija Saariaho, Helsinki, June 12, 2001.
30. Alain Patrick Olivier, “Amin Maalouf: Emigrant, Pilgrim, Storyteller,” trans. and adapted by Steven Lindberg and Herbert Glass, Salzburger Festspiele program, 2000.
31. Act II, scene 1, mm. 117-47.
32. Hautsalo 2000, 17.
33. Hautsalo 2001, 7.
34. Act V, scene 2, mm. 452-55.
35. Act III, scene 1, mm. 308-11.
36. Although the Pilgrim is not a “page boy” character, the convention of female cross-dressing in 19th-century French opera suggests that the inclusion of a trouser role in L’amour de loin is another conventional feature that joins it with that tradition, to which issues of voyerism and gaze are not foreign. See Heather Hadlock, “The Career of Cherubino, or the Trouser Role Grows Up,” Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera, edited by Mary Ann Smart (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), 67-92.
37. In Act II, scene 1, mm. 63-64; the stage directions indicate that the Pilgrim tries to pass by Clémence without her noticing.
38. Act II, scene 2, mm. 537-41.
39. Hautsalo 2000, 4. Saariaho’s choice of metaphor is also revealing: originating from textile design it is reminiscent of the composer’s early experiments in the realm of pictorial arts and their impact on her musical thinking.
40. Telephone interview with Kaija Saariaho, May 28, 2001.
41. My concept of androgynity is based on the psychological definition by Sandra Bem (1974) that “masculinity and femininity constitute complementary domains of positive traits and behaviors and that, in principle, it is possible for a person to be both masculine and feminine[.]” Quoted in Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2d ed., vol. 1 (New York: John Wiley & Sons), 69.
42. The composers created a group called “L’Itinéraire,” the most famous of whom were Gérard Grisey (1946-98) and Tristan Murail (b. 1947).
43. Mikko Heiniö, Suomen musiikin historia 4: Aikamme musiikki (Porvoo, Helsinki, Juva: WSOY, 1995): 245. Within the domain of art music, the term “postmodernist” refers to certain composers and musical practices, whereas the term “postmodernism” refers to a special aesthetic attitude. The content and meaning of both terms are varied, however: see for instance Judy Lochhead, “Introduction,” and Timothy D. Taylor, “Music and Musical Practices in Postmodernity,” both in Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, edited by Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Further, in the Central-European context closest to Saariaho, postmodernism as an aesthetic attitude, or stylistic approach in music, is revealed by the composer’s use of pre-modernist structural and stylistic elements. With regard to Saariaho, the Hungarian composer, György Ligeti, presents a case for comparison. Jane Piper Clenning considers Ligeti’s Piano Concerto (1985-88) as an example of postmodern music (see her “Postmodern Architecture/Postmodern Music” in Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought). On the other hand, Mike Searby refuses to call Ligeti a postmodernist (see his “Ligeti the postmodernist?” Tempo 199, January 1997: 9-14), since, although Ligeti uses materials from the past, he “illuminates them in a new and original way” (p. 14). The same could be said about Saariaho. L’amour de loin, however, is not completely free from “sentimentality or backward-looking quality” (ibid.). Searby, like Heiniö, considers this typical of postmodernist music; thus one may well suggest that Saariaho’s first opera possesses postmodern features.
Sanna Iitti earned a master’s degree in music theory at the Sibelius-Academy in Finland (1993) and taught music theory and other subjects there part-time. She is a Fulbright Fellow and is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in musicology at New York University as a Henry M. MacCracken Fellow. She has published in Finnish about contemporary art music and music theory education. Her article, “Mind Above Body—Evaluating the Aesthetic Experience in Eduard Hanslick’s Writing,” will soon be published by Indiana University Press in Musical Semiotics Revisited (in the Acta Semiotica Fennica series).