Influential Pieces: Kaija Saariaho - Cendres - Part 2

Prior to hearing Kaija Saariaho's Cendres for the first time I was only familiar with about three of her orchestral works and some of her electro-acoustic compositions.  Cendres was the first piece for acoustic chamber music of Saariaho's that I heard.  This piece really captivated me.  The instrumentation was, at the time, to me different: alto flute, cello and piano.

While the instrumentation seemed different, it is the way in which Saariaho uses the instruments that opened my eyes to the world of color and timbre.  The piece opens with a harmonic trill in the cello.  This technique creates a thin and airy sound that initiates the sound world that is to come.  Another technique for string instruments that Saariaho uses in many of her compositions is the application and changing of bow pressure.  Increasing the bow pressure creates a sound that is more noise than tone.  Bow pressure can be applied to the point where all sense of pitch is lost.  The inverse, less bow pressure, thins out the sound creating an eerie and airy tone.

The alto flute is also used in uncommon ways.  Saariaho composes certain passages using breath tones.  Breath tones are created by the flautist using the fingering needed to create the notated pitch, but air is blown through the instruments not producing the normal tone.  In certain passages Saariaho will alternate between breath tones and normal tones.  This creates an effect similar to that of the alternation of the harmonic and normal tone in the cello.

Another of Saariaho's favorite flute effects is the use of phonemes.  Phonemes are an elementary part of speech that distinguishes one utterance from another.  In the preface of the score Saariaho gives a list of the phonemes used in Cendres and the correct pronunciation.  Saariaho explored this technique in some detail in Laconisme de L'aile (1982) for solo flute and electronics.  In Cendres Saariaho used the phonemes as coloration which acts as another form of progression.

Another technique Saariaho used in this piece is quarter-tones.  There are most easily heard in the alto flute and cello as glissandi.  This pitch will be bent up or down a half-step in certain passages.  It is with these glissandi that the quarter-tones will be most transparent.  Saariaho will rarely use the quarter-tones as exact pitches in this piece as they can be difficult to play with accuracy.