Stories Saari Residence 07.03.2025 Composing with trees – an interview with Riikka Talvitie Stories Saari Residence 07.03.2025 Composing with trees – an interview with Riikka Talvitie Reviving the Wild Reviving the Wild is a series that highlights different aspects of ecological activities at Saari Residence. This article is an interview with a Saari Invited Artist. During every individual residency period at Saari, one artist or artist-researcher focusing on various ecological issues is invited to stay at the residence. The Saari Invited Artist Programme provides resident groups with ways to deepen their ecological thinking and examine their connection to nature. Text Sini Mononen Photographs Jussi Virkkumaa Share: How does the work of a composer tie in with social activism? And is it possible to compose in an ecological way? Riikka Talvitie’s extensive output ranges from orchestral pieces and chamber music to vocal songs, a variety of stage works, radio opera as well as solo pieces. At the Saari Residence, she nevertheless intends to explore the possibility of bringing elements of shared authorship and ecology into her work as a composer. However, rethinking the process of composing is not that simple. Music as an art form is associated with strong traditions, which guide the expectations of performers, audiences and institutions. A composer who wants to take their work in a new direction also has to actively take apart their own process. Talvitie is using the trees on the manor grounds as inspiration for her search for answers. Her goal is to approach trees with an open mind and without preconceived notions. ‘I have promised myself that I will not attack the questions head-on but will give them time to take shape. The trees allow me to think about the everyday existence of nature and how it is being slowly transformed due to global warming.’ Breaking the mould As a composer, Talvitie likes to explore and push the boundaries. Her works typically combine elements from several different genres and traditions. Her pursuit of ecological composing also starts with an examination of the boundaries that exist and looking for a way to break into new territory. ‘When people think about the relationship between music and nature, they usually have romantic notions of nostalgic elements like the sea or mist or sunrise. This type of imagery illustrates the traditions that composers have to work with, and have worked with for a long time.’ For Talvitie, the relationship between music and nature also has ties to other art forms, such as contemporary art. Her works celebrate interdisciplinarity and the principles of dialogical, political and socially engaged art. Green Tress, which she completed in 2023, is named after a tree planting project in the Kurdish region of Syria. The goal of the project is to plant four million trees in the region to make it greener. Talvitie took a nursery rhyme and turned it into a socially critical musical composition. It reminds people that, as well as being emotionally gratifying and socially rewarding, green projects of this kind can also be used as a form of anti-war protest. Grass, which Talvitie produced in collaboration with playwright Pipsa Lonka in 2018, is a multimedia project exploring the essence of grass. The performance features images drawn by the movement of grass – as manifestations of its poetry. Nature’s poetry also sets the stage for the music: the swishing of grass as it bounces, dives down and shoots back up again is interpreted by a bass clarinet. Working with the more-than-humans Green Tress and Grass are early indications of what ecological composing can entail. Reinventing the practice of composing requires the ability to empathise and immerse oneself in new roles. Working with more-than-humans such as trees makes this even harder. ‘Simply coming up with a melody and giving the sheet music to the performer – a tree, in this case – just does not work. I need to find a new approach to musical instruments and a way to “play” the tree so that I can reproduce the sound of, for example, deadwood.’ Composing with trees requires building music around sound elements that are not normally audible to human ears. ‘I have recorded the trees at the Saari Residence with a contact microphone and managed to capture a groaning sound as well as what could be described as a sound-box effect from deadwood. “Groaning” and “deadwood” are examples of sounds that I have discovered in the space of just a few weeks. There may be many more. I have used a small speaker to feed various materials into the echo from deadwood and been amazed by how trees respond to different frequencies.’ Progress is slow and often down to chance. ‘I have not done much composing so far but have focused on understanding how to reproduce these sounds that a tree makes. External factors such as wind and humidity also play a part. The conditions are always changing when you work with trees.’ Shared composership The Composer in Flux is Talvitie’s thesis for her Doctor of Music degree, which she wrote in 2023 and which dissects the work of a composer into its constituent parts. One of the conventions that Talvitie sought to take apart was the idea of the composer as an agent separate from the rest of the world. ‘The traditional role of composers is to work alone to produce sheet music that someone else then performs. There is therefore a chronological and even a hierarchical order to the steps that it takes to create a piece of music. The process of composing becomes less restrictive when you incorporate elements from other disciplines and produce works that are not always obviously musical.’ Talvitie likes to explore dialogical ways of working. She wants to break down the institutional nature of classical music and reorganise the idea of composing, the essence of sound and the relationship between text and music. ‘I would like to discover a new way of making art that feels meaningful in the contemporary world. Achieving that requires motivation and the drive to reshape your own work. I feel that collaborating with artists representing other disciplines gets me closer to my goal. Making things heard gives me satisfaction. A different approach also changes the way things sound.’ According to Talvitie, it is nevertheless difficult to break down the traditions of classical music. Co-composing, for example, is still rare in the field. There is no reason why musical authorship could not be shared, however. Talvitie mentions an example: Water, which was co-composed by Tapio Lappalainen and Sanna Ahvenjärvi and won the Teosto Prize in 2023. ‘The traditional way of thinking is to attribute a piece of music to a single composer. However, the process of composing involves multiple agents, such as orchestras and choirs. Expanding the composer’s agency to collective creative practices and shared authorship is a novel perspective. This is especially true in the case of classical music. But the situation is slowly changing.’ Imaginative experimentation Although tradition still plays a big role in composers’ work, numerous practices are emerging in the fields of sound and musical culture that are making people rethink what music actually is and how it can be enjoyed. Experimental approaches such as novel listening techniques developed in the vein of deep ecology in the 1960s and 1970s, field recordings and avant-garde compositions have brought the sounds of the natural environment into concert halls. While Talvitie finds the tradition of incorporating natural sounds into sound art fascinating, she sees it as being somewhat removed from the conventional work of composers. ‘People usually think that a classical composer creates an imaginary world all of their own. Incorporating field recordings changes the ratio of fiction versus documented sound. Ville Raasakka is a composer who walks this tightrope with exceptional skill.’ Talvitie’s own works often mix different materials to create a collage of interwoven sounds. Examples include her 2017 radio opera, The Queen of the Cold Land, which combines elements of national anthems, folk songs, regional anthems, lullabies and war songs, and her chamber music composition, Polarisation, which was performed at the What ever Works! festival in the autumn of 2024 and explores the history of protest marches and US presidential elections. ‘I have played around with incorporating a variety of materials into my compositions, such as 1960s activist songs, and then seeing what meanings the songs take on when you transport them into different environments.’ Slow growth So how exactly does Talvitie envision marrying her work as a composer and her identity as an activist? Is she simply exploring the tradition of protest songs or engaging herself in social activism through her work? ‘Listeners tend to recoil from force-fed calls for action. I have tried to analyse my own reactions to understand what makes people receptive to new ideas and stimulates them to want to know more.’ Talvitie is fascinated by the perspective of time and how the natural environment transcends human experience. ‘What particularly appeals to me in the natural environment is the long timespan over which things happen. A human life is not long enough to witness the full life cycle of a tree. It is these long timespans that make me feel in awe of nature and understand my own insignificance on this planet. Capturing fleeting moments in time and recognising when another artist has captured a similar moment is an incredibly emotional experience. I am now looking for ways to capture longer timespans in my work.’