Kaija Saariaho, the first woman to have a work staged at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in over 100 years – since Ethel Smyth’s “Der Wald” in 1903! – has died. Saariaho was one of Finland’s foremost composers.

Saariaho’s “L’Amour de loin” (“Love from Afar”) was performed at the Met in 2016. Originally presented in Salzburg 16 years earlier, the opera is a meditation on the idealized love between a French troubadour and a countess of Tripoli. The two are separated by the Mediterranean Sea.

Saariaho’s most recent opera, “Innocence,” composed in 2018, examines the aftermath of a school shooting in Helsinki. “Innocence” is projected to be heard at the Met in the 2025-26 season.

In February 2021, Saariaho was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, but was able to carry on successfully until fairly recently, when she entered the terminal phase of her illness. Her last completed work was a trumpet concerto, “Hush,” completed in March and scheduled for performance in Helsinki in August.

Saariaho was born in Helsinki in 1952. She studied at the Sibelius Academy with Paavo Heininen. Following summer courses in Darmstadt, she attended the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, where she studied with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber. In Darmstadt, she was influenced by a concert of spectral music by Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. This led her to Paris to study electronic music at the avant-garde institute IRCAM.

Saariaho claimed to experience a kind of synesthesia, in which all of her senses were engaged in composition. She once commented that “the visual and the musical world are all one to me.”

She was married to composer, computer scientist, and sometimes collaborator Jean-Baptiste Barrière. The two were separated for a time, as the COVID-19 pandemic intensified while she was away, visiting Helsinki, and they were forced to live apart. “L’Amour de loin,” indeed!

Even in the years she lived abroad in Germany and France, she always held Finland very dear. Like Sibelius, she found inspiration in the country’s ample natural world, citing specifically the big forests she knew during the summers of her childhood; also the sounds of wind, waves, and footsteps in the snow.

In April, Saariaho endowed the construction of a new organ at the Helsinki Music Center with one million euros (US $1,072,450) . She was also the chair of the International Kaija Saariaho Organ Composition Competition.

During her career, she was the recipient of many awards. In 2011, “L’Amour de loin” was recognized with a Grammy for Best Opera Recording.

This morning, she died peacefully at her home in Paris. At the time of her death, she was counted among the world’s leading composers. Saariaho was 70 years-old.

“L’Amour de loin” at the Met

“Graal théâtre” for violin and orchestra

“Orion”

“Nymphéa (Jardin Secret III) for string quartet and electronics

“Six Japanese Gardens” for percussion

“Sept Papillons” for solo cello

A brief interview with the composer