Ice

Music rings with the power of nature

Composer Jaakko Kuusisto reflects on how life in Finland’s outer archipelago informed his latest opera.

To me, reading Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s novel Ice was a ravishing experience. It left me with an idea of a vast landscape, as if I had been looking at a picture. The story evoked intense emotions and thoughts. There was something very familiar about the picture that the book had painted. As a child, I grew up by the sea, and as an adult I’ve lived in Finland’s outer archipelago.

The eventual outcome of the story cemented my opinion that Ice would make a powerful opera. It fulfils all the criteria of a great opera. On the outside, very little happens, but there’s extreme drama hidden under the delicate surface. It inspired me as a composer and opened up a world of possibilities.

Nature is full of forces that we cannot grasp, and that are so strong that we are powerless against them. The sea in all its guises enables sequences of events that are totally beyond our control. In the end, we can’t fight their power. This conflict between nature and humanity became particularly evident to me while living in the outer archipelago.

The composition of an opera begins from the libretto. You get the text and hope that it awakens ideas, which in turn become melodies. When it comes to Ice, the novel had already given me a sense of how the opera would sound. When I got my hands on Juhani Koivisto’s libretto, the text really began to speak to me.

When you’re composing music for a libretto, you often tend to start from the beginning of the story. With Ice it was different. Mona’s aria towards the end is such a powerful piece of text that I took it as a starting point. That aria was the first scene that I completed, and I began to create the music around it. Mona’s aria gave me certain themes for the rest of the work, as the leading light of my composing process.

The music of Ice adheres to opera traditions with its arias, choral scenes and intermezzos. It’s a strong orchestral opus, but the chorus is crucial to its tonal landscape. The chorus plays a double role. It’s an element depicting natural forces, like a distant, mystical sound, but also a small church choir singing hymns. I spent a lot of time working out the relationship between music that tells the story and more static, figurative music that creates a sense of the landscape.

The atmosphere of the music revolves around very basic ideas. Just like the islanders in their daily interaction, the music shies away from direct conflict, focusing on everyday life. On the other hand, when nature shows its power, the intense, almost violent orchestral music crashes into you as it carries the story forward. I relied very much on these two components. Not all the events of the opera are evident in our visible reality. The scenes involving another dimension have more modern elements. The sound is subtly processed and there is the quiet yet ominous background noise of howling wind. It’s not a roar but a sinister rumbling.

The fact that we’re creating world premieres here in Finland is important in itself. It’s the only way in which we can concretely advance the cause of the art of Finnish opera. With such a fine Finnish novel chosen as the subject, the combination is near perfect. A lot of people can truly relate to the story of Ice. The fact that this novel has touched so many Finns makes it a great subject for an opera.

There’s much of the old truth in it, that an individual’s life is merely a speck within the bigger picture. Anything can happen at any time, and anyone’s story can end at any moment. When an individual’s story comes to an end, the rest of the world carries on, almost as if nothing had happened. While looking at life from your own personal perspective, it’s easy to over-inflate your role. More than anything, the novel left me conscious of how small we really are in the big picture.

Working with music in general is very important to me. Music has been a key part of my life as long as I remember. I’d say this is a lifestyle that takes a lot but gives even more. I’m lucky that, while working on Ice, I get to experience what’s best about my work: as a composer, I can start making something new, sit at my desk and create music. As a conductor, I can also get on the stage with the rest of the artists. I have the chance to enjoy someone else adapting my work and producing their own unique interpretation. That is a wonderful experience for a composer.