Part I

Kaija Saariaho's Verblendungen was written between 1982 and 1984 upon commission from Finnish Radio. The electroacoustic tape part was realised in the studios of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris and the completed work was given its first performance by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen (to whom the work is dedicated) in Helsinki in April 1984. Aside from the fact that it is, in this author's view, a highly successful musical work, it has been chosen for this study principally because it is a model mixed electroacoustic work in that it has an equal balance of instrumental and electroacoustic elements, both in isolation and combination, instrumental writing which ranges from melodic to textural and clear processural and qualitative relationships between the instrumental and tape parts. In short, it is fully engaged with the possibilities inherent in the mixing of instrumental and electroacoustic sound. Any attempt to analyse this work should recognise these aspects and address the particular problems arising from a piece of music which bridges both of these sound worlds. For these reasons it provides a good case study in the analysis of mixed electroacoustic music. It is also a work that can be described, in Emmerson's (1987) words, as operating through an 'abstract discourse', and so this analysis concentrates upon developing an understanding of the structure of the piece rather than any of the other modes of discourse within which electroacoustic music can operate.

Despite a number of earlier acousmatic works (Cartolina per Siena (1979), Study for Life (1980), Vers le blanc  (1982)), Verblendungen is Saariaho's first mixed electroacoustic work and can clearly be seen as marking an important point in her compositional output. It brings together a number of central concerns of the works which precede it, for instance the influence of the visual arts and in particular painting. Most obviously it unites the previously separate acoustic and electroacoustic worlds. It also points forward to many of the developments in later works, especially the series of mixed electroacoustic pieces composed during the composer's time at IRCAM in Paris during the late 1980's and early 1990's (Jardin Secret II (1984-6), Io (1986-7), Noa Noa (1992), Amers (1992) and Près (1992)).

The title of this piece is taken from the novel of the same name by the Bulgarian writer, Elias Canetti (published in English as Auto da Fe), the basic meanings in translation being blindnesses or facings:

Dazzling, different surfaces, tissues, textures. Weights, gravity. To be
blinded. Interpolations. Reflections. Death. The sum of independent worlds.
Shading, refracting the colour.
                                                                                                            Saariaho, 1985.

Saariaho has herself written about the creation of Verblendungen (Saariaho 1987) and the compositional methods used in its making and mention should be made here of the role of such information in this analysis. In composition, a composer makes "use of her craft, taste and intuition" (Nuorvala 1991) the role of technique being at the disposal of "taste and intuition"(ibid.). The relationship between a compositional tool and it specific use in a final piece is very varied and flexible - the results of the use of certain techniques are not always traceable in the final piece, however clearly they may appear to be presented in writings about the piece (1).  To put it another way,

What a composer knows intimately, and an analyst cannot, is the process which results in material is 90 percent discarded in the final composition.
                                                                                                            Macdonald, 2000.

Therefore, any description of compositional method by the composer does not guarantee its relevance to an analysis of the piece made by such methods. This is as potentially valid to acoustic as it is to electroacoustic music. However,

the analysis of electroacoustic music does not coincide, as often happens also in the analysis of a great deal of instrumental music, with an examination of the compositional process of the work. Even if information on production strategies can sometimes be gathered from a hearing of the piece, it is not the main part of the analysis itself. How a composer built sounds and mounted them in a formal articulation is only useful in emphasising and correlating some physical characteristics of the sound objects which make up the work. Nothing more. This sort of warning, which in itself might seem banal, is due to the fact that, because of problems in defining sound objects and the typology of formal stucturalisation, many analyses often fall back on a reading of the compositional process, one of the few written sources available about an electroacoustic work.
                                                                                                            Camilleri, 1993.

Accordingly, Saariaho's own comments about this piece will be treated as insights and information about the compositional process, as distinct from information about the final piece we hear. A clear attempt will be made to base an analysis on the piece itself (as it presents itself in performance / recording)  rather than the ways in which (the composer tells us) it was made.