Kaija Saariaho’s “Laterna Magica”
Notes by TŌN percussionist Philip Drembus
The Laterna Magica (magic lantern) is an early predecessor of the slide projector and was first developed at the end of the 17th century. It uses a mirror to direct light through an image painted on glass and out of a lens. As with any technology, magic lanterns would be refined and improved upon over the next several hundred years. By the early 20th century they had handles which one could crank in order to move through a series of images. The faster one cranked the handle, the more it looked like a moving image rather than a series of pictures.
Such was the gift the film director Ingmar Bergman received as a child. He would go on to title his autobiography Laterna Magica, and it was this book that would inspire composer Kaija Saariaho’s piece for orchestra. Saariaho writes “as I read the book, the variation of musical motifs at different tempos emerged as one of the basic ideas behind the orchestral piece on which I was beginning to work. Symbolizing this was the Laterna Magica.”
Over the course of the piece Saariaho portrays the manipulation of light as both walls of sound, tied together by different groups of instruments, and by various rhythmic motifs. She describes how “rhythms with different characters became a major part of the piece’s identity: a fiery dance-rhythm inspired by flamenco, a shifting, asymmetrical rhythm provided by speech, and an accelerating ostinato that ultimately loses its rhythmic character and becomes a texture.”
To my ears, Laterna Magica, somewhat ironically, comes across almost like a suite from a film score. It flits from one motif to the next, creating a restless, hypnotic, driving atmosphere. The piece, though written as one movement, is split in two parts. It pulls multiple moments of inspiration from Bergman’s autobiography. French horns played in unison are meant to represent the color red as an homage to the Bergman film Cries and Whispers. Woodwind players whisper various descriptions of light; the same descriptions used by Bergman about the work of cinematographer Sven Nykvist. The piece moves from one episode to the next before a hushed ending as Saariaho cinematically explores a musical depiction of moving light.