The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, who has died after treatment for brain cancer, aged 70, rose to international fame in the 1980s as a leading, perhaps the leading, musical modernist of her generation.
From her student days onwards, Saariaho’s outlook was adventurous. She spoke of the difficulties in being taken seriously in her student years as a would-be composer who was female; and her works of the early 80s were coolly received in her home country. Her move in 1982 from Finland to Paris to work at Pierre Boulez’s research institute, Ircam (the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), was a clear attempt to immerse herself in computer-assisted composition, live electronics and what had by then become known as spectralism.
