Paired Opposites

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016) was one of the major figures in Finnish music and was one of the most successful late-20th century composers internationally. Paired Opposites: The Development of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Harmonic Practices studies Rautavaara’s preferences in writing harmonic motions.

Rautavaara used various composing techniques in his long career and embraced many different aesthetic attitudes, but this study shows a common vein running through his music in most of its stylistic phases. Among the works studied are compositions from six decades of Rautavaara’s career, from the late 1940s to mid-1990s, by which time he can be considered to have reached a synthesis of all his previous stylistic phases.