New Music for the

Traverso:
“Affects” and “Effects”
in the Music
of Jukka Tiensuu
by Matteo Gemolo

The rediscovery of the one-keyed flute in modern performance and composition

allows renewed use of a wide spectrum of Baroque palettes, techniques,
embellishments, and genres—keenly illustrated by recent works by Finnish
composer Jukka Tiensuu.

C
ontemporary music for the flute has come to be as-
sociated with advanced instrumental technology and
techniques. For much of the 20th century, the modern
Böhm-system flute—with its voluminous sound, efficient key
system, heavy-duty material, and equal-tempered scale—proved
the perfect vehicle for the new ideals of the modernist avant-gar-
de and for creating its new sonorities.
But as the early-music movement gathered pace during the
1960s, the preeminence of the modern flute became subject to
reassessment. The one-keyed flute, no longer regarded as an
underdeveloped prototype of the modern flute, achieved rec-
known composers as Otto Luening (Three Fantasias, 1988, for
traverso) and Ezra Laderman (Epigrams and Canons, 1993, for
two traversos), showing how the Baroque genres of fantasia and
two-part invention can be turned into modal or atonal music.
British traverso player Stephen Preston has been research-
ing “ecosonics,” new techniques and improvisational forms
for the one-keyed flute based on birdsong, producing “The
Soft Complaining Flute” (2004) for traverso and six female
voices by Edward Cowie (b.1943), “Less” (2004) for traverso
and live electronics by Jo Thomas (b. 1972), “Il Prestone” and
“L’Amara” from Six Duets for two traversos (2006) by John
PHOTO BY MAARIT KYTÖHARJU / MUSIC FINLAND

ognition in its own right because of its fragile and softer tone
color, its unequal and flexible intervals, and its darker timbre.
Moreover, it became of interest not only to performers but to
composers as well, who began reverting to the simple-system
flute from the late 1980s.
In 1988 Hans-Martin Linde, the renowned German early-music
specialist, wrote a solo piece for traverso called Anspielungen,
in which contemporary idioms interacted with tonal excerpts
borrowed from the Baroque and Classical flute literature. In
America, John Solum commissioned pieces from such well-
Thow (1949–2007), and “About Birds and Humans” (2006) by
Sergio Roberto de Oliveira (b. 1970).
Canadian flutist Elissa Poole is one of the best-known traverso
players to have devoted her whole career to contemporary music.
She describes how “from the early 1980s, a few composers began
to be attracted to the new sound world of early instruments, but
also by various performance aspects: the lack of vibrato, pure
tunings, different sense of phrasing, and non-romantic approach
to lines and expression. Their aesthetic was especially friendly to
early instruments and vice versa.”1

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 The rediscovery of the one-keyed flute reveals a spectrum of
old-fashioned values that the “modern flute” seems to have de-
nied or at least not fully explored: a palette of gentle flute tim-
bres that can vary according to the expressive intent and musical
motifs, variable types of vibrato such as the French flattement,
the rich and diversified use of unequal temperaments, and ways
of producing microtones and multiphonics with extreme exac-
titude. What is more, the Baroque artistic milieu from which
the one-keyed flute stems is a vivid source of inspiration for
post-modernist composers, whether through the use of embel-
lishments or quotations from the Baroque flute repertoire or by
reversion to genres or instrumental combinations from the first
half of the 18th century.
Thanks to its simple structure—a conical tube with six
holes—the traverso is capable of embracing the whole range of
extended techniques borrowed from the modern flute vocab-
ulary, with surprising new results. Within the contemporary
music scene, the new composers’ need to distance themselves
from the strict rules of serialism and free their voices from
any orthodox approach to music seems to find in the traverso
sound and its musical legacy (especially in the company of
other period instruments) the best way of reconnecting the
contemporary “effects” with the perennial “affects” that this
instrument is able to evoke.
One of the prime examples of this approach to the traverso
comes from Finnish composer Jukka Tiensuu, whose most re-
cent works show how a deep and genuine inspiration derived
from the Baroque era’s instrumentation, form, and rhetoric can
be set into dialogue with a contemporary language.
Best-Kept Secret: Jukka Tiensuu
Along with Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg, Jukka Tien-
suu (b. 1948) is one of the most fascinating voices within the
Finnish contemporary music scene.2 But due to his self-effacing
personality, he is not well known. Tiensuu’s reluctance to speak
about his music does nothing to dispel the aura of mystery that
surrounds him. As Risto Nieminen writes: “Is he the best-kept
secret in Finnish music, and one who could, with a mere mod-
icum of marketing, be one of the most sought-after contempo-
rary composers? He travels all roads, acknowledges no taboos,
is interested in and eruditely aware of what others have done.
If any of our Finnish composers is a loner, a filter indifferent to
trends and isms through whom the music of all eras flows in an
unbroken stream, then that composer is Jukka Tiensuu.”3
Tiensuu assimilated his first avant-garde notions from Paavo
Heininen (b. 1938), one of the fathers of Finnish modernism,
from whom he took classes at the Sibelius Academy.⁴ He later
moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music,
then to Freiburg, where he studied with Swiss composer Klaus
Huber (b. 1924) and English composer Brian Ferneyhough (b.
1943), the central figure of the New Complexity movement.
Tiensuu eventually arrived in Paris, where he completed his
studies at IRCAM. He studied piano and harpsichord, later
becoming a specialist in the latter. Thanks in part to his deep
knowledge of that instrument, early-music repertoire has always
been an important source of inspiration in his creative process as
a composer. At the same time, Tiensuu has never renounced re-
searching the extended techniques to suit modern instruments.
In the boom of the modern flute among the avant-gardists—and
Jukka Tiensuu studied piano and harpsichord in Paris and specialized in the latter instrument.
“He travels all roads, acknowledges no
taboos, is interested in and eruditely
aware of what others have done. If any of
our Finnish composers is a loner, a filter
indifferent to trends and isms through
whom the music of all eras flows in an
unbroken stream, then that composer is
Jukka Tiensuu.”
thanks to extraordinary figures such as Severino Gazzelloni
and Aurèle Nicolet—in the early ’70s, Tiensuu dedicated to
the modern flute a number of new challenging works such as
the Ouverture et Cadenza (1972) for flute and harpsichord, the
Four Etudes (1974) for flute solo, and the Lyric Trio (1975) for
mezzo-soprano voice, flute, and piano.
In the Cadenza, Tiensuu makes use of spatial notation, writ-
ing a solo for the flute that consists of one single note; around
this note (the C above middle C, ca. 523 Hz), the composer
employs a wide spectrum of extended techniques to create
microtonal changes such as alternative fingerings to produce
quarter tones, micro-tonal tremolos, glissandos, wind-sound,
and flutter–tonguing in the manner of his teacher Heininen.
The use of the harpsichord alongside modern instruments⁵
was in line with the precedent set by earlier 20th-century
works such as the harpsichord concertos by Manuel de Falla
and Francis Poulenc. It was not until 1996 that Tiensuu began
to write for ensembles made up entirely of period instruments.
Musica Ambigua
The first such piece was Musica Ambigua (1996–98), commis-
sioned by the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Finnish viol
player and cellist Markku Luolajan-Mikkola. Composed for re-
corder doubling traverso, baroque violin, viol, or baroque cello
and harpsichord, it represents a breakthrough in Tiensuu’s style,
though it came at the expense of being dubbed a “neo-neoclassi-
cal” composer.⁶ In it, Baroque taste and invention interact with a
contemporary musical language.
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Example 1

But the new trend is in no way reminiscent of conservative or

anti-modernist approaches, nor does it contain any trace of “nos-
talgia for the good old days of tunes and tonality.”⁷ Tiensuu’s bold
palette of “affects” is able to achieve a new sense of lyricism and
drama without relinquishing the full inventory of “effects” such as
quarter tones, multiphonics, percussive effects, and glissandi. The
work is shaped as a suite and divided into six sections, which can
be performed together or separately. Alternation between record-
er and traverso is indicated across the various movements due to
the range of the tessitura.
Yksin? (literally “alone?”) for viol and (optional) harpsi-
chord can be regarded as a prelude to the suite. The viol part
consists of a passionate melody, marked in the score “con de-
siderio ardente,” embellished by a rich variety of microtones,
glissandi, messe di voce, and portamenti that encourages the
performer to interpret the piece freely and improvisational-
ly, along the lines of the Baroque Art de préluder. The bass
line, on the other hand, played by the harpsichord, is a steady
slow-motion habanera, which reverberates as a hypnotic
drone throughout the movement. The harpsichord is tuned
to an unequal Baroque temperament in which the fifths C Example 2
sharp–G sharp–D sharp have to be perfect and tuned to the
viol’s corresponding pitches. transgress the limits of the instruments’ traditional tessituras.
Tiensuu adds a vast palette of “affects” to the viol’s melody, The furious overlapping of canons among the four restless in-
indicated by such expression markings as calmo, appassionato, struments restarts each time they reach the limits of their own
rassegnato, fantastico, sperando, and dolce. Furthermore, the ranges. After a first failed attempt (in bars 1–9) to overstep the
employment of echos recalls the familiar Baroque imitative device. boundary of the staves with a concatenation of large glissandos
The second movement is a duo for traverso (or alto record- and tricky quintuplets heading towards the high register, the in-
er) and violin, entitled Möbius after the 19th-century German struments climb up again from the bottom, creating a different
mathematician. The two parts are interwoven in an endless game combination of cross rhythms; only later do they begin to go
of glissandi, chromatic scales, mordents, and trills (example 1), back and forth in a more synchronised fashion.
their curves resembling the paradoxical and enigmatic Möbius This constant interchange among the parts continues for a
strip⁸ famously used as a model for engravings by Dutch lithog- number of bars, no longer running the risk of being taken se-
rapher Maurits Cornelis Escher.⁹ (See example 2.) riously. Like the traditional children’s game ring-a-ring-o’roses,
Sleepwalk is the suite’s third movement. Over a pedal note in this movement ends peacefully once the four hyperactive instru-
the viol, the harpsichord, violin, and recorder create an impres- ments get tired of taking turns and flop onto the ground, playing
sionist constellation of sounds, mostly harmonics or very bright, a descending scale of worn-out mordents.
high tones. The tension between the bass line and the other Kitkat, the fifth movement, represents a silent preview of the
voices creates a humorous, light-hearted, and weightless sound- finale. A sequence of rhythmic patterns build up without rec-
scape. In the last few bars Tiensuu moulds the playful acoustic ognisable pitch, anticipating (sometimes literally) the content of
atmosphere into a pointillist sketch (example 3, next page): The the next movement. All four melodic instruments are employed
conventional note-heads gradually get smaller and smaller (a exclusively as percussion: the flute player taps the body or ring of
quasi-spatial notation that gives a certain amount of freedom to the recorder with the fingernails or blows a little away from the
the players) up to the point where they are transfigured into tiny mouthpiece to produce whistle tones with very soft multiphonic
dots. At the very end, the notes appear in brackets indicating that sounds. (See example 4, next page.)
they no longer need to be played, only mimed. The piece ends in Thanks to a wide variety of effects, Tiensuu invents a colourful
absolute silence: dim. al niente. and rhythmic soundscape in which the instruments are almost
The fourth movement, La Fervente, is an eruption of chromat- indiscernible, an effect designed to overwhelm the audience with
ic scales and acrobatic glissandos that attempts over and over to suspense before the grand finale.

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Example 3
Example 4
The final movement, Veto10 (for recorder or traverso, baroque
violin, viol, and harpsichord), presents from the very beginning
a head-motif characterized by two conflicting ideas—ironic
glissandos and sinuous triplets—which will be expanded, in-
verted, twisted, and modulated throughout the duration of the
piece. A few of the rhythmic patterns employed in Kitkat are
here reintroduced as pitched musical ideas. The central part is
a slow Affettuoso, divided into a few shorter sections in which
different kinds of embellishments such as trills, turns, double
cadences, and mordents are slowly liquefied—to the point of
being practically unrecognizable.
Tiet/Lots
In 2003, Tiensuu composed Tiet/Lots11 for traverso (or recorder),
baroque violin, viol (or baroque cello), and harpsichord. Unlike
in Musica Ambigua, in which the recorder and the traverso were
interchangeable, here both tessitura and dynamics seem to favour
the use of the traverso.
The four movements are called “ways” or “paths” (Opintie/
Studydrome, Mierontie/Beggary,12 Lavea tie/Primrose path,
Taiston tie/Battle.13) The opening movement can be considered
a preparatory study on embellishments: the trills are slowly pre-
pared by longer glissandi played on a few slurred semibreves,
which are gradually reduced to smaller and smaller note values.
These flowing patterns (later transposed onto different intervals
and reversed) are abruptly interrupted by rhythmic and dotted
motifs, which anticipate the salient recurring figures of the last
movement.
In line with the main preparatory character of the piece,
Tiensuu here seems to not miss the chance to reproduce and
mock the endless tuning session that most musicians on period
instruments need to have before starting a concert: Next to the
embellishments mentioned above, he displays a long series of
different layers of microtones around the same main chord that
creates an unstable and annoying overlapping of subtle disso-
nances. The paradoxical, light-hearted trait of Tiensuu’s style
shines through this first movement.
Mierontie/Beggary has as its central theme a modal arpeg-
gio played by the traverso. Later in the movement, Tiensuu
makes extensive use of glissandi for both the string and the
flute parts, conferring on the piece a strongly plaintive nature.
Along the lines of Xenakis, these glissandi embody the idea
of continuity of matter and serve to express very effective-
ly Tiensuu’s main concept for the piece: a shaky and limping
walk without destination. To render this impression of in-
stability, the four instruments employ a variety of different
combinations of rhythmical patterns and make use of large
glissandos, bow vibratos, and descending arpeggios or scales.
Lavea tie/Primrose path is a slow and indolent gigue.
Throughout the piece, the four instruments attempt to set up
a canon; their dialogue is often dissolved into a cascade of
glissandi that halts the playful dance with stubborn chords.
Nothing of the traditional jumpy and lively nature of the ba-
roque gigue is left here. On the contrary, Tiensuu depicts a
bored, monotonous soundscape that ends up in a resigned
(rassegnato) silence, just as a hedonistic primrose path al-
ways leads to insolvency.14 It is interesting to highlight how
the timbres of the four instruments are meant to interlace
with each other. The glissandos and the scales interconnect
the four voices, giving the impression of fluidity and continu-
ity, throughout the movement.
In Taiston tie/Battle, Tiensuu wishes, as the title suggests,
to reconnect with the Renaissance and Baroque tradition of
the battaglia (or battalia), a type of program music imitating a
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battle that has one of its first and foremost examples in Clément
Janequin’s La Guerre (1528) and later in Claudio Monteverdi’s
Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624). The stile concitato
or “agitated style” is here adopted by the Finnish composer with
the same rhetorical intent as in the Baroque—that of surprising
and exciting the listeners with a sequence of percussive, dissonant
effects to reproduce the empty sound of war.
The employment of extended techniques such as col legno,
the tapping of the bow on the instrument, recalls the pioneer-
ing Battalia à 9 (1673) by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. In this
latter piece (see example 5) dedicated to Bacchus, the Bohemi-
an-Austrian Baroque composer used a series of nontraditional
musical techniques quite innovative for his time to portray the
ecstatic atmosphere of a Bacchanalia.
Example 5
Tiensuu recreates the same insistent effect by the employment
of over-dotted motifs and accentuated articulations. (See ex. 6).
The piece ends ppp with a repetitive series of semiquavers played
in perfect unison.
Example 6
Beyond these stylistic references, the structure of the work, with
its classic four-movement division, shows an authentic baroque
afflatus thanks to its rich and diverse expressiveness based on
conflicting affects. Tiensuu’s sense of humor and passion for
strong emotions find fertile ground in this Baroque environ-
ment. The period instruments show themselves capable of ex-
ploring new timbres and effects that in no sense conflict with
their particular nature. The choice of the traverso is not a mere
exercice de style. What in Musica Ambigua was still in its em-
bryonic state takes on a more mature aspect in Tiet, revealing a
deeper understanding of instrumental features and peculiarities.
While the recorder and the traverso were still interchangeable in
Musica Ambigua, in Tiet, the recorder becomes distinctly second
best, less capable than the traverso of expressing all the nuances
of the piece.
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Conclusion
Tiensuu’s focus on period instruments would therefore ap-
pear to be no mere temporary phase. In fact, he is completing
two new works: a Concerto for recorder and small orchestra
commissioned by Finnish recorder player Eero Saunama-
ki and a new piece for baroque orchestra commissioned by
the Finnish Baroque Orchestra for 2017. In one of his very
rare lectures,15 entitled “The Future of the Music,” Tiensuu
concludes by mentioning the “eternal values” he believes will
guide the quest toward the music of the future:
• Know history, to avoid involuntary copying;
• Know the means of expression, to be able to do what you
want, and not only what you can;
• Have the patience to work out all the details, as true mastery
is seen and heard in the details;
• Have the courage to remain utopian.16
As the composer claimed in another of his rare interviews in
2007 for the Finnish Music Quarterly, “the more we know and
are aware of, the better. There is no point putting up fences.
Greater understanding brings greater torment, but it also brings
greater freedom and ecstasy.”17
Matteo Gemolo is an Italian flutist and Music PhD at Cardiff
University (Wales–UK). He investigates, commissions, and per-
forms new music for the one-keyed flute. He regularly plays with
leading ensembles on period instruments such as Vox Luminis
(Lionel Meunier), Les Muffatti (Peter van Heyghen), Silete Venti
(Simone Toni), Le Concert d’Anvers (Bart van Reyn), Ad Mo-
sam (Huub Ehlen), Aphoteosis Ensemble (Korneel Bernlote),
and B.O.X. (Pieter Theuns) and collaborates with living compos-
ers including American Albert Behar, Belgian Joachim Brackx,
Italian Giovanni Sparano, and Icelandic music producer Valgeir
Sigurðsson. As the artistic director of the collective Europa Ritro-
vata, he promotes and develops new works in which artists from
different disciplines can interact and mix genres and experiences.
Endnotes
1. Elissa Poole, from a personal interview with the author (May 2015).
2. As Kalevi Aho writes: “These young composers (Jukka Tiensuu, Eero Hämeen-
niemi, Kaija Saariaho, Jouni Kaipainen, Magnus Lindberg, Esa-Pekka Salonen)
grouped themselves around the society Korvat auki (Ears Open), which organized
discussions and concerts of modern music. A little later, Lindberg and Saariaho
made their international breakthroughs.” Kalevi Aho, “Trends in Postwar Finnish
Music,” Nordic Sounds 12 (1993), 3–9.
3. Risto Nieminen, “Notes from the Borderland—An interview with Jukka
Tiensuu,” trans. Susan Sinisalo, Finnish Music Quarterly, no. 3 (2007). http://
www.fmq.fi/2007/09/notes-from-the-borderland/.
4. Heininen, described by Jarkko Hartikainen as “the most significant living
Finnish modernist composer,” was the first Finnish composer to employ do-
decaphony in the creative process towards the end of the 1950s.
5. In chronological order: Ouverture (1972) for flute and harpsichord; M
(1980), harpsichord concerto; Yang and Yang II for two ensembles and one
ensemble (8+8 players); P=Pinocchio? (1982) for soprano voice, ensemble
and computer; Prelude mesuré (1983) inspired by the preludes of Louis and
François Couperin, Jean Philippe Rameau, and Jean-Henri d’Anglebert; “Fan-
tango” (1984) for any kind of keyboard, often performed on the harpsichord,
inspired by the famous Fandango by Antonio Soler (1729–1783); Interludes I−IV
(1987) for tape (with optional harpsichord); Arsenic and Old Lace (1990) for
string quartet and harpsichord, premiered at the Helsinki Festival in 1990 by
Tiensuu and the Arditti String Quartet; Musica Ambigua (1998) for recorder
Jukka Tiensuu at the keyboard, circa 1980s. His thorough knowledge of the harpsichord and, subsequently, of early-music repertoire inspired his creative process as a composer.

(traverso), violin, viol (cello), and harpsichord; Etudes for harpsichord: train, Bibliography
drain (2000), grain (2001); Lots/Tiet for traverso (recorder), violin, viol (cello),
and harpsichord; “Brandi” (2011), a second movement for J.S. Bach’s 3rd Bran- Chapman, Jane. The Contemporary Harpsichord: New Perspectives.
denburg Concerto; Mora (2012) for tenor and baroque orchestra. Reading: Gordon & Breach Publishers, 2001.
6. Kalevi Aho, “Trends…”, 3–9. Christensen, Jean, Kimmo Korhonen, John D. White, Herald Her-
ressthal, Morten Eide Pedersen, Per Broman. New Music of The Nordic
7. Jonathan D. Kramer, “The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism,” in
Countries. New York: Pendragon Press, 2002.
Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, ed. Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner
(New York: Routledge, 2002), 13–24. Lochhead, Judy, Joseph Auner et al. Postmodern Music / Postmodern
8. Möbius’s strip consists of a surface with only one side and only one boundary. Thought. New York: Routledge, 2002.
The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable and O’Kelly, Eve. The Recorder Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University
can be realized as a ruled surface. Press, 1990.
9. Escher worked on two wooden engravings entitled Möbius Strip I and II in Pereksta, Linda Helen. Twentieth-century compositions for the Baroque
1961 and 1963.
Flute. PhD diss., Florida State University, 2001.
10. This movement can be played as a solo piece, a quartet, or any combination
of duo or trio (Jukka Tiensuu, Musica Ambigua introductory notes).
11. There is a small discrepancy between the actual English translation of the
Finnish term “Tiet” and the translation given by the composer: “Tiet” means
“paths” or “the roads.”
12. There is a small discrepancy between the actual English translation of the
Finnish term “Mierontie” and the translation given by the composer: “Mieron-
tie” means “a road or a path without a destination.”
13. A better translation for the term “Taiston” could be “the road of battle.”
14. “The Primrose path” is an idiom often used to describe a way of life
devoted to irresponsible hedonism, or as a course of action that is easy or
tempting but hazardous. Historically, it was firstly employed by Shakespeare
in his The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, Scene iii. “Do not, as
some ungracious pastors do, / Show me the steep and thorny way to heav-
en, / Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, / Himself the primrose path
of dalliance treads, / And recks not his own rede” (Shakespeare, Hamlet
(1.3.48–52), Ophelia to her brother, Laertes).
15. Since the 1980s, Tiensuu has been officially refusing to comment on his
own music (no liner notes, no interviews), preferring to let the music speak
for itself.
16. Jukka Tiensuu, “The Future of Music” (online published conference paper,
Search Event I, University of California, San Diego, 16 April 2000).
17. Risto Nieminen, “Notes from the Borderland. Jukka Tiensuu circa 1970s.

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