ABSTRACT
One of the most striking features of Paavo Heininen's music is that often quite simple questions lie at the root of its surface complexities: time, space, beginnings, endings, continuity, contrast, momentum (and more). Heininen's stance was an ambitious one and from the outset there is an uncompromising independence, even if its creative results ran counter to the cultural climate of the day. The structural consequence of the highly organic approach is summed up in Heininen's description of the form of the symphony: The symphony is in one, two, three or four movements. Heininen speaks of his own 'significant forms' saying that they have a resemblance to a film-director's technique of an ever-moving camera. Emotional effect and intellectual process are, therefore, inextricably connected and this remains a consistent feature in Heininen's work. Heininen's comment on conventional practice is to introduce a significant degree of duality within that thematic material: diatonicism/chromaticism; continuity/discontinuity.
