ABSTRACT
Joonas Kokkonen belongs to the generation of composers born just after World War I and who came to prominence; the cohort includes such celebrated names as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Gyorgy Ligeti and Karlheinz Stockhausen. For these composers and their followers, innovation was a fundamental premise of their music. Kokkonen's 1957 Music for String Orchestra is a watershed work in his oeuvre. The composition garnered him recognition within the Finnish musical community as an important orchestral composer-a striking point to consider, since the piece is widely considered one of the finest examples of post-World War II string ensemble writing and yet, remarkably, was the first orchestral work he penned. The remarkable success of The Last Temptations, like Kokkonen's symphonies, may not have had a direct influence upon younger Finnish composers-works such as Kaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin or Kimmo Hakola's The Mastersingers of Mars are very far away from the sound, historical narrative, or overall compositional approach of Kokkonen's opera.
