ABSTRACT
The four-movement Music for String Orchestra dates from 1957 and represents Joonas Kokkonen's first orchestral composition following nearly two decades of piano, voice and piano and chamber works. The work has at times been labeled Music for Strings, a title that Kokkonen was quick to admonish, for he was explicit that the normal complement of strings from a symphony orchestra, and not a string quartet or the reduced forces of a chamber ensemble is the appropriate size of ensemble for the work. The Music for String Orchestra represents an important evolutionary stage away from the tonally based neoclassical-styled works from the prior twenty years and the dodecaphonically-styled works that characterize the vast majority of Kokkonen's works after 1957. To avoid monotony, one engenders symphonic argument more from engaging these rows or motives with a variety of rhythms, imitative procedures, textures and registrai changes rather than by developing specific attributes of the pitch material itself.
