Some ideas begin with a melody. Others begin with a sound, an instrument, or a musical idea that refuses to leave your mind.
This composition began with a landscape.
It was an autumn sunset in a Finnish coniferous forest. The combination of the colours in the evening light and the quietness of the forest made me stop and simply look for a while.
There was a strong contrast in the scene. Golden sunlight filled parts of the landscape, while the forest around it was already falling into deep shadow. The colours could have made the scene feel dramatic, but the atmosphere itself was remarkably peaceful.
That was the feeling I carried with me when I began composing.
From Silence to Sound
The landscape, and especially the atmosphere of the sunset, was clearly in my mind as the composition began to take shape.
I found myself returning to two instruments: harp and flute.
The harp creates a deep, resonant foundation for the piece. Its plucked strings have an organic quality that feels grounded, while the recurring pattern gives the music a gentle sense of movement.
The flute brings something lighter above it. Its sound is airy and clear, carrying brightness into the melody.
I like the way these two sounds can exist together. The harp has a certain mystery and a grounded quality, while the flute brings the feeling of light into the music without disturbing its peaceful character.
In a way, this became a musical conversation between the two.
The recurring harp pattern was actually one of the first ideas I had for the piece. Before I started composing, that pattern was already playing in my mind, and I decided to build part of the composition around it.
As the piece develops, the role of the harp changes, but the original idea remains at its centre.
Between Light and Shadow
The relationship between light and shadow was one of the things that stayed with me from the landscape.
The golden sunset and the dark forest created a strong visual contrast. Yet what I remember most is not a feeling of drama, but the sense of quietness that came with it.
That distinction became important when shaping the music.
The composition is peaceful and meditative, even though there is a certain tension between darker and brighter elements. The flute allows the melody to carry some of the brightness of the sunset, while the harp keeps the music grounded.
The music does not attempt to reproduce the landscape literally. Instead, it follows the same relationship between light and shadow that I noticed in the forest.
A Touch of an Older World
There is another element that often finds its way into my music: a feeling of history.
I am interested in the way certain instruments and sounds can bring to mind an older European folk tradition. Not necessarily a particular story, but the feeling that you are standing close to something old.
This composition does not tell a specific folk tale. There is no story that the listener is expected to know.
Instead, the sound colours and instruments leave space for the listener's own imagination.
For me, that is where the connection with the old folk-tale tradition comes from. The instruments create the atmosphere, and the atmosphere allows the listener to form their own interpretation.
In some of my other compositions, I use historical instruments alongside the symphony orchestra to strengthen this feeling. Here, the harp takes on much of that role.
This way of thinking also influences how I choose landscapes for my visual artwork.
When I find a landscape that interests me, I do not only look at what is beautiful about it. I also sometimes wonder whether it could have looked much the same several centuries ago, and whether there is something about the landscape that connects naturally with history.
A Finnish forest can simply be a Finnish forest. But it can also leave room for the imagination to wander a little further.
The Sound of Approaching Darkness
The tubular bells came into the composition later.
While working on the piece, I had the idea of bringing them into the ending to strengthen the final part of the music.
They add another layer of drama, but more importantly, they suggest a change in the evening. The sunset is fading, and the light is gradually giving way to darkness.
I liked the idea of allowing the music to follow that transition.
The piece begins in the atmosphere of the sunset, but by the end, the evening is moving somewhere else.
From Photograph to Painting
The visual artwork began with a photograph I took while observing the sunset.
When transforming it into a painting, I wanted to preserve the landscape itself. I did not want to change what was actually there.
Instead, I focused on the elements that had made the scene interesting to me in the first place — especially the golden sunset and the strong contrast between the light in the sky and the dark forest.
The biggest change is therefore not the landscape itself, but the way it is presented.
The digital transformation introduces visible painterly qualities, giving the image the feeling of a historical oil painting. Stylistically, I am drawn to the realism of late-19th-century Nordic art, combined with a more impressionistic approach to light.
This is also interesting to me because some of the strongest stylistic influences on my music come from the same general period.
My music and visual art have many different influences, and neither is meant to imitate one particular historical style. But there is a shared aesthetic thread between them.
One Landscape, Many Forms
What I find interesting about this project is how many different forms can grow from one quiet moment.
It began with a real landscape: an autumn sunset in a Finnish forest.
Then there was the photograph.
The photograph became the starting point for a painting.
The same landscape also became the inspiration for a musical composition, built around harp, flute and, later, bells.
And eventually, the image can become something physical — a postcard that you can hold in your hands.
The composition is still being finished, so the music is not yet ready to share. The artwork, however, is already taking its own form, and my plan is for the image to become available as a postcard as well.
I like that these different forms can exist alongside one another.
The original place remains what it was: a Finnish forest at sunset. But the same moment can also become something you hear, something you look at, and eventually something you can hold.
Perhaps that is what makes working with nature so interesting to me.
One quiet moment does not have to become something grand.
Sometimes it can simply give you an idea — and that idea can take a few different paths.