Botanique (2021)

Years after composing in 2002 Danse des flocons I & II for two violins, a pedagogical piece intended for her then seven-year-old daughter Aliisa, Kaija Saariaho decided to revisit the format at a more advanced level, as Aliisa was growing into a professional violinist. Botanique was meant to be a longer cycle, in the spirit of Bartók’s violin duet collection, but only three movements were completed before Kaija’s passing.

The inspiration for the piece’s structure and title comes from Gaston Bonnier’s classic field guide from 1920, Les Noms des fleurs, trouvés par la méthode simple sans aucune notion de botanique (The Names of Flowers, Found Through the Simple Method Without Any Knowledge of Botanics). Bonnier’s titular ‘simple method’ allows to identify any plant by answering a series of questions: does it have flowers or not, is it herbaceous or a tree, is it ‘composed’ of multiple flowers organized into a structure or not, what is its color, how many blades does it have…? Each movement of Botanique is named after one of the categories in Bonnier’s guide.

We are including here two possible beginnings marked for an unfinished fourth movement – fittingly, in Bonnier’s classification they were to be devoted to ‘non-composed flowers.’

Aleksi Barrière, August 2023