Time of Music is a Finnish contemporary music event held at the turn of June–July on Viitasaari in Central Finland. It is the largest annual contemporary music festival in Finland and the only Nordic contemporary music festival with regular course activities. The official organizer of the event has been the Viitasaari Summer Academy Association since the beginning.
Founded in 1982, Time of Music is an internationally respected forum for contemporary music, which has been visited by almost all the most significant contemporary composers of our time, from John Cage to Iánnis Xenákis, not forgetting top Finnish names. The combination of the festival and course activities makes it possible to bring significant composers to Viitasaari as course teachers. The Academy promotes the training of specialists in contemporary music in Finland. International courses led by top composers and instrumentalists increase the international networks and employment opportunities of young professionals.
Time of Music has been a leading networking venue during the summer for several generations of Finnish contemporary music professionals, from Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kari Kriikku to emerging composers of the current generation such as Sampo Haapamäki and Sebastian Hilli. John Cage’s visit to the festival in 1983 is considered one of the most significant visits to Finland in our recent music history. In 2015, Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Brian Ferneyhough were visiting festival composers. Birtwistle was awarded the Wihuri Music Prize in the same year.
The highlight of the summer of 2019 was Kaija Saariaho’s return to the festival as a teacher and guest composer after a 25-year hiatus. The festival premiered one of Saariaho’s last remaining works, Study for Life.
The latest influences in contemporary music have often arrived in Viitasaari before Helsinki.
Today’s festival touches on current themes
In recent years, Time of music has dealt with bold and social themes. In 2018, the theme was Rooms & Bodies, and the works reflected in many ways our society’s accelerating digital perception of time. The theme of 2019 was light, in which changes in society were approached from an existential and mystical perspective. The summer 2021 festival “Timeshifts – memorials for the future” symbolically said goodbye to the pandemic and the era before it. The theme of the 40th anniversary year in 2022 was “Mundi novi – New worlds”, which focused on the future and the discovery of the new.
Currently, Time of Music is involved in the Ulysses Network and Sounds now projects.
Read more about the history of Time of Music here.