Told by her teachers in Freiburg that she could not write a steady pulse, a melody, or a pleasing harmony, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho walked away from strict serialism and found a different path through computers. This episode follows her from a Steiner school in Helsinki and studies in graphic design, piano, and musicology to the Sibelius Academy, the 1980 Darmstadt courses where she encountered the French spectralists, and IRCAM in Paris, where she met and married Jean-Baptiste Barriere.

The hosts explain how spectral composers used computer analysis to split a single cello note into its overtones and map them onto an orchestra, how Saariaho's synesthesia linked color, light, and sound, and how works like Verblendungen, Nymphea, and Six Japanese Gardens grew from brush strokes, fractal generators, and Buddhist chant. They cover L'amo ...