In Finland, composer Cecilia Damström speaks about creating after illness
In Helsinki, Finnish composer Cecilia Damström attended a rehearsal of her work Information, which the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra performed at the opening of its autumn season. Two years ago, following a tick bite, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis. The composer still experiences severe headaches, weakness and difficulties moving, and during the first eight months of her illness she was unable to write music.
As YLE News reports, Damström continues to work despite the long-lasting effects of the illness. Due to sensitivity to bright light, she often begins composing only after dusk. During creative periods, the composer can devote an entire week to music, barely communicating with people.
Music about social issues
Thirty-eight-year-old Damström is one of the most sought-after classical music composers of her generation in Finland. She won the Teosto Prize in 2022 and was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize several years ago. Her body of work includes around one hundred compositions, most of which she accompanies with programme notes on socially important topics.
In her work, Damström addresses climate change, biodiversity loss, overconsumption and equality. Her first work was a piano piece about the crisis in Kosovo, written after she saw television footage of the war at the age of 10.
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During her illness, the composer also created an opera. She was unable to travel to London when her Teosto Prize-winning work ICE, dedicated to climate change, was performed in the United Kingdom at a BBC Symphony Orchestra concert.
A work about disinformation
In the composition Information, messages are encoded in Morse code, and the orchestra reproduces them in a mechanical manner. According to Damström, the work is dedicated to the destructive impact of disinformation. While working on it, she read 25 books, including Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro's work Putin's Trolls.
The composer noted that information warfare is aimed at dividing people through support for the far right and far left. In one episode of the work, the orchestra conveys the word unity in Morse code: before this, the messages sound superimposed on one another and then begin to unite.
Damström is currently working on a 40-minute composition about Finnish forests and continues it whenever her health allows.
