---
title: "Will of its own"
date: 2003-10-27
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2003"
    url: "/tag/2003.md"
---

# Will of its own

I posted this on [my linkblog](https://web.archive.org/web/20040310152439/http://ideas.readwriteweb.com/), but I feel like publishing it here too. I heard some of Rautavaara’s Symphony Number 7 (Angel of Light) a few weeks ago, for the first time, and I was quite taken by the music. It reminded me of The Matrix. So anyway tonight I googled Rautavaara and discovered a) he’s a Finnish composer, and b) I like the way he thinks… I must buy a CD of his. I’m also currently enamoured with a British rock band called [Muse](https://web.archive.org/web/20040310152439/http://www.muse.mu/) – their song “Apocalypse Please” blows me away. It’s like Bowie’s “Man who sold the world” but even more harmonically eerie. Anyway, [here’s that Rautavaara quote](https://web.archive.org/web/20040310152439/http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/rautavaa.html) that I like:

> “Rautavaara is a mystic who considers that his compositions already exist in ‘another reality’. His job is to bring a composition into the world in one piece. “I firmly believe that compositions have a will of their own, though some people smile at the concept,” he says.”

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/2003/10/27.html#a137))*