Many musicologists and music theorists investigating the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) explore it through detailed analysis only on the syntactic level, leaving the semantic content aside. Such an approach, which risks creating an incomplete image of Rautavaara's music, needs to be complemented by an understanding of its wider cultural context. The present study attempts to fill this gap by focusing on five instrumental compositions whose titles refer to angels: the orchestral overture Angels and Visitations (1978), the Double Bass Concerto Angel of Dusk (1980), Playgrounds for Angels for brass ensemble (1981), the Seventh Symphony Angel of Light (1994), and “Archangel Michael Fighting the Antichrist” from the piano suite Icons (1955) and the later orchestral adaptation in Before the Icons (2006). The aim is to explore the link between musical phenomena and their extramusical references both in the case of the individual works and in the composer's general aesthetics. Rautavaara is an erudite composer whose interests extend beyond music to philosophy, psychology, literature, the visual arts, and spirituality. He is a talented writer of books, poems, and opera librettos, as well as an amateur painter. Such extramusical interests also characterize his music. They leave their traces in his program notes, commentaries, titles, and writings, which together provide a rich source of knowledge about his aesthetics and philosophy. As a result, much of his music can be read semantically, in some cases in the sense of the mildly programmatic tendency of contemporary music, in others as an example of musical ekphrasis.

Not all of Rautavaara's compositions have obvious extramusical connections; notable exceptions are his dodecaphonic works from his first serial period (1957-1965). The group of instrumental compositions referring to angels, however, provides an excellent case for an investigation of how the semantic content of the work titles plays itself out in the compositional technique, from smallest details such as the use of motifs and scales through the structure of particular movements to the layout and characteristics of whole compositions. Moreover, as Rautavaara in his instrumental works tends to incorporate aspects that relate to the vocal style of his operas and songs, many non-vocal parameters must be examined for their potential to represent, or correspond to, narration in stage drama.

In order to prepare the ground for the examination of Rautavaara's musical reflection on angels, the study begins with an overview of angelic representations in the history of Western music.