Kaija Saariaho

Her ten planets divide three apiece in earth, air and water with a single one in fire, and five of the ten are cardinal against one mutable. The Sun, Saturn and Neptune sit inside three degrees of Libra, which is a very tight group for three planets. The record calls Saariaho a Finnish composer of the opera L'Amour de loin, and a figure of the spectral school.

The Sun sits conjunct Neptune at four tenths of a degree inside that group, which fuses identity to the planet of image and sound: imagination available without effort, and a self that is easier to describe from outside than from within. In a composer the record attaches to a school named after the way sound breaks into its parts, a Sun welded to Neptune at four tenths is the contact to keep, and it is a resonance rather than a cause.

Saturn sits square Uranus at just over a fifth of a degree, the closest contact here, which is order against revolt and frustration with rules that serve nobody, and Jupiter stands at an awkward angle to the same Saturn at three quarters. A T-square closes on Venus, Jupiter and Pluto without an outlet. Her Moon sits four arcminutes into Virgo at noon, which is as marginal as a placement gets, so it and everything resting on it are set aside. A composer the record places in a school named for taking sound apart had order against revolt as her tightest contact, which is a figure about method rather than about feeling.

She died in Paris on 2 June 2023, at seventy. Uranus stood directly opposite her natal Venus at under a fifth of a degree that day, the closest thing in that sky, with the Moon in easy contact with her natal Uranus at three fifths. The Moon was gibbous and ninety six per cent lit, the phase that refines, questions and improves, and rarely calls anything finished, which for a composer working in a school about taking sound apart is the phase to finish on.