Magnus Lindberg came to the immediate attention of the world of classical music when he announced his artistic credo as a budding composer in the late 1970s. Together with Finnish contemporaries such as Kaija Saariaho, Jouni Kaipainen and Esa-Pekka Salonen, he formed a group with the name “Ears Open!” (“Korvat Auki!”) in 1977. With the goal of reliving the spirit of modernism and innovation in Finnish musical culture, a number of striking compositions followed which, in many different ways, were much more extreme in their musical parameters than the works of any of Lindberg’s teachers, the well-known Einojuhani Rautavaara and Paavo Heininen.