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ANDERS ELIASSON : Breathing Room: July
(for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir)
Wednesday 10 October, 1984
Main Hall, Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Stockholm
Swedish Radio Choir, dir. Eric Ericson
Edition Reimers AB, 1990 (ED 101106)
May Swenson's English version of Thomas Tranströmer's poem 'Andrum Juli', included in the collection entitled Mörkerseende (1970), provides the starting point for Anders Eliasson's composition for unaccompanied mixed choir, 'Breathing Room : July'. Not that Tranströmer's poetry demands musical interpretation; Eliasson's music does not purport to add anything to the original text. Nor is 'Breathing Room : July' a choral composition in the traditional sense. Tranströmer's poem serves, in Eliasson's own words, "as a key to that big room".
In 'Breathing Room : July', Eliasson penetrates behind the words and tries to capture what is beyond and between them. The words are illuminated from many different angles at once. If anything one is entitled here to speak of holistic music, of states and processes at work in different strata of time and space which are superimposed on each other. The text is treated contrapuntally and freely, certain important words are highlighted, sticking in the mind and moving with the music in any direction whatsoever. Words and music move in a living water, in its swell, ripples and currents. Internal and external reality are mingled.
Tranströmer's poem consists of three four line verses. Eliasson's choral composition, of considerable length in relation to the text material, also has three clearly distinguishable, interconnected parts - movements, one is tempted to say. The vigorous middle section is surrounded by external episodes in a quieter tempo. In this way the work describes an arc. Anders Eliasson points out that the fact of voices conveying the music is really of little interest - it "just happens" to have become a vocal composition. In fact 'Breathing Room : July' is instrumentally, symphonically conceived.
ANDERS ELIASSON : Breathing Room: July
(for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir)
Wednesday 10 October, 1984
Main Hall, Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Stockholm
Swedish Radio Choir, dir. Eric Ericson
Edition Reimers AB, 1990 (ED 101106)
May Swenson's English version of Thomas Tranströmer's poem 'Andrum Juli', included in the collection entitled Mörkerseende (1970), provides the starting point for Anders Eliasson's composition for unaccompanied mixed choir, 'Breathing Room : July'. Not that Tranströmer's poetry demands musical interpretation; Eliasson's music does not purport to add anything to the original text. Nor is 'Breathing Room : July' a choral composition in the traditional sense. Tranströmer's poem serves, in Eliasson's own words, "as a key to that big room".
In 'Breathing Room : July', Eliasson penetrates behind the words and tries to capture what is beyond and between them. The words are illuminated from many different angles at once. If anything one is entitled here to speak of holistic music, of states and processes at work in different strata of time and space which are superimposed on each other. The text is treated contrapuntally and freely, certain important words are highlighted, sticking in the mind and moving with the music in any direction whatsoever. Words and music move in a living water, in its swell, ripples and currents. Internal and external reality are mingled.
Tranströmer's poem consists of three four line verses. Eliasson's choral composition, of considerable length in relation to the text material, also has three clearly distinguishable, interconnected parts - movements, one is tempted to say. The vigorous middle section is surrounded by external episodes in a quieter tempo. In this way the work describes an arc. Anders Eliasson points out that the fact of voices conveying the music is really of little interest - it "just happens" to have become a vocal composition. In fact 'Breathing Room : July' is instrumentally, symphonically conceived.