Context

Performance

Instrumentation

bl.kör

Classification

Blandad kör a cappella

Subject heading

Xp

Language

eng

First performance

Date

1984-10-13

Location

Södertälje, Sta Ragnhilds kyrka

Performers

Kammarkören, dir Eric Ericson

Background

Comments about the work

May Swenson's English version of Thomas Tranströmer's poem Andrum juli,included in the collection entitled Mörkerseende (1970), provides the startingpoint for Anders Eliasson's composition for unaccompanied mixed choir,Breathing Room : July. Not that Tranströmer's poetry demands musical interpretation; Eliasson's musicdoes 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 andbetween them. The words are illuminated from many different angles at once. Ifanything one is entitled here to speak of holistic music, of states andprocesses at work in different strata of time and space which are superimposedon 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 directionwhatsoever. Words and music move in a living water, in its swell, ripples andcurrents. Internal and external reality are mingled. Tranströmer's poem consists of three fourline verses. Eliasson's choralcomposition, of considerable length in relation to the next material, also hasthree clearly distinguishable, interconnected parts - movements, one is temptedto say. The vigorous middle section is surrounded by external episodes in aquieter tempo. In this way the work describes an arc. Anders Eliasson points out that the fact of voices conveying the music is reallyof little interest - it "just happens" to have become a vocal composition. In factBreathing Room : July is instrumentally, symphonically conceived. It was written in 1984, mainly by coincidence, and first performed on 10thOctober that year by the Swedish Radio Chamber Choir conducted by EricEricson, at a concert in the Main Hall of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.Text: Birgitta Huldt. From Phono Suecia nr 44 (1990)

List

The work

Composer

Anders Eliasson

Lyricist

Tomas Tranströmer

Source of lyrics

transl May Swanson

Title

Breathing room: July

Duration

20 minutes

Composition year

1984

Information

Identification number

132151

Publication year

1990

Work administrator

ER (Edition Reimers AB (c/o Gehrmans Musikförlag))
Box 42026
126 12 Stockholm
Phone: 08-610 06 00
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.gehrmans.se

Edition number

101106

Format

SCORE

Reference to physical copy

L-fol

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