Two Songs from Kalender Röd

2000 (12 minutes)

Composed for: Chorus a cappella / Chorus plus 1 instrument

First performed: Swedish Radio Choir, cond. Stefan Parkman, Swedish Radio Choir 75th anniversary concert, Stockholm, 2 December 2000

Instrumentation: Chorus: SATB

Commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Cooperation for the 75th Anniversary Concert of the Swedish Radio Choir, the piece is set to poems by Ann Jäderlund. 

Salonen: ‘I became enchanted with Ann Jäderlund’s poetry because of its sensual intensity and lack of sentimentality. She describes sensations with amazing effectiveness, with few words but with a rhythm that immediately awakens musical associations.

In the first song, Kyss min mun (Kiss my mouth), I tried to give musical shape to verbal images such as 'touch me', 'glide', and adjectives such as 'slippery', 'round' and 'loose'. InDjupt i rummet (Deep in the room), the text is presented as a whole in a Palestrina-like simple counterpoint section at the beginning. The poem is then broken down into phonemes used as material for a musical game that becomes increasingly like a virtuoso piece until its culmination. A simple chorale featuring the poem again over slow harmonic waves concludes the work. The songs are of course dedicated to the Swedish Radio Choir.’

Published by: Chester Music Limited

Copyright: Esa-Pekka Salonen, 2000