[TR24][OF] Himmelkvad - Lasse Thorsen (Berit Opheim Versto, Nordic Voices) - 2012 (2L)

COMPOSER’S NOTE
I find myself in an empty apartment and collapse, empty and exhausted, onto
a sofa left by the previous occupant. Suddenly my attention is lifted up and
out into the room. An amazing melody starts to take shape. I listen to it in
my head, making mental notes of the melody line, the atmosphere, intonation
and expression. My fatigue disappears. I want to make a composition, a
composition based on the non-tempered tonality of Norwegian folk music,
but differing from it in that it will modulate to several keys. I find a prayer text
by Bahá’u’lláh that I am already familiar with and sketch the piece: a melodic
contour emerges from the improvised melody phrases. I note it down in the
margin, play with it, turning it backwards and upside-down, and note that the
same contour can form the micro-details and ornaments. The piece will be
called O du som er mitt liv og lys (O Thou, who art our Life and Light), the first
of Helligkvadene op. 19 (the Sacred Songs). The year was 1988.
But who was to sing this new piece? It was obvious that that the work
required a different voice than one trained for classical and romantic music.
On the other hand it required someone able to read micro-intervals from a
score — and folk musicians generally come from a score-free tradition. Three
years later I was tipped off by a teacher at the Norwegian Academy of Music
that there was a student there who was a folk musician studying classical
singing. Her name was Berit Opheim. I contacted her, she rehearsed the piece
and did the premiere performance at Salle Oliver Messiaen in Paris. Both Berit
and I have lost count of how many times she has sung it since the premiere.
Not long afterwards I met the singer Anne-Lise Berntsen at a concert of Indian
sitar music. We agreed on the spot that I should write some songs for her with
the very spirituality that we both felt was missing from the concert we had just
attended. Taking as my point of departure two prayers that I use in my own
personal devotionals, I wrote Forfrisk og gled min ånd (Refresh and gladden
my spirit) and La meg næres (Let my food be Thy beauty) for her. A little later
I received a commission from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’is
of Norway. They wanted a work for the opening of an exhibition of pictures
by the American artist Mark Tobey, an exhibition marking a holy year — the
centenary of the Bahá’úllah’s death. I decided to write more works for Anne-
Lise. One week in February 1992 I took my microtonal synthesizer and went
to visit my good friends Eldbjørg Brekke and Tore Svelle in Saksumdal and
they let me live for over a week in the attic of their farmhouse. I went for
walks in the snowy landscape. One day I found that the air, the very heavens
were on fire. I saw nothing unusual with my physical eyes, but everything was
vibrating as if an invisible fire had risen up between the frosty blue sky and
the dark forest. The result was For Menneskeheten (For Mankind) and Gud
bevitner at han er én (God testifieth to the unity of his Godhood).
I wrote the last movement in 1996 as Festival composer at the Bergen International
Festival. During the opening concert, Berit Opheim performed the
Sacred Song Skap i meg et rent hjerte (Create in me a pure heart) fifteen
metres in front of King Harald. Berit’s performance was spellbinding: the hall
of 1500 people was filled to the brim with a silence that is almost tangible.
In 2002 I taught for a week at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de
Musique et de Danse in Paris. I gave lectures and met my old friend and
colleague, Guy Reibel. He had been working for some time with an approach
to vocal improvisation based on body energy. One morning I suddenly got an
idea. I wanted to try and create a new vocal music. I contacted David Hykes,
an old friend of mine also living in France, to discuss the idea. As far as I can
judge, he is one of the world’s best overtone singers and a man of spiritual
and meditative skills. The Concrescence project was born, but it was to take
another couple of years before it came to fruition. Becoming acquainted with
Nordic Voices was crucial in this respect. With support from Ultima Oslo Contemporary
Music Festival’s Geirr Johnsen and the Lindeman Trust Fund we
managed to organize a series of training seminars for Nordic Voices, with
regular instruction in overtone singing from Tran Quang Hai, in Norwegian
folk singing from Berit Opheim Versto, in “voice games” from Guy Reibel and
in microtonality by Gro Shetelig. Nordic Voices exhibited a combination of
great skill, playfulness and openness to experimentation, a combination rarely
found among such perfectionist professionals. I invited a number of other
composers to join the process and write works for Nordic Voices, and these
were first performed during Ultima 2006. Thus Nordic Voices were equipped
to achieve an extraordinary feat — all that I could imagine a vocal ensemble
being able to do!
In 2007 I was contacted by Per Boye Hansen, the director of the Bergen
International Festival, about writing a work based on folk music for the
Latvian Radio Choir. At the time I was not aware of the choir’s qualities and
didn’t want to write the Grieg hymns all over again. I replied that I would much
rather do something that made use of Norwegian folk music’s distinctive
tonality and rhythm and I asked if I could write a work for Nordic Voices
instead of the Latvian Radio Choir. The result was Solbøn (Sun Prayer),
which was first performed at the Bergen International Festival in 2008. Boye
Hansen was clearly happy with the result and wanted to commission several
similar works. I had to disappoint him by informing him that the remaining
works in the opus were already commissioned.
For after winning the Osa Prize for my contribution to Norwegian folk music,
Kari Margrethe Okstad from the Osa Festival contacted me to commission
a work. I seized the opportunity to ask them to commission new works from
me for Nordic Voices. In the winter 2009 I borrowed a little cabin on Bente
and Endre Hemsing’s farm in Aurdal. Bente treated me not only to homemade
moose casserole, but also to a constant supply of music from Valdres.
There was much to enjoy, but what really fired my imagination was a rather
untidy tune, Likfærdssælmin (The Funeral Hymn), sung by Ingvar Hegge.
Before arriving I had already decided to do something with a melody by
Vigdal, Himmelske Fader (Heavenly Father), and after hours spent trying to
transcribe his sophisticated singing, I caught a glimpse of how I could shape a
longer work. The little cabin was now fully furnished with microtonally tuned
synthesizers, and through experimentation I found a way to harmonise this
music with its complete lack of tempered intervals. My opus 42 included four
works based on folk music, including Tvetrall (Dual Tune), a piece brought
to my attention by Berit Opheim, which I composed in the summer of 2009.
On June 2, 2010 at 12 o’clock precisely, the news breaks: Opus 42 has won the
Nordic Council Music Prize. The telephone rings, and a succession of interview
follows. Per Boye Hansen spontaneously invites me and Nordic Voices
to the Bergen International Festival. The decision of the Nordic Council of
Ministers is announced to a packed Grieg Hall, and Nordic Voices perform
Solbøn live on Norwegian national radio, from the stage where Berit Opheim
performed the last movements of the Sacred Songs.
And now I am sitting writing these notes at an airport in Riga, waiting for my
delayed flight to Oslo to come up. I have been in Riga for the rehearsals of my
next Concrescence work, and ironically it was the Latvian Radio Choir, which
Per Boye Hansen wanted me to write for in 2008, that picked up the ball and
is now continuing the learning process that Nordic Voices spearheaded. I
think a new culture of vocal music is feasible. That is my 200-year plan. It may
not be the most effective career move to write music that at present only a
few singers in the world can perform, but it is meaningful. The hope is that
the future is on our side …
LASSE THORESEN 4th June 2010

Berit Opheim Versto
Nordic Voices: sopranos Tone Braaten and Ingrid Hanken, mezzosoprano Ebba Rydh, tenor Per Kristian Amundrød, baritone Frank Havrøy and bass Trond Reinholdtsen