Pie made by Julie

To day Julie (14) has made pie. She is really good at it!

A must for the Knights of good food.

If you are traveling a lot, Enjoy Food and Travel, is the place to look for where to go, where to stay and what to eat. Tor Johnson who has the site, is a dear friend of mine.

Corporate Image

Malin is working on building a new "corporate image" for me. The picture is a blind drawing (she doesn't look at the paper when drawing). Hope you like it.

Arioso for Oboe, and dead lines

Sissel from Musikkteater i Bodø (Music Theatre in Bodø/Norway) has right when she calls musical composition a high risk sport. It´s allways those bloody deadlines. Arioso for Oboe is the Adèles theme from the up comming opera Adèle. It´s a lyric theme build upon the synthetic scale "scala Enigmatica" used by Verdi in his "Quattro Pezzi Sacri".

Status presence - writing opera

I´ve been writing about the opera project I´m working on, and the picture illustrates the state of my mind right now.

My librettist Ketil J. Zahl

My librettist is Ketil J. Zahl, and he has done a great job transforming August Strindberg´s play "Play with the fire" into a libretto. We are now planning several new projects. He has written a Richard III monologue which I´m going to compose for the barytone Per Andreas Tønder and piano forte. Malin has made the english translation, and I the german. My dream is to do Richard III as an opera with a libretto of Ketil. Ketil´s angle is Richard III as a ghost. It´s a sort of over writing, using parts of Shakespeare's famous play. But first I have to finnish an opera, a viola concerto and so on and so forth. It´s a privilege for me that so many musicians are interested working with me.

My totem animal...

I´m working on the opera, while the family is enjoying the nice weather in Oslo. Malin made to day a turtle in sand; I like!

My Paradise

Years ago I was part of a Photo Exhibition in Lübeck/Germany. The photographer portrayed a lot of different people, and asked us to write a text about our own paradise.

Mein Paradies

Mein Paradies,
fünf Uhr morgens
und ich bin endlich
Soweit, dass die Komposition abgeschloßen ist.

Monate vorher –
ein Gedanke ensteht außerhalb der Zeit
und innerhalb eines Raumes,
eine Vision.

Oft sehe ich die Musik
vor meinem inneren Auge,
bevor ich sie höre.

Mein Paradies
ist nicht Erfüllung,
es wirft ständig neue Fragen auf.
Stillstand wäre Erstarrung.

Für mich ist Musik zu komponieren
ein Ausdruck
für eine Sehnsucht
nach etwas
von dem ich nicht weiß,
was
ist.

Einen langen Weg habe ich hinter mir.
Jetzt gehört das Stück
sich selbst.

Mein Paradies,
fünf Uhr morgens.
Nochmals lese ich die Partitur.

Nature, Nature, Nature

I must admit it, the Nature is best on TV. It doesn't smell, and you can change channel, or turn the time consumer off. Today I was exposed to Nature. The family was swimming, while I was reading the score of Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre. I'm writing an opera as a part of a competition, and it is important to study what my (mostly dead) colleagues have written. I can also recommend Bernd Alois Zimmermann's "Die Soldaten" and Alban Berg's "Wozzeck". To survive in the Nature you need an iPod, a lot of books and scores and the possibility to be in the centre of a large city within 20 minutes.

Confession - or the 360 degree intellectual spastic

When it comes to which compositional style I prefer, my brother Per is right when he years ago referred to me as a "360 degree intellectual spastic". I can be really harsh to some music styles, and the year after I would admire the same style, and argument for it... I've for instance been attacking the music of Krzysztof Penderecki, Arvo Pärt and Hedryk Górecki, but they write great music. I now see that the problem is those who try to copy them. These three composers have travelled a long way to end up with a kind of strict late romantic music. What I don't like, is the composers who just start to write in a film music style, not knowing the tradition, and the necessity to learn to know your self.