on poems by Tomas Tranströmer from The Great Enigma (Den stora gåtan © Bonniers 2004), © New Collected Poems, 2006, translated by Robin Fulton.
commission by the ensemble Lipparella, supported by the Swedish Arts Council
first performance: 21/22.2.2014 at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
publisher: Svensk Musik
Tomas Tranströmer's collection of poetry, The Great Enigma (2004), which consists of five poems and forty five haikus, had been with me for a long time. I had read some of them for my old father who would soon after die of Alzheimer's disease. The choice of Tranströmer's haikus/poems for a composition for ensemble Lipparella felt as if it were prepared: They opened up to musical spaces and moods, shifts between darkness and light of life, which the particular possibilities of articulation and timbre of the baroque ensemble offered me to explore. I also had a strong desire to compose in my native language Swedish.
In Hemligheten (The Secret), ten of the forty-five haikus were selected chronologically and composed in seven parts, sometimes with two haikus in the same part. Instrumental and vocal parts constantly go in and out of each other throughout the piece. The instrumental beginning and the end of the composition - yes, perhaps even the work in its entirety - has been inspired by two more of Tranströmer poems from Short Poems (2002);
in the beginning of the work, from Örnklippan (Eagle Rock):
"In the depths of the ground
my soul glides
silent as a comet"
and its end, from Snö faller (Snow is falling):
"A bridge builds itself
slowly
straight out in space"
Madeleine Isaksson