Olav Anton Thommessen - Stabat Mater Speciosa
About the composer
Olav Anton Thommessen was born in 1946 but lived in the USA from 1958 to 1969, where he studied under Bernard Heiden and Iannis Xenakis at the Indiana School of Music. He studied for one year at the Warsaw Music Conservatory, followed by a year at the Instituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht. He is now an assistant professor at the Norwegian State Academy of Music. Thommessen is the son of a diplomat, which has provided him with a highly international background. This is reflected in his music, where modernist elements merge with traits from non-European music. An almost late Romantic style characterizes Thommessen’s earliest works, but gradually he has developed a more modern language with great dynamic contrasts, a strong rhythmic vitality and volcanic eruptions of sound.
About the Stabat Mater
| Date: | 1977 |
| Performers: | Mixed choir |
| Length: | 4.44 minutes |
| Particulars: | The Stabat Mater Speciosa was commissioned by Ny Musikk (the Norwegian branch of ISCM - International Society for Contemporary Music) in 1977 for the Oslo Youth Choir. The work treats the vowels of the hymn as sound units, while the consonants are given a percussive function. The work is built on a characteristic type of scale which is gradually transformed into a chord. The resulting sound opens and closes like a fan. |
| Textual variations: | Only the first two stanzas of the Stabat Mater Speciosa have been used. |
| Colour bar: |
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Information about the recording
| CD: | Aurora Contemporary NCD-B 4940 |
| More info: | I bought the cd in a recordshop in the Netherlands. |
| Choir: | Oslo Youth Choir |
| Conductor: | Jor Rormark |
| Other works: | Olav Anton Thommessen: Upside-Down, Barbaresk |
| Code: | June 2007 - THOM-01 (217) |
