Olav Anton Thommessen
About the composer
Olav Anton Thommessen was born in 1946, but lived in the USA from 1958 to 1969, where he was taught by Bernard Heiden and Iannis Xenakis at the Indiana School of Music. He studied one year at the Warsaw Music Conservatory, followed by a year at the Instituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht. He is now assistant professor at the Norwegian State Academy of Music. Thommessen is the son of a diplomat, and that has provided him with a highly international background. It is reflected in his music, where modernist elements merge with traits from non-European music. An almost late Romantic style charaterizes Thommessen ‘s earliest works, but gradually he has developped 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 branche of ISCM (International Society for Comtemporary Music) in 1977 for the Oslo Youth Choir. The work treats the vowels of the hymne as sound units, whereas the consonants are given a percussive function. The work is build on a characteristic type of scale which is gradually tranformed into a chord. The sound that results opens and closes like a fan. |
| Textual variations: | Only the first two stanzas of the Stabat Mater Speciosa have been used. |
| Colour bar: |
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) |
