The project “Get all old works published at NB” is progressing!
The latest piece I’ve added there, “…noen vil alltid hviske deg i øret…”, has been an especially meticulous process. It’s the last work I wrote by hand and the first of my early pieces that I still keep in my portfolio. I actually started working on it before I began studying at the Academy of Music, and it was completed during my first year there. At that time, composition students regularly had workshops with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra (KORK), and I was fortunate enough to have it included in one of those. After that, it was selected for UNM 2003—my first UNM! That was a big deal.
The performance from UNM 2003 can still be heard here:
I can still remember the physical sensation this piece gave me during the writing process. It was the first time I wrote for so many instruments, and I could feel how there just wasn’t enough space in my head to think about it—it felt too small. A bit like when I try to think about how vast the universe is—there’s no room for that in my head. These days, I don’t get that feeling anymore when writing for multiple voices (I’ve built enough “muscle,” or maybe expanded the space in my head, or some other metaphor). But sometimes, I still feel it, especially when I’m on particularly thin ice or working on something entirely new to me. That’s when I tell myself: “Hey! There’s that feeling—so I must be doing something right.” I have an unwavering belief in challenging oneself and expanding one’s mental capacity.
Why has it been so hard to get this piece published? Well, as I mentioned, it was handwritten. It has only ever existed in that handwritten version, and the parts were originally created with cut-and-paste methods—and those parts have since disappeared. Even though it’s for string orchestra, it’s written for 16 individual parts. This is where having an assistant pays off: Astrid Solberg has entered much of the piece into notation software, after I had started but never finished a few years ago. Then we’ve gone through about a million corrections—there are so many details here! It’s a bit crazy since the piece is only four minutes long, but there are so many notes, especially in one section, which increases the chances of mistakes.
Better late than never—23 years after completion and 21 years after its performance at UNM—this piece is finally ready for the world to see!