Anders Eliasson
Anders Erik Birger Eliasson was a Swedish composer.
Life
Eliasson was born in Borlänge. His "earliest musical experiences originated from within myself: they were my own singing, and familiar tunes I heard on the radio. No classical music." Marching his toy soldiers up and down, he used to imagine sounds, learning only later to describe them as an orchestra. Aged 9, he began the trumpet, started up a small jazz orchestra, and aged 10 he was writing arrangements. A jazz bass-player, "an unbelievable musician", taught him chords. Aged 14, he went to an organist, Uno Sandén, to learn harmony and counterpoint.Aged 16 he went for private study in Stockholm to "the wonderful Valdemar Söderholm", who "confronted me once more with real music" – music such as he had first heard aged about 12. "The first real piece of music" which Eliasson heard "on a gramophone record was Haydn’s Symphony No. 104."
Under Söderholm, he studied counterpoint: there followed five years’ intensive work on Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso and above all Johann Sebastian Bach, "the highest form of energy with which it’s possible to come into contact."
From 1966 he was a student under Ingvar Lidholm at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and until 1973 a member of the artistic committee of the Electronic Music Foundation, Stockholm. His first major successes were a choral work, Canto del vagabondo, and his First Symphony, for whose "originality, authenticity and musical clarity" Eliasson was awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize.
In 1991 he was composer in residence at the Lapland Festival in Arjeplog and visiting professor at Sibelius Academy Helsinki in the academic year 1993/94. 37 works of Eliasson's were performed at the "1996 International Composer´s Festival Stockholm".
From 2000 Eliasson had performed a monodrama for soprano and 27 instrumentalists, a great number of chamber music as well as five large-scale concertos: a Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, a Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra, a Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra, a Double Concerto for Violin, Viola and Chamber Orchestra as well as a Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.
Together with the composers Kalevi Aho, who was chairman of the jury, and Magnus Lindberg, Eliasson was juror in the 2nd International Uuno Klami Composer Competition 2008/09.
From 2005 until his death, Anders Eliasson was composer-in-residence of the New York-based Arcos Chamber Ensemble. He died in Stockholm, aged 66.
'The International Anders Eliasson Society' was registered on 7 March 2016 in Vienna; its inaugural meeting took place on 11 March 2016 at Stockholm's Konserthuset.
Aesthetics
Eliasson became familiar with classical and modernist aesthetics while still a student. "I was initially happy to be allowed to be a student in the proper way. But when I compared what was then fashionable to the classical period, the latter seemed so much better!" When he was accepted for Ingvar Lidholm's composition class, he was, he says, shocked, because "when I came into contact with luminaries such as Karl Karkoschka or Roman Haubenstock-Ramati – who were delightful people – I suddenly lost all contact with the music I had inside myself."At that time, Stockholm was "a modernist fortress: dodecaphony, serialism, aleatoric music, musique concrète – there was every technique and trend and fashion. György Ligeti, John Cage and Terry Riley all taught in Stockholm. It was no big deal to master all that – it was only a question of techniques, not of music, nothing about it was authentic. It was a time of unbearable self-denial. Metrical rhythms, melodies, even particular intervals were all taboo in contemporary music. This was a catastrophe for the human voice and the human ear – was then, and still is." Anyone stepping out of line, he said, was immediately banished. He mentioned an example from Sweden, Allan Pettersson.
Selected worksTony Lundman: ''Anders Eliasson'' (= Svenska Tonsättare / Swedish Composers Series by the ''Royal Swedish Music Academy''). Bokförlaget Atlantis Stockholm 2012
Orchestra
- 1968: Exposition för kammarorkester
- 1977: Canti in lontananza för liten orkester
- 1978: Impronta för orkester
- 1978: Turnings för orkester
- 1988: Fantasia per orchestra för orkester
Symphonies
- 1984: Sinfonia da camera för kammarorkester
- 1987: Symfonie nr 2
- 1989: Sinfonia concertante: Symfoni nr 3 för altsaxofon och orkester
- 2005: Symphony No. 4 for Orchestra
- 2013: Symphony No. 5
Concerti
- 1982: Concerto per fagotto ed archi för fagott och stråkorkester
- 1992: Klarinettkonsert – Sette passaggi för klarinett och orkester
- 1992: Concerto per violino ed orchestra d´archi för violin och stråkorkester
- 1992: Farfalle e ferro: Concerto per corno ed archi för horn och stråkorkester
- 1996: Konsert för basklarinett och orkester
- 2000: Concerto per trombone för trombon och orkester
- 2002: Konsert för altsaxofon och stråkorkester
- 2005 Concerto per violino, piano ed orchestra: dubbelkonsert för violin, piano och orkester
- 2009: Concerto per violino, viola ed orchestra da camera: dubbelkonsert för violin, viola och kammarorkester
- 2010: Einsame Fahrt / Solitary Journey - Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Choral
- 1979: "Canto del Vagabondo in memoriam di Carolus Linnaeus per orchestra, coro femminile e voce bianca"
- 1998: Dante anarca: oratorium för sopran, alt, tenor, bas, blandad kör och orkester
- 2007: Quo vadis för tenor, blandad kör och orkester
Works for string orchestra
- 1981: Desert point för stråkorkester
- 1987: Ostacoli för stråkorkester
- 2001: Sinfonia per archi för stråkorkester
- 2003: Ein schneller Blick... ein kurzes Aufscheinen för stråkorkester
Selected chamber music
- 1970/1992: In medias för soloviolin. Durata: 6
- 1986: Poem för altsaxofon och piano. Durata: 15´
- 1991: Quartetto d'archi för stråkkvartett. Durata: 20´
- 2003: Pentagramm för oboe, klarinett, fagott, horn och piano. Durata: 16´
- 2010: Fantasia per sei strumenti. Durata: 10´
- 2010: Trio för violin, vibrafon och piano. Durata. 17´
- 2012: Trio d´archi `Ahnungen´. Durata: 26´
Music drama
- 2011: Karolinas sömn för sopran och kammarensemble. Libretto: Bengt Emil Johnson. Durata: 48´; premiered June 4, 2012 at Konsthallen Artipelag, Hålludden, Värmdön. Commissioned by the Royal Swedish Opera, Soloist: Lena Hoel; Kungliga Hovkapellet; Conductor: Daniel Blendulf; production: Christina Ouzounidis.