...There Is Also Loneliness (male choir)

In the middle of the Covid pandemic, during September 2020, I was observing how people were turning to social media for communication, comfort, and cultural exchange. At the same time, as many critics have commented, social media is a serious factor of increasing loneliness and associated mental health issues. This inspired me to write the piece …There is Also Loneliness. The piece was supposed to be a ”quick-learner”, nothing too complicated, well, that didn’t happen. Rather than an easy piece in four parts, this became an intricate exploration of sounds and vowels for double choir. The piece was first written as workshop material for male voices, not really conceived as being a concert piece. I wanted to explore the possibilities of glissandos and the sounds of different vowels, not in an extroverted expressive way, but in a more subtle, understated way. The text at this point consisted of vocal sounds such as ‘mm’ and ‘oo’, and a more traditional text for the piece became secondary. My idea was always to not put the lyrics at the forefront, but the music. The poetry has meaning, but the important part of this composition is the build-up and the sound of the words. The original version of this piece was commissioned by the Swedish male voice ensemble Svanholm Singers and their conductor Sofia Söderberg in 2020, and premiered by the same group on 15 October 2020 in Domkyrkan, Lund, Sweden. An adaptation for mixed voices was created in 2022 for a workshop with the British ensemble Voces8, hosted by JAM (John Armitage Memorial Trust), and the festival Jam on the Marsh, UK, and was later publicly premiered by the Voces8 Scholars on 15 October 2022 in St Bride's Church, London, UK.

Henrik Dahlgren