Erotiske salmer (1998)
(Erotic Hymns)

Bent Lorentzen’s song cycle based on religious texts/lyrics, Erotic Hymns, was commissioned by organist Jens E. Christensen for the 300th anniversary of the organ in the Our Saviour’s Church in Christianshavn in 1998. At the premiere the work was sung by bass Aage Haugland, and Jens E. Christensen later recorded Erotic Hymns together with baritone Morten Frank Larsen for release on Dacapo Records in 2002. In 2014 Jens E. Christensen and Jakob Bloch Jespersen revived the work, and in February 2015 they performed Erotic Hymns at the concert celebrating Bent Lorentzen’s 80th birthday. In Erotic Hymns, Bent Lorentzen juxtaposes H.A. Brorson’s pietist poetry from The Rare Treasure of Faith (1739) with Ole Sarvig’s religious poems from the collection Hymns and Beginnings for the 1980s (1981). The bodily and erotic relationship to faith expressed by the Pietist H.A. Brorson finds an immediate modern reflection in Sarvig’s descriptions of intimate human relationships.

With great sensitivity and immersion in the intimate relationship of faith expressed in the texts, Bent Lorentzen unfolds a song cycle about love, loss, hope, consolation, and belief, in which the traditional and the modern merge symbiotically into a lyrical musical language that is unusual for the composer, yet also deeply personal. Brorson’s hymn texts are set with an eye to the traditional use of cantus firmus as the recurring thread binding together the strict structure of the movements. Lorentzen’s training under Vagn Holmboe and Jørgen Jersild seems to shine through here, just as Richard Wagner’s harmonic universe, especially as it unfolds in Parsifal, must have served as a source of inspiration. As a counterpart to this, Ole Sarvig’s poems are set as free, speech-like recitatives. In these movements, the organ merely supports the singer with fragile sound layers and sensuous chromaticism, with which Lorentzen portrays the most vulnerable, intimate, and erotic aspects of human life.

Only in the final song of the cycle is a rapturous, orgiastic climax reached with Brorson’s verse “Jeg ligger ved Jesus hans bryster så tæt” (“I lie so close upon Jesus’s breasts”). Here the Christian/ Pietist marriage metaphor is finally unfolded in the erotic union of the Soul and Jesus. As such, the final song can be viewed as Brorson’s religious response to the “modern” existential questions Sarvig poses throughout the work.

Jakob Bloch Jespersen, 2026