To måner (2022)
(Hyldest til Per Nørgård)

Connecting to Per Nørgård's music is no difficulty for me, it would be more difficult to compose a work that is not related to Nørgård's music. Once you have stepped into his musical thinking, the world will never be the same again: it has been given another dimension. With his invention of the infinity series (from the 1960s), Per Nørgård rediscovered the beauty of music, at a time when many considered such a development impossible.

Poul Borum's poem Two moons revolves around a few things that all actually carry an association to Nørgård's world: dreams, moons, threads, many people. Dreams and moons are both common themes in Nørgård's music. The threads with which the moons are woven - yes, then I think of the infinity series, which are a kind of threads that are pulled from a never-decreasing ball, and "many people" symbolize the typical harmony for Nørgård: the rhythmic hierarchies that arise when many steps wandering at the same time, but at different paces. In the composition of Two Moons, I have started from the infinity series of only two notes, a special technique that Ivan Hansen has collected a number of examples of in The Drum Book (1999). But instead of percussion instruments, these are voices - "many people" - that create a rhythmic two-tone universe. Congratulations on your 90th birthday, Per Nørgård, and thank you for your unique contribution to music history!

Britta Byström