Dream-Land (2019)
(for male choir)

For the past twenty years, I have played with the idea of composing music to Dream-Land, the multifaceted poem by Edgar Allan Poe, but it was not until the Polytech Choir and Saara Aittakumpu asked me for a new piece for their 120th anniversary concert that the plans went into motion and the composition became reality.

Poe`s strong and mythical imagery resonated strongly with me. The text surveys the borders of spiritual and physical existence, and it can be interpreted in many ways: What first appears to be a description of a frightening, difficult to discern dreamscape through which the protagonist travels, can also, on the contrary, be seen as a description of the protagonist waking from a dream and the dreamscape into the frightening and threatening real world. For me, this pattern interpretation is highly relevant in the modern flux of information, which is marked by news of ecological destruction and social discord.

Sebastian Fagerlund