Mozart oppdateres og kles i 2017-drakt
No one has heard Mozart's "Requiem" like this before! With fresh descriptions from young people with mental health challenges, the text of Mozart's very last work will be updated and given a completely new expression. This is the promise of Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra's director Stefan Sköld, who describes an unusual and exciting process.
It all culminates in a single concert on May 5, 2017.
But before that, important work took place in 2016. Young people struggling with mental health challenges have shared their experiences and formulations with one of the region's leading writers, who has transformed them into poetry and replaced the original Latin text in the work.
This autumn, more than 100 young people from the music departments of upper secondary schools in Agder have been practicing and rehearsing in numerous lessons, before everything is put together from the New Year with singers and musicians in Kilden.
The hospital's proposal
KSO Director Stefan Sköld explains:
- We will do a requiem in 2017. And we're going to give voice to the growing number of young people with mental health problems. There are more and more of them, and we as fellow human beings and parents are not used to how to deal with it. So it's about giving young people a voice.
How do you do it?
- Karl Erik Karlsen is head of Sørlandet Hospital's Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ABUP). He has worked hard to include music as part of therapy, because he believes it is an important element for all people, both healthy and sick. "Together with our violinist Pål Svendsberget in the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, Karlsen contacted me and said 'Why don't we do something around Mozart's Requiem'," says Sköld.
- I was a bit skeptical at first, and wondered how we could do it. But then I got the idea: What if we remove the Latin text and then ask the young people to formulate their "dies irae" (hell) or their "libera me" (liberation from evil) - or "lacrimosa" (the flow of tears). We can give the young people impulses, and then ask a professional writer to lift it up, de-identify it and turn it into poetry. And then we add this text to the choral movements.
That idea has never been realized, and I didn't know if it would work," explains Sköld, who discussed the idea with Marie Teresie Sørensen, head of Kilden Dissemination and Dialogue, a department that works with unorthodox projects at Kilden, where new groups are involved in art productions.
Author Rune Belsvik makes Norwegian poetry out of young people's experiences.Lets young people formulate their dies irae* their libera me** or lacrimosa***
* hell **liberation from evil ***the flood of tears
Belsvik's method
- The two of us then contacted author Rune Belsvik, who has an incredible affinity with young people. And he liked the project idea. So last winter we gathered a group of young people from ABUP here in Kilden, and I think that was the first mistake we made - asking them to come here. Those who go to the department department for psychological help for children and young people are initially a little shy of getting out on unsafe ground. But then a group of young people came, and I had to play a few seconds from the first movement, explain the Latin text and say what it was about - in my own words in Swedish.
That's how KSO director Sköld explains how he got help from one of his closest friends to get through to the reserved group of young people. Sköld himself has extensive experience as a conductor and musical director, and has also studied theology. But it was still difficult to get through to the Norwegian youngsters in his own mother tongue, which is Swedish.
- Now my daughter Ida, who has gone through the same thing as these young people, she became the bridge from me to them. She kept giving them cues while I explained: "Think about what it was like when you did that, or that...."
Successful
She interpreted?
- Yes, she interpreted me. And she speaks perfect Norwegian, which I can't be accused of doing. However, all the kids were sitting there with their cell phones, and I thought "Hello. This is rubbish! This is never going to work". But then, when they had listened and I had finished jabbering, and my daughter had given them key words, we started talking about the text. And THEN they put their cell phones away! Then they came to life!!! And I felt that wow, this is still going to work!
What did you do next?
- We then had three-hour "writing sessions" at the hospital every other Saturday throughout the spring, led by Rune Belsvik. He had, of course, thought through the Latin text and my daughter's key words, and how he could give us tasks. So that everyone around the table - young people, therapists, psychiatrists, the director of the symphony orchestra - all wrote. Then Rune Belsvik said in his peaceful voice that "This task is about pain. You have two minutes from now". And then he pressed his mobile, and everyone wrote like crazy. Everyone! Then his alarm went off, and "Great. Thank you. The next task is joy"... And so we went on. He eventually got a lot of material and became friends with the young people who sent in diary entries, light and dark... In this way, he collected a lot of material he could link to the Latin text.
Over 100 young singers
But the young people are anonymized - even though their stories are not anonymous?
- Yes, it's their experiences. The whole expression is initiated and inspired by the young people's lyrics, that's why we do it that way. To give them a voice," says Stefan Sköld.
This summer, Belsvik has made poetry from the young people's texts. The texts were then written into the score, before the young people received them in the fall.
- The people who will be singing this are young people on the music courses at upper secondary schools in Agder. 110 pupils from Dahlske upper secondary school in Grimstad, Vågsbygd upper secondary school in Kristiansand and Kristen upper secondary school in Vennesla. When they started school in the autumn, they were given a choir score with the new lyrics, which they practise during school hours until Christmas. After the New Year, there will be a gathering of all the young people who will sing under the direction of conductor Ragnar Rasmussen.
"Mozart's REQUIEM was 18th century rock music" Stefan Sköld
So will there be a performance in Kilden on May 5?
- Yes, there will only be one performance with the young people, Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and professional vocal soloists. But it will be fantastic. And there are many good reasons for giving this work this form. One is that this was 18th-century rock music. Another is that Mozart suffered greatly when he wrote this requiem, and he died before he had finished it. So it was his pupils who got to complete it," says Sköld, adding another important reason:
- Because if anyone really had diagnoses and mental health problems, it was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! Nevertheless, he wrote one of the world's most amazing pieces, which is about joy, liberation, pain and hell. And even though this piece is based on the Latin Mass, which pays tribute to the souls of the dead, it is perfectly possible to transfer this in a good way.
Mozart's is a great example of how even if you have many mental health diagnoses and problems, you can still do something amazing?
- Yes, you can. Absolutely!
Text Reidar Mosland
Photo Lasse Midling-Jenssen Gautestad