In Sweden the summer is short and intense. When I was a child the summer vacation seemed to last forever. June, July and August seemed an eternity of bare legs through grass, the fragrance of flowers and the sound of humming bumble bees, high summer clouds above the trajectories of whistling swifts and the occasional danger of thunder and something venomous slipping away in the grass. It was a very pastoral experience, leaving an atmosphere of down-to-earth but elusive beauty in my soul to last this lifetime. The prison of bodily materialization had not yet any bars across its windows.
Strong reminiscences of that childhood summer paradise – a fairytale told by someone that was I – recur each summer, contrasting the brevity of adult summers of early 21st century, which pass in the wink of an eye, in quiet desperation at the feeling of time just slipping relentlessly through my fingers, truly having everything that happens take on that strange sense of unreality, without real substance; life as a mirage at the horizon of consciousness…

In July of 2006 my work took me through the District of Sodermanland of Sweden, from the coast of the Baltic Sea where I live in a salty breeze from the vast waters, way inland to the town of Strängnäs by the great Lake Mälaren that huddled in soaring heat, unusual for Sweden even in high summer. I made this drive twice, by myself, on the 7th and the 11th of the month, called in as the union’s representative to participate in interviews with some applicants for a job at the Police Authority where I work as a criminal investigator.
The visits to this old city brought on memories. I last visited 18 years ago, riding buses through the countryside with my 4-year-old son Ivan, who now is 22 and living in the USA.

The runes read: “Tola lät resa denna sten efter sin son Harald, Ingvars broder. De foro manligen fjärran efter guld och österut gåvo örnarna föda. De dogo söderut i Särkland” (Tola had this stone risen after her son Harald, Ingvar’s brother. They traveled manly far away for gold, and gave the eagles feed in the East. They died southward, in Sarkland)

Sarkland is the area southwest of the Black Sea (Iran, Armenia, parts of Turkey, Iraq and Russia). The expression “give the eagles feed” means that they killed enemies in battle.

This is old country, with a grand heritage, the roadsides dotted with rune stones from Viking times a thousand years ago, and three-thousand-years-old Bronze Age burial mounds towering in the landscape while rock carvings from the same period embellish places where the rock face opens towards the sky. You really have the link-on-a-chain feeling when you browse these areas, knowing that your ancestors emerged from and receded into this land of forests, lakes, fields, meadows and hills, throughout the millennia. No man is an island - but each man is alone and yet mysteriously part of the community of Man and History and Future.

I bike this countryside each day for exercise, usually in the evening after work, around 40 kilometers. It’s light until about 11 PM this time of year in these parts, and biking through the light of a low sun, through the increasing natural fragrances from flowers and fields and forests is a soaring, almost erotic experience of bliss, set to music by thrushes, songbirds and crickets.

When I arrived in Strängnäs the second time, I had a few hours before my professional mission, so I walked around town. The mighty cathedral on top of a town hill raises its tall tower on high, and I climbed one of the narrow streets leading up to the wooded area surrounding the impressive building.

I stepped in, while mood and atmosphere changed drastically, like always when you enter the cool and shady realm of a spacious church, straight from the glaring heat of a midtown summer’s day. The hustle and bustle of the day fades away; things you considered important a few moments ago seem irrelevant, and you’re caught in the surge of millennium upon millennium, suddenly observing the process and proceedings of human life from a loftier and almost timeless vantage point.

One of thirteen cathedrals in Sweden, this is one of the best-preserved ones. Even long before Christian times, this place was a major cult center. The construction of the present cathedral started in the 13th century, and about a hundred years later, in 1335, it was finished. Of course, after that a lot has happened to the building. The great West Tower was added in the 15th century. The big chancel, raised above the level of the nave, was constructed in the midst of the 15th century. Most of the exterior is unchanged since the restorations initiated by Bishop Konrad Rogge (1425 – 1501). Recurring fires has caused damage and called for some changes. The tower got its baroque cupola after a fire in 1723, for instance.
The interior has been altered many times. The last comprehensive restoration took place 1908 – 1910, and the interior was thoroughly cleaned 1988 – 1993.

I roamed the spacious interior by myself, taking pictures along the way of details as well as larger views. Places like these make you think about your life and about the beings who are or have been closest to you, and about those who will always stay with you even if you never see them. I lit a candle for a special person I want to bring down God’s blessings on, and I also scribbled a short prayer with a pencil on a piece of paper specially designed for this purpose, and slid it into a slot. That prayer would then be silently read and thus distributed to God by intercession the coming weekend.

When I finally passed on out again, ready for more summer light, I noticed that a CD with organ music recorded in this cathedral was on sale by the door. I didn’t have money with me, and the boys minding the stand couldn’t take credit cards, so I descended on the town down a narrow street, between old wooden houses – some from the 18th century – and got some money out of the bank, where after I climbed the street back up to the cathedral again, picking up my copy of the CD that is the reason for this text!

After the interviews with applicants for a Police Authority employment at the local police station were completed, I began my drive back through the Sodermanland summer bliss, slipping the organ CD into the CD slot, turning the volume way up! As I saw the mighty cathedral on the horizon, slowly receding from view, I absorbed the music that had been recorded in that very space, on the organ inside that next-to-timeless realm. It was as if that holy space reached out and extended itself, embracing me as I drove through forests, by lakes and across the open farm fields of the evening. It was quite a spiritual experience that lifted me and carried me along. In my mind I saw that candle burning inside the cathedral for someone whom I wish the very best in this life and the lives to follow.

The organ in the Strängnäs Cathedral was built in 1971 by Fredriksborg Orgelbyggeri (Fredriksborg Organ Works) in Denmark. The organ has 60 stops; 27 of them preserved from the preceding 1860 organ built by Per Larsson Åkerman and Erik Adolf Setterquist. The organ has four manuals and pedal, and is equipped with a computer-controlled number of almost unlimited combinations.

The musicians playing the organ – one set each – are Rolf Stenholm (1937) and Torvald Johansson (1955).
Rolf Stenholm is a pupil of famous Professor Alf Linder in Stockholm and legendary Flor Peeters in Antwerp. Stenholm has been an organist in the Strängnäs Cathedral since 1966. He has arranged and performed series of organ works by César Franck, Max Reger and Olivier Messiaen, and also toured abroad.

Torvald Johansson has studied with Rolf Stenholm and Professors Olle Scherwin and Anders Bondeman. He has been an organist and choral conductor in Strängnäs since 1980. He has given concerts with organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach, and in 1990 he performed the complete organ works of César Franck.

Track 1. Nicolas Jacques Lemmens (1821 – 1881): Fanfare [3:15]

This Fanfare is a strong, rhythmic and persuasive tour-de-force utilizing a great part of the massive organ, practically blowing you away, if you use a sub for the lowest registers. Here and there, for effect, the music huddles and withdraws into more silent passages, only to hit you hedge-hammer-like with an immense power of sound – but always very orderly and harmonic; like soldiers moving across a battlefield of the 19th century.
Heard with differently tuned ears, the Fanfare might be a swaying, swaggering dance melody, voluptuous ladies involving themselves in challenging postures and movements with men stiff as pea-cocks in courtship across the floor!

Track 2. David Wikander (1884 – 1955): Variations on Den blomstertid nu kommer [6:26]

This psalm is always used for the ceremonies at the conclusion of the spring semester of Swedish schools, on the last day before the summer holidays begin, either in the local church or out in a summer’s meadow full of colors and fragrances of the season of Hope and Freedom. Therefore each and every Swede has a very special feeling for this melody, almost always with a tear glittering in the corner of the eye…

Dan Wikander served as an organist at famous Storkyrkan in the Old Town of Stockholm. In his compositions he drew on Swedish romanticism, and these variations on the well-known summer hymn demonstrates this. He does a splendid job with the melody, beginning with a run-through that adheres completely to the original setting of the tune, where after he moves into the first variation, using a dark drone for the higher pitches to dance above like golden sunrays through birch trees, in a melancholic love-affair with the Nordic summer and its erotic implications.

Later Rolf Stenholm plays so softly that you’re lost in dreams of impossible happiness in the midst of a meadow, lying flat on your back, watching the white summer clouds drift by, the wind whispering in the birches and aspens as your life keeps on slippin’, slippin’ slippin’, into the future… With about three minutes to go, a variation begins with lots of thin, circular or spiral motions of the tonal brush, registering as thoughts of insisting hopefulness on the canvas of the mind… or like a fairy sweeping up lost thoughts and shreds of dreams in church after everyone’s gone home…
More sturdy, highly persuasive events emerge, the melody echoed in various hoqueting registers, like angels calling to each other across an abyss of human despair at the realization of the brevity of each life.
Finally the deepest registers rock and shake your anatomy in overwhelming power and bliss, while higher tones wave at you like shadows cast up on the walls of the cathedral, in a repetitious, almost minimalist theater of voices from the organ pipes. Mighty!

Track 3. César Franck (1822 – 1890): Pastorale [9:09]

This César Franck aria with a scherzo middle section opens on a meditative, introspective note, yet conveying deep feelings from within yourself and from within the music. Sometimes brownish hardwood drones allow for a lighter dance of silver up above, like elves more sensed than seen, behind you on the windowsill.

A more swift dance melody lets light and hasty motions loose, while brief, dark hues move like giant paws in the background, well into the shadows. Rolf Stenholm plays this tune in the utmost beauty; withheld but bursting with sentiments and conviction. I wish this work were much, much longer. I’d love to loose myself in this music all night.

Track 4. Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992): Communion (Les oiseaux et les sources) [6:08]

Messiaen has always interested me a lot, not least his oiseaux compositions, but also piano compositions like the grand series Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus from 1944. Communion (Les oiseaux et les sources) heard here is part of Messe de la Pentecôte from 1950 – but did you know that Messiaen also composed electronic music? He did! I very much enjoy his Timbres Durées from 1952! This was very early days of electronic music. Pierre Schaeffer in Paris had begun his experiments with musique concrète in 1948, and Stockhausen, Eimert and a few others then began their work in Cologne in the early 1950s.

The meager beginning of Communion consists of just a single pipe sounding, making you aware of the ambience of the large space inside the Strängnäs Cathedral – but then medium range pipes are played, and a littler later real low registers sound. But the composition is still transparent as a view through an early morning garden, where you’re sitting on the steps of a pavilion, watching the apple trees in bloom. The playing – the score! – then talks to you in the voice of a songbird; one of those talkative songbirds, perhaps a garden warbler or a blackcap, but the Messiaen’s organ music then reaches farther, touching upon the canvas of the painter inside the pavilion, applying his filtered view of the world in thick layers of clear oil colors… and this painter’s vision and the orchard watcher’s dream and the garden warbler’s talk and the blackcap’s chatter merge into a semi-transparent block of crystal glass, vibrating in the final colored burst of concluding power from the Strängnäs Cathedral organ puffing away like the Big Bad Wolf. Masterly!


Tracks 5 – 7. Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877 – 1933)

Track 5. Gelobet seist Du, Jesu Christ op 65:2 [1:37]

Sigfrid Karg-Elert defines these three brief works (tracks 5 – 7) as chorale improvisations. Perhaps they are notated improvisations, who knows – rather than speculated results of a more compositional composition! These pieces are so short that you hardly begin to listen until it’s over… but then again, isn’t that how life is?

Gelobet seist Du, Jesu Christ is a narrowly treading, speedy affair, involving much flickering light, like sunlight through the swaying, bending reeds by one of the Sodermanland lakes that can be seen from the Cathedral of Strängnäs. The piece manifests a more powerful grandezza at the end.

Track 6. Machs mit mir, Gott op 78:13 [2:22]

The second Karg-Elert chorale improvisation - Machs mit mir, Gott – emerges from the depths, like a rising prayer from inside a troubled period of life; almost resigned. It feels good to rest solemnly in this humble organ music, which doesn’t over-power you, but lets you rest on the green, soft moss of its secret opening in the forest, which the light of day touches softly upon, like consolation of someone in pain.

Track 7. Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele op 65:1 [1:47]

The last of Karg-Elert’s three chorale improvisations here is Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele. It opens much like a Swedish summer psalm; in that same melancholy, melodic watchfulness; in that folklore fragrance of old tapestries from the District of Dalecarlia, in that tender glance out of a loved one’s eyes, that promise of love before death and all the way to death. The feeling of this careful organ progression is deep and strong, in a withheld way that makes it even more impressive in all its humility. Life is precious.

Track 8. Loius Vierne (1870 – 1937): Carillon (de Longpont) [3:47]

The last work played by Rolf Stenholm is Louis Vierne’s Carillon (de Longpont). The title is explained by the fact that the piece is based on a melody of the carillon in the royal chapel at Longpont. The organ comes on fully-fledged from the very beginning, sweeping you along like a torrent out of the skies, with nowhere to hide. Chords move like giant steps across the landscape while circular motions of great haste run about on the top floor, seeking redemption, while the music eventually turns jubilant and victorious, as the good defeats the evil and the sun shines bright on a world of men and angels.

Track 9. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750): Sonat 5: Allegro [5:02]

Torvald Johansson’s first choice is this wonderful little Bach melody, fingers moving swiftly in a jubilant dance across the manuals, golden garlands falling through the air as a pumping dark force roots the music way down in the clay below sea bottoms. This piece is played in utmost serenity and purity, for sure cleansing the listener’s mind of sonic residue.

Tracks 10 – 11: Otto Olsson (1879 – 1964): Preludium & Fugue in D Sharp minor op 56 [11:04]

Otto Olsson is one of just two Swedish composers on this disc, the other being David Wikander. Olsson is the most prolific organ composer in the Swedish organ literature. Preludium & Fugue in D Sharp minor op 56, heard here, has been called a contrapuntal masterpiece. In the ears of a layman the first impression is overwhelming force and persuasive might, like music set to the illustrations of Gustave Doré: Old Testament music, shaking the world and bringing joy to the faithful ones, while all the other lay slain, their blood making the soil of the planet wet and nutritious…
Seriously, Otto Olsson’s organ music rocks like hell! Torvald Johansson is the Jimi Hendrix of his mighty Strängnäs organ!
Rest assured, though: this Preludium & Fugue calms down into the most fragile tonal bliss, like the first ray of light in the morning playing with your perception over the sea, or the last dying light behind the mountains at night, as the air gets cool and your body dissolves into the night, in gravity and dreams…

Track 12 – 15: Tylman Susato, arr. John Iveson: (1500 ca – 1565): Four Renaissance Dances.
Tylman Susato, the probable composer of these dances, was a music publisher in Antwerp.

Track 12. La Mourisque [1:07]

This short tune is a simple, rhythmic and repetitive slogan, elating and bound to catch on, staying in your head through many a bicycle ride in Tour de France times! It rocks you with a smiling aloofness that moves the summer clouds across the sky of July!

Track 13. Bransle Quatre Bransles [1:17]

Bransle Quatre Bransles – the second Renaissance Dance by Tylman Susato – comes on in a more single-minded manner, finding its way across the score with the aid of just a choice few organ pipes that talk to you in voices of early adolescence, it seems. Beautiful, young, fresh – and modestly simple! – organ music from another day, another time, which nonetheless affects me strongly in these late days of Man.

Track 14. Ronde [1:53]

This sounds very renaissance, like was it played on crumhorn and shawm, starting with a drone with embellishing little melodies dancing lightly up above, like rays of light touching upon the ocean, and then there are only the rays left… Pretty!

Track 15: Basse Danse Bergeret [2:35]

More force is applied, but in a tenderly and softly moving melody that limps and stutters in a jagged dance trail through time and space; the melody catchy like La Mourisque before. These short melodies crave re-plays, so hear them loud on repeat: they quench your thirst in the most rewarding way!

Track 16. Louis Vierne (1870 – 1937): 6me Symphonie: Aria [8:06]

One of the longer works on this CD, Louis Vierne’s Aria from his 6th Symphony tilts mirrored geometrical planes against each other above a restful motion of oceanic waves; a swell of tones that breathe in the night – the world sighing and turning on its side while beacons of the sea and the beacons of the Cosmos – pulsars – emit messages of warning across the interstellar voids. Nowhere along the way does Vierne’s Aria trespass into wilder country. It soars above this oceanic swell, in this messenger service across the precipices: a meditation while the world looks away.

Track 17. Flor Peeters (1903 – 1986): Lied To the Sun op 66:5 [6:58]

We’ve reached the concluding piece, played by Torvald Johansson: Floor Peeters’ Lied To the Sun. It’s the finishing part of his Lied Symphony, that he composed while touring the USA in 1947.
He waves his arms wildly, motioning to someone on the next mountaintop, it seems, at the outset of this piece. It’s lively; a rotating wheel in a stream, a powerhouse of tonal expressivity caught in a repetitive pattern. The repetitive motion is heard a long time, providing the fuel on which this organ engine runs, as melodic structures are constructed across the landscape, across the score: a framework of power distribution.
Standing waves of deep murmurs rise out of the organ, giving rise and lift to sailplanes surfing the updrafts along steep mountainsides in the music.
It’s rhythmical and lyrical, powerful and playful simultaneously; a suiting conclusion for this great CD from the Strängnäs Cathedral.