Kenneth Sivertsen
Timeglaset og Morgonstjerna (Symphony no. 2)
(b. Bømlo 16. January 1961 – d. Bergen 24. December 2006)
Premiered in Oslo, 2. November 1989
By Oslo Philharmonic orchestra conducted by Kjell Seim
Original score available from the Norwegian National Library (www.mic.no)
KENNETH SIVERTSEN (1961-2006) was arguably the most staggering musical talent to emerge from Norway at the tail end of the 20th century. Born in the island of Bømlo (south of Bergen) he learned to play the guitar at a very young age, soon forming a pop band with two of his older siblings and becoming very active in the local music scene. He took composition lessons from Magnar Åm (b. 1952) for a year and guitar lessons from Arild Hansson for a short period. Other than this Sivertsen was essentially self-taught. He wrote his first symphony at the age of twenty. At twenty five he was the youngest Norwegian to be accepted into the Norwegian Composers’ Union. His work For Ope Hav was chosen to represent Norway in the 1986 edition of Nordic Music Days in Iceland.
Sivertsen was equally active as a composer and performer. He was a world class guitarist and an able singer and pianist. Being of a restless and inquisitive nature he worked and excelled in many different musical genres: contemporary classical music, popular song, jazz and rock. He wrote two symphonies, numerous chamber works, many songs, an oratorio, a trumpet concerto, ballet music and a Requiem, besides countless arrangements. The recordings he left behind attest to his baffling versatility. These include several CDs of songs in popular style, an album of guitar compositions, ballet music, religious songs, chamber music and three acclaimed jazz albums in which he played with some of the world’s finest jazz musicians at the time.
Kenneth Sivertsen became a very public figure in Norway, particularly from the early 1990s. Besides his musical ability, he possessed an uncanny comical talent. The latter was exploited relentlessly by the media and made him a darling of the entertainment circuit in Norway for many years. The chaos of life of the road eventually took its toll on Sivertsen’s health. After several years of intermittent illness he died on Christmas Eve 2006.
Sivertsen’s music defies categorization. Surprising and unpredictable as life itself, it often changes atmosphere and style radically, even within the same composition. Sivertsen was a master at creating moods that draw the listener close to the music. He wrote some of the most beautiful and gripping music ever to come from a Norwegian composer.
Having had his first symphony Håp (mph 4171) premiered in Oslo in November 1984 (when the composer was only 23 years old), Sivertsen began working on his second symphony that year. He completed the work in the autumn of 1986. An incident lent the work on the symphony a special incentive. In 1985 Sivertsen's oldest nephew Espen Olsen (12 years old at the time) was severely injured in a cycling accident. The young boy spent two and a half months in a coma. With a fractured neck and severe concussion that resulted in brain damage, the boy recovered against all odds. During a very long period of convalescence, in which Espen had to relearn how to speak and walk, his uncle was a frequent companion, spending many hours by his hospital bed and later visiting him at home. He even took the wheelchair-bound boy on a trip to Rhodes when he was well enough to move around. In her Kenneth Sivertsen biography "Kenneth - historia om Kenneth Sivertsen" (Samlaget 2013) Katrine Sele recounts Espen's memories of the time many years later, when Sivertsen was already dead:
'We laughed a lot. We listened to music together. Kenneth helped me a lot, and still
does'
When Espen feels down some days, he rewinds his answering machine and listens to
and old message from Kenneth, which he has kept in his telephone: 'Hi Espen, uncle
Kenneth here. I was tidying and washing in my house when that nice photograph of
the two of us caught my eye. And it hit me when I saw the picture - and I'm completely
sober - and here it comes: You are my big hero. For me you are greater than Johann
Sebastian Bach, Beatles, Mozart, the lot of them! Good night, my hero'
(op. cit. page 69 - translation: Ricardo Odriozola)
Sivertsen dedicated his second symphony to his nephew, who attended the premiere in Oslo in November 1989.
Timeglaset og morgonstjerna (The hourglass and the morning star) follows in the same vein as his first symphony. The main difference is that Timeglaset... is divided in two movements (Håp is a single-movement work). The human voice is absent from the later work, as is the guitar (Sivertsen's primary instrument), both of which had been prominent in the first symphony. Although Timeglaset... contains many sequences of characteristically poignant intimacy, its outward appearance is somewhat more exuberant than that of its predecessor. The large instrumentation includes piano, harp and a vast array of percussion as well as an electronic tape, which mostly produces spooky whistling sounds at crucial spots in the work; and, of course, full woodwind and brass sections as well as strings.
After a short introductory phrase in the strings we hear the tape and woodblocks wrapped in sandpaper being rubbed together (m. 11). The sound grows gradually into a fearsome cacophony, whereupon a string canto (which will return in the second movement) is introduced (m. 72). When calm seems to have been achieved, a piercing motif appears on the xylophone (m. 91), unleashing another anxious episode. As if trying to fend off this unwelcome apprehension the music turns into dance. It is not a joyful dance, however, but more akin to a danse macabre in folk apparel. It falls to the celesta to eerily introduce this new aspect of the work (m. 123). What at first seems to suggest the possibility of some physical relief soon turns into a quagmire of repeated restless ostinati held in check by an insistent and ominous line in the low winds, brass and strings. This suddenly drops out of the texture, leaving the rest of the orchestra exposed with its nervous repetitions (mm. 167-179). The bass register ostinato returns and continues until m. 200, when the dance melody makes a comeback, finally establishing its preeminence in a pompous, self-conscious manner. A short chordal episode (mm. 217-224) serves to gather strength before the symphony's fist movement heads towards an almost traditional, even joyful ending with a repeated D. An ending that would not have been out of place in a Nielsen or Sibelius symphony. Unexpectedly, however, the last percussive sound is followed by a pane of glass being smashed (in full view of the audience in performance). The score has three empty measures at the end of the movement. These signalize stunned silence and the feeling that, somehow, nothing can be the same after such a startling event.
The second movement begins with a poignant lament on the strings. A disturbing element appears, eventually, in the form of metal chains being dragged across the floor in the back of the orchestra. This disconcerting sound will reappear several times throughout the movement, which has a generally ominous and threatening atmosphere. In measure 74 we again hear the string song that had appeared in m. 72 of the first movement. In one powerful section, precipitous falling figures are followed by slow rising lines carried by the entire orchestra, resembling a Sisyphus-like struggle (mm. 99-110). This is followed by a haunting episode involving the harp, vibraphone, light percussion and solo violin (mm.115-122). After more song and further struggles the music lands squarely on a D, as it had done at the end of the first movement (m.166). The old xylophone piercing motif reappears (m. 166), unleashing a percussive racket. When this recedes, a second glass pane is smashed (m. 189). Then, out of nowhere the most beautiful chorale appears (m. 195). After the heavy struggle the symphony has staged up to that point, one does not expect this to happen. It acts as a benediction, a recompense for all the trials and tribulations suffered beforehand. After the second restatement of the chorale, the chains reappear (m. 231), as if Death is rearing its ugly head in the midst of perfect bliss. This intervention is, thankfully, short-lived and the symphony concludes in profound calm.
Although this work is too short (just over half an hour) to be Mahlerian in scope, it nonetheless shares a lot of the spiritual probing and grandeur found in Mahler’s symphonies. It does, of course, not sound like Mahler in any way, but there is the connection between the two broken glass panes in Sivertsen’s second and the three hammer blow’s (turned, out of superstition, into two by the composer) in Mahler’s sixth symphony. Also the end of Timeglaset og morgonstjerna seems to take a surreptitious look into the end of Mahler’s ninth symphony. Although it cannot approach the utter fathomless depth of that final page in Mahler’s Ninth (Sivertsen was, after all, much farther away from death than Mahler when he wrote the symphony) the spiritual stillness at the end of Sivertsen’s symphony is genuine and, thus, deeply affecting.
About this edition
Enharmonic respellings have been undertaken in several passages, in order to make them correspond to easily readable diatonic patterns. As no pitch has been changed, we do not consider it necessary to list all these changes.
Pedaling changes are indicated in the harp part throughout the work.
Sivertsen’s characteristic phrasing legato slurs with no apparent beginning or end have been kept in this edition. Having said that, they are less frequent in this work than is generally the case with Sivertsen.
Some of the frequent, very long cresc. and dim. hairpins have been substituted by cresc. or dim. which are added to all the relevant parts, instead of only appearing below each instrument group, as in the manuscript.
1st movement
- Measure 82, cello: arco instead of ordinare
- m. 117, trumpets: senza sordino added (based on the recording of the first performance)
- From m. 123 to the end of the movement all figures have been beamed together in order to clearly show the beat structure of the measures. For some reason Sivertsen chose to notate most of these figures with loose beams for each 8th-note beat of the bar, rather than gathering them in dotted quarter-note beats.
- m. 138, xylophone: f dynamic added
- m. 147, bass clarinet: the first two 16th notes of that figure, when it appears on wind and string instruments, are sometimes slurred, sometimes not. The edition has kept the original notation, well aware of its inconsistency.
- m. 166, cello: last 16th note removed in order to facilitate the change to arco.
- mm. 166-160, gran cassa: Sivertsen erroneously uses the measure repeat sign from m. 166, where the meter changes to 6/8 after many bars of 9/8. In this edition this has been corrected by continuing the gran cassa rhythmic pattern until the end of m. 170.
- m. 188, woodwinds: ff added in parentheses to all instruments of this family.
- m. 225, flutes, oboes, clarinets: f dynamicadded.
- mm. 209-211, harp: the chromatic passage was unplayable as written by Sivertsen. These three measures have, therefore been changed, including only the pitches that can be played by the harp at the given tempo. Otherwise, both the piano and the xylophone play all the pitches of the chromatic figure.
2nd movement
- m. 13, bass: quarter note rest added at the end of the measure.
- m. 20, viola: dynamic at the end of the measure changed to p (originally mp, which does not make sense, since there is a hairpin cresc. to mp in m. 22 – plus, the moving voice, vln. 1, is below the viola, and goes to mp in m. 23)
- m. 105, trumpet 2: the manuscript has the instruction “piccolo tromba ottava basso” (sic.). As there is no evidence of an octave distance between the trumpet lines in the performance, this indication has been disregarded.
- m. 111, viola: sharp added to the beginning of the glissando.
- m. 114, harp: first rest on right hand changed to half note (originally quarter note)
- m. 115, vibraphone: cautionary natural added to third 16th note. Harp: cautionary natural added to first note of right hand second beat.
- m. 119: in the score the rising violin line is notated on the second violin staff. The recording of the premiere performance makes it clear that it is a violin solo. This has been given to the first violin. Also, both the violin and vibraphone have D natural as the last note of the measure. In the performance this is, unequivocally, a D flat. This has been corrected in the edition. In the same measure the last triplet of the harp has been given to the piano, in order not to unnecessarily complicate the harpist’s change of pedals.
- m. 120, flutes: p dynamic added (missing on the manuscript)
- m. 143, violin 1: sul ponticello moved to this measure (in the previous measure in the manuscript). It seems more logical to logical to change to sul pont. when the long note turns into tremolo (as with the cello two measures earlier).
Regarding the percussion part
In consultation with Peter Kates, percussionist with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the following changes have been made to the percussion part.
The crotales are notated in their usual range between middle C and C two octaves above (as opposed to Sivertsen’s notation of the actual pitches being heard)
Likewise, the tubular bells (campane) are notated in treble clef (as opposed to Sivertsen’s bass clef notation)
The instruction “break a pane of glass” found at the end of the first movement and in the latter half of the second, is to be realized by the players in the most practical and safe available manner. The desired sound is meant to be startling and unsettling.
FIRST MOVEMENT
Measure 11: ‘Sandpaper’ instead of Sivertsen’s instruction “sandpaper wrapped around woodblocks, rubbed together”
m. 24: “resonance” tie after woodblock removed here and in all similar places
mm. 33-42: both crotales played by one person (each pitch was assigned to one player in the manuscript)
m. 50 : “with soft mallets” added to bongos part.
m. 97, woodblock: a single 16th note, rather than a 16th tied to a quarter
m. 124; cymbal: “with sticks” added (assuming a crisp, clear articulation)
m. 146 (and all subsequent similar places): the rhythmic notation dotted 8th-8th-16th note rest has been substituted by two dotted 8ths with a dim. hairpin (sempre simile).
mm. 175-177: the woodblock is notated in 6/8 rather than in ¾ as in the manuscript.
m. 227: small bongo (not specified by Sivertsen)
m. 228: small tomtom (not specified by Sivertsen)
m. 241: small bongo (not specified by Sivertsen)
SECOND MOVEMENT
m. 64: small bongo (not specified by Sivertsen)
m. 142: “soft mallets” added to woodblock
Ricardo Odriozola, April 28th 2021