This text is from the book «Stemmer i samtidsmusikken – samtaler med norske komponister», which means «Voices in contemporary music – conversations with Norwegian composers». The book is written by Bodil Maroni Jensen, and this chapter is translated by Lyndon Riley. Photo: Bodil Maroni Jensen

Kristine Tjøgersen

Born 1982

Rehearsals for Pelagic Dreamscape with WDR Symphony Orchestra,
conducted by Sylvain Cambreling

Grosser Sendesaal WDR Funkhaus
Cologne, May 19th 2023

We’ll have to whisper, Kristine. You’ve just been down to talk to the harpist. What does she need to know?

She needs to know how to use these special techniques and how the instrument has to be prepared. Now that I’ve heard the harp in relation to the orchestra, we needed more volume, so we tested how she could use one of these techniques on another part of the instrument, to get the right sound level. She was very helpful.

What do you use to prepare the harp?

Bubble wrap and videotape on the deepest string. The tape is wound around the string in a way that makes a wind noise when she plays it.

Videotape?

Yes, VHS videotape.

Oh, old-fashioned videotape.

It’s fastened at the top and wound around the C string, the deepest string. And there’s also a bit of string damping. And she plays with a plectrum, and chopsticks and other things.

She plays with chopsticks on the strings?

On the tuning pins.

Plastic chopsticks or wood?

Wood. The material is important, it makes all the difference.

But when the harp has been prepared, is it prepared for the whole piece, or do adjustments need to be made during the performance?

She makes one adjustment, but I’ve made sure she has enough time to do it, so that it’s not stressful.

Hotel Mondial am Dom
Cologne, May 19th 2023

We’ve come straight from rehearsal and a full run-through of Pelagic Dreamscape with the conductor, Sylvain Cambreling. What are your impressions?

It’s exciting, but he has chosen some slightly different tempos. Lars timed it.

Lars Skoglund, your husband.

It lasted twenty-one and a half minutes, and I thought it would last for seventeen.

That’s a big difference. What effect does that have on the music?

I think it maybe lacked some energy and drive and heat. I had in mind at least two or three parts that are more, well, Rite-of-Spring-ish.

It was far from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

I had envisioned lots of noise like there is in the ocean from drilling and seismic surveys, but it sounded quite pleasant. My intention was for it to be quite unsettling and with an extreme rhythmical drive. The tempo also meant that the dynamics weren’t quite what I had in mind.

Did you talk to the conductor about it?

We had a meeting after rehearsal, and I said that certain parts needed a faster tempo. But it seems he has decided on another interpretation of the piece. So, while I want more drive in several of the parts, he wants to bring out all the details, and his opinion is that he needs a slower tempo in order to hear them.

Do you think a conductor can choose a tempo that’s so very different to the one specified by the composer?

In the end, it’s his decision, and I don’t want to be the kind of person who lays down the law. He’s convinced that my tempos are too fast. It’s an interesting situation. Music is a living art form.

But it’s surely a good thing that he’s so interested in the details? He’s doing the score justice in that sense?

When I think about it, it’s kind of cool that he’s so determined to do his own interpretation.

What else do you think about today’s performance?

I think there were lots of parts that sounded very good, but the tempo has a lot to do with the character of the piece. I spend a lot of time working out the tempos. It’s all to do with the drive, the inner pulse, and if things are played more slowly, it’s not the same as I’ve envisioned it.

It’s an entertaining score, Kristine. One distinctive thing, from the first bar, is that there are small drawings of birds, and later on, fish. And around halfway, there’s a diver underwater, and then a picture of two orcas hunting herring. How did the conductor react to your drawings?

I think he found them distracting. To him, this is simply music, and I don’t think he needs to know how it was composed. He doesn’t need pictures or explanations. I’ve transcribed the sound of orcas eating herring. It’s a pretty extreme sound and a kind of crazy tempo. I think if he’d understood where the material came from, the result would have been closer to what I had in mind. But I think what’s important for him is the notation. The notes on the page. It’s a bit like the old division between absolute music and programme music, where absolute music was seen as more worthy than programme music. So maybe he thinks that the music doesn’t need a programme. That it’s the score that counts. But that’s something I want to get away from, because I don’t think we’re isolated from the world. We’re surrounded by so much more than ourselves. And if I can illustrate this through an orchestra, in a concert hall, for an attentive audience? I can show them a sound world they don’t normally get to hear. They can experience it, and maybe they’ll do some reading on the subject and think, wow, I didn’t know it sounded like that. This is a whole world we don’t know anything about. And imagine if it disappears?

How have you gained access to these sound worlds?

Through contact with researchers, and by doing my own research on the sounds. For example, I’ve met biologists from the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen. They’ve made recordings in the sea that I’ve been able to use.

And you’ve transcribed these sounds? Translated them into sounds for musicians?

Both the sounds and the rhythms. I transcribe whole rhythmical cycles. I love rhythm. When I sit and listen to the recordings, I can feel where the centre of gravity is. I sit and sing along with the recordings and feel the right way to write them down. And it leads to some very varied time signatures.

Yes, there are long rows of ten, fifteen, twenty notes going over the bar lines, that presumably slide backwards and forwards a bit?

The notes you’re pointing at are the guillemot, which you can also see pictured.

Why have you inserted these pictures in the score?

I’ve done it in several scores. In the score for the piano concerto, I really just did it for fun. I put some birds in, and I found that, with the birds, the musicians understood exactly how they were supposed to play. They played musically instead of mechanically. It was like that with the squirrel sounds in Between Trees, too. Instead of explaining the score with a lot of text, I put in a picture of a squirrel, with the words Like a squirrel eating. The results were great.

How was this piece, Pelagic Dreamscapes, put together?

When I made it, I started with recordings of a sound landscape. I laid several of these recordings on top of each other, creating my own landscape, in a way. Then I inserted more birds, and fish, and mammals. And then I improvised some things on top of that, too. I’ve edited the recording here and there, so I’m also manipulating nature, making it the way I want it to be. In order to create a musical form.

To what extent are you trying to exactly reproduce the sounds you find in the real world?

The sounds are quite similar to the originals – like the noise the guillemot’s wings make, tshhtshhtshh. I work with the musicians and we listen to the recordings, and I ask them to play something that sounds exactly the same. Then we sit and listen, and check which notes are best to use, which positions, what distance from the mouthpiece. I really investigate all the techniques, asking questions and interviewing instrumentalists, to get it as close as possible. All the sounds I transcribe from nature are recreated together with the musicians.

Why do you go to so much trouble transcribing all these sounds when you could use the actual recording in the music?

Because this way, I have to find sounds on the instrument that I never would have discovered otherwise. That’s kind of the most fun part, I think, that research stage where I try to find the sound on the instrument. I think instruments have so much to offer. I have to dig and find out what’s on the inside, turn them inside out. And I like the energy that comes from people playing. From musicians. They’re sitting there, working. It’s alive. I think electronics can feel so dead. This also makes it my music. That’s the way I see it.

Powerful, low-frequency sound waves and hammering air cannons are masking the natural habitats, leaving them silent, unable to communicate and hear each other; muting the sounds of the marine life.

That’sfromthe programme notes you wrote for Pelagic Dreamscape, where you say that human-made sounds can disguise and disrupt communication between living creatures in the sea. I’m sure the same is true in the air, that our noises can disturb birds. Are you trying to get a message across in your music?

Yes, absolutely. David Attenborough has been my biggest hero since I was a kid. I’d love to have had him as a grandfather. I’ve watched his programmes ever since I was in primary school. He shows you how fantastic the world is, and he loves talking about what he sees. But at the end he says: This is what might happen if we continue down this path. All of this could disappear. He’s been a big inspiration. Music is my way of shedding light on a part of all these fantastic things that we don’t know about. There aren’t many people who’ve experienced hearing orcas under water, or seen fireflies flashing.

Which is what your orchestra piece Bioluminescence is about?

Fireflies are disappearing. Light pollution means they can’t flash at each other. They can’t find each other, because it doesn’t get dark enough. And in the ocean, there’s so much noise that fish and mammals can’t locate each other or communicate. They travel immense distances, like migratory birds, and they communicate by sound. Not many people are aware of this. And sound travels a lot farther in water than it does in the air. When exploring for oil, we use seismic shooting, which is an extreme noise that can be heard over incredible distances. Seismic shooting can make fish lose their hearing, and it can damage their livers and swim bladders. This means they can’t navigate, they can’t find a partner. After seismic surveys, or military exercises where they send sonar signals from submarines, we find lots of beached whales, because the whales have been scared to death. There’s a lot of man-made noise in the ocean.

These are big themes. How did you learn about all this?

Some, I knew already, but I read and I spend a lot of time on research. So I can suddenly discover, for example, that, wow, there aren’t many kittiwakes left. They’re disappearing from Røst. Whole colonies have gone. So it’s serious. Things can disappear, and most of us are totally unaware.

Can you use music to raise awareness about this?

Yes, that’s the way I can give these creatures a voice. I can transcribe their voices so that they ring out in a concert hall. I also have a piece with fish sounds from the Great Barrier Reef, Seafloor Dawn Chorus. The coral reefs are falling completely silent. They should be full of sound, from the fish, because fish sing in the evening and in the morning. Just like songbirds, they sing together in chorus. So I transcribed several of the fish.

Where did you get hold of the recordings?

From research sites online. I just googled. That piece has been played quite a few times now, and when I’ve been there at the concerts – and the musicians in Ensemble Recherche, who I wrote the piece for, they say this too – people come up afterwards and say, wow, I had no idea that fish make sounds. We don’t think of fish as having the same kind of existence as other animals. We don’t consider that fish have feelings or that they can think, but it’s now known that fish have much greater consciousness than we thought. And that they communicate, like birds. We know so little. Oceanic sound is a very new area of research.

Does all the material in your music come from these sound worlds, in the ocean and in the air?

No, when I started to write, that’s not what it was about. I started with videos, with what they call shreds.

What’s that?

It’s when you remove the audio on a video and replace it with something else. I tended to use dance videos and rock videos, and dub contemporary classical music onto them. It was really an attempt to put new music in a different context. It was fun to just play with sound and turn things upside down.

I’ve seen some of those. I didn’t know they were called shreds. It’s really funny when movements are synchronised with unexpected sounds. There was actually a similar effect in the piece we just heard. Towards the end of Pelagic Dreamscape there’s a bit that’s reminiscent of classical harmony, and some lovely melodies. It comes as a surprise, emerging out of these more concrete sounds – suddenly this more traditional beauty comes in. Why did you put that in there?

I try not to deny myself anything. I like beautiful music too. I also like music that’s a bit more ‘pop’. I struggle a bit with the traditional ‘contemporary classical’ sound. It’s not quite me.

You don’t like it?

It doesn’t come naturally. I can’t write that kind of music. It’s not the music that’s in my head.

I have to say that anyone reading this conversation might now think you write much more traditionally than you do. Because that’s not the case. There’s a lot that’s unusual in your work.

It’s strange, because I don’t think of it as being unusual. But people tell me it is. I don’t see it that way.

There was a period not that long ago in music history when there were certain things composers weren’t at liberty to do musically. In light of that background, how free are you? Can you do whatever you like?

Yes, I think so actually. Some of what I’ve done, if you saw or heard it in isolation, could even be heard as sentimental sounding.

Does it worry you that it could be heard that way?

No, why shouldn’t it be permitted to make that kind of music too? I like it. I like melody. I miss hearing melody in contemporary music, because I love playing melodies on my instrument. It’s a bit tiresome when everything is like, de-do-de-do-de-do. You never get to play a phrase. So I think that comes from my being a musician, and being tired of never having a single phrase to play.

So why don’t you use more melody then? You could just go crazy with it.

I think a lot of the material I use, even the noise elements, become melodic material and are satisfying to play, because you get to breathe. There’s something about the physicality of the techniques that means you get to empty your lungs. I feel like I’ve played a lot of new music where I never get to breathe out fully.

‘Breathe when needed’crops up often in the score of Pelagic Dreamscape. That made me smile. It’s as if you’re giving the musicians permission to breathe.

Yes, I try to sing and play through each part and check whether it’s playable, whether it feels natural for the performer. I want it to feel good to play, physically.

There’s something towards the end of Pelagic Dreamscap that I hear as a polyphonic song for instruments. But I know you’ve included sounds from a coral reef in the piece, so maybe the word ‘coral’ made me think of it as a chorale?

When I worked on Seafloor Dawn Chorus, with recordings from theGreat Barrier Reef, I found out that one of the world’s largest coral reefs, a cold water coral reef, is actually in Norway. It’s called the Røst reef – it was discovered in 2002. These reefs are like Norway’s underwater rainforests, and some of them are several hundred metres high. There’s an enormous one in the Trondheim fjord too. Most of them are badly damaged and on their way to total destruction due to bottom trawling. I tried to track down anyone doing work on cold water coral reefs in Norway, and sent emails here and there asking if there’s any sound in a cold water reef, or what kind of sound, and whether anyone had any recordings. Some researchers answered, but I got the impression they didn’t know much about the sound, maybe partly because these reefs are in far deeper water than the Great Barrier Reef, three or four hundred metres down.

Did you get hold of any recordings?

No.

So you’ve used your imagination here, in Pelagic Dreamscape?

There’s that little chorale at the end there – maybe it’s a cold water chorale?

Where did you get hold of the recording of fish for this piece?

A researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Karen de Jong, had done a lot of trials, but not so much in the ocean, more in aquariums, of tiny fish. She referred me to another researcher, Lise Doksæter Sivle, and through her I got recordings of cod, haddock and cusk. And the cusk was really cool, that sound. I did a workshop with Sverre Riise from KORK, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Marie Solum Gran, the horn player in the NyNorsk Brass Quintet, and we found the cusk sound on the trombone and the French horn.

You weren’t totally satisfied with the cusk sound here in Cologne, you said?

Well, I haven’t met the musicians and talked to them, and I didn’t have time to grab them straight after, as I tend to do.

But when you make things so hard for yourself, with new techniques and different sounds than the musicians are used to – they’re supposed to actually imitate a cusk – it’s almost to be expected that it won’t be perfect straight away?

Maybe. Like the bit with the fish, where I’ve written these small boxes where the musicians have to improvise.

What do you mean by boxes?

It’s a notated section with the sound the fish make. And the musicians are supposed to improvise on it for a certain amount of time.

Why improvisation?

I like it. I remember one of the first times I played in an orchestra, during the Ultima contemporary music festival in Oslo when I was at the Norwegian Academy of Music. We played Lutoslawski’s Chain, and there were these boxes. I just loved it when I got to the box – I could do whatever I wanted with the material. I went crazy in that box, because it was such fun. The conductor said to me, ‘Very good third clarinet’. It was the only positive thing he said to anybody the whole week. I don’t know if that’s why I like boxes.

As we walked past Broadcasting House yesterday, you said that that was where it all started. Where what started?

That was where I played my first concert with the asamisimasa ensemble. It was a tryout, and they were probably putting me through my paces. It was a big deal for me to play with these fantastic people.

Asamisimasa, that’s one of the top contemporary music ensembles in Europe. When was this?

In 2013.

You hadn’t played with them at home?

No, the first concert was here. And the strange thing is that Carola Bauckholt was there. She lived in Cologne then. She was backstage after the concert, and she came over to me. I was a real fan of hers. She’s one of my favourite composers. She was very complimentary, and I was taken aback, totally starstruck. If anyone had told me then that in ten years my third orchestral work would be performed here, a premiere… I could never have imagined it.

Had you at that time thought about becoming a composer?

Not at all.

Because you were a clarinet player then.

Yes, I completed my Master’s in clarinet at the Norwegian Academy in Oslo in 2010. After that I took a break from playing. I had been working so much. I worked in the Armed Forces band during the day, I was studying for my Master’s at the academy, and I often worked at the opera at night, plus I was playing contemporary music. I worked round the clock. I loved playing, so it came as a surprise, really – suddenly I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t play. Couldn’t leave the house.

That must have been a shock. You think you can work non-stop, and you’re full of energy. And then you just hit a dead end, and you don’t know why.

Since I didn’t know what to do, because I couldn’t play the clarinet, I started making bits of music. I didn’t think of it as composing. It was just something to fill the time.

Did you write things down?

No, I started filming, and then I wrote text scores, with do this, do this and follow the film.

What did you film?

Soap bubbles being blown up again and again, for example. And when I took the bus or sat in a car, I filmed going through tunnels, all the different lights I saw. Some low down, from small cars. And then suddenly a truck, and then light from the ceiling. And a lit-up traffic sign. Lots of different colours and different lights. I heard them as music. And then I edited it in film software. The final film was shown at a festival in Copenhagen. And then I rewrote it as a piece for Ensemble neoN, Travelling Light.

And that was your first piece?

It was the first piece I notated properly on paper.

When was this?

2015.

That’s not very long ago.

Anne Hilde Neset’s help was crucial.

She was artistic director at nyMusikk (New Music) back then, now director at Henie Onstad Art Centre.

Yes, she helped raise my profile. I had only written Travelling Light and a duo, GLAM. But she asked if we could meet, and then she asked if I wanted to write for the Arditti quartet.

Write for the world’s best-known contemporary string quartet?

At that time I didn’t even think of myself as a composer. That was my first commission. I owe Anne Hilde Neset a huge debt of gratitude for saying, ‘I want a piece from you’. It was to be the opening piece at the Only Connect festival in 2017. So I thought, why not? I just have to go for it. Do it as well as possible.

It was a brave project in many ways, because it’s a very unusual piece.

I used a film of Hermeto Pascual, the Brazilian composer and multi instrumentalist.

I’ve seen it. A man lying down, slapping his bare torso and face and head as if they were percussion instruments. And you replace the original sound from the video with the Arditti Quartet, who play along with it. Mistérios do Corpo. Is it fully notated?

It’s a detailed score and actually very virtuosic music.

How do you explain that you already then had enough knowledge to be a composer and write a work like that?

I think my composition training came through playing. I’ve played an awful lot of music, classical and marching band and improv, and loads of contemporary music. I’ve worked closely with a lot of composers, at home and abroad, and played lots and lots of premieres. That gives you a real insight into how a composer thinks.

Let’s go back to your time at the music academy in Oslo, where you studied clarinet, but at the same time learnt to compose. How long were you there?

It took me, I guess, seven years to complete my Master’s in clarinet. I wanted to play contemporary music. That was actually why I started studying clarinet. But a lot of people at the academy think that you have to get a job in classical music, in an orchestra, or you’re finished. That there’s no future for you. There are no freelance musicians who teach classical instruments, so you never find out that being freelance is an option, that it’s viable. I’ve heard about lots of people who’ve graduated from the academy who are terrified if they haven’t found a job in an orchestra. They think it’s all over.

But you were freelance and played contemporary music in various ensembles the whole time you were studying?

I helped start Ensemble neoN. I was doing my Bachelor then. Then we started Tæyen Fil and Klafferi, plus I was working a lot with Oslo Sinfonietta, almost full-time for several years. And I played a bit with Ensemble Ernst and Ensemble Mimitabu in Gothenburg.

Is it possible to make a living playing freelance with contemporary music ensembles?

You don’t make a great deal, but I kind of thought, well, I’ll cut out all the freelance work I don’t want, and live on porridge and play new music on the clarinet. It just about worked out.

And then, after a while, you started studying composition. How did that come about?

The year after the concert here in Cologne, in 2014, I played Carola Bauckholt’s Klarinettentrio, for clarinet, piano and cello, with asamisimasa. There were lots of extended techniques. A lot of clarinetists struggle with that kind of thing, but I like it. The sounds were so good. I felt a musical connection. It was strange, because when I came to the rehearsal and played, she came up to me afterwards and asked, are you a composer? Do you write? At that point I’d only written Travelling Light and done this piece, GLAM, a duo for cello and violin with video, for these fantastic musicians, Tanja Orning and Karin Hellqvist. And I was doing a one-year continuing course in composition at the academy.

Meaning you’d already begun to direct your focus towards something else?

Yes, but she didn’t know that. After I showed Carola my pieces, she said, you have to come and study with me. But I was so nervous about the aural exam. I can’t hear anything on those kinds of tests.

Yes of course, there would have been an audition for the university in Linz, where she teaches?

And I didn’t have much money, so I said that I didn’t want to pay to travel down there just to fail an aural exam.

With your great ears, and your interest in sounds, what is it about ear training that makes you so anxious?

When I applied to the academy, I’d been through music high school in Grimstad. I hadn’t even heard of some of the things that I was supposed to know, so when it came to the aural exam, I failed. They let me try one more time, and I failed again. After that, I lost all confidence. I was so crushed. I was the only one who passed on clarinet that year, but I didn’t get in because I failed the aural exam. But I was offered a place at the Barrett Due Music Institute in Oslo and at the Grieg Academy in Bergen.

So you started at Barrett Due?

I did one year there. Then Hans Christian Bræin called me.

The clarinetist, and professor at the academy.

And he said, you’ll get in next year. You have to study with me. So Jon Øivind Ness, the composer, helped me to practise my ear training. We practised a lot together. And the year after, yes, bang, I got in.

And so you did your Master’s in clarinet in 2010, as you said. But when did you start thinking of yourself as a composer?

When I began getting serious about becoming a composer, when I could say it, was when I started studying composition with Carola Bauckholt. That was in 2016. I travelled back and forth for two years. I was there for a few weeks at a time. I didn’t have a student loan, so I earned money by playing in asamisimasa and Ensemble neoN, and by teaching. I’ve had students through all these years. School marching band clarinetists. But I was always short of money. I did my Master’s in composition at the Bruckner university in Linz in 2018.

How did it feel to start something new, with no safety net?

I didn’t think about it. I just had to do it. And it meant a lot that Carola had such faith in me. She tells me all the time that I should cut down on my playing. She says, you have to spend time composing. You need time to think. It’s been great to have someone who can help me say no. Like leaving asamisimasa, that was hard. Especially as they’re very good friends. But Carola said, you have to go for it now. I didn’t leave the ensemble because of her, but it was good to have her opinion. I trust her judgement. My husband has also been very supportive, with everything. I don’t think it would be much fun to be here on my own or travel around alone. But we do it together. It’s not something I do by myself, I don’t feel alone in the world. That’s nice.

He’s a composer too. Do you discuss ideas with him? Do you get feedback on what you’re doing?

Now and then I ask for advice. The music we write is pretty different, we think differently, so it’s incredibly helpful to discuss things with Lars. He actually just encourages me all the way.

You’ve written music for various types of ensemble in the course of these few years, and you’ve especially made your mark with orchestral works. Why are you attracted to this traditional instrumental format?

The orchestra is fascinating. I didn’t grow up with it. I don’t come from a family who listened to classical music. I only heard it on the radio, and I thought it was fun to watch the musicians on TV. All those people, all those instruments. The first time I heard an orchestra live was when I was sixteen. That was the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra. It was crazy. I felt like I was high. They played Dvorak’s ninth symphony in Grimstad. I’d never heard anything like it. And I thought, ah, I want to play in an orchestra. And the first time I played in an orchestra was at the academy. It was Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 2. That was a huge experience. I loved it. I remember leaving rehearsal and being totally out of it. I had this little purse with me, and suddenly, walking along feeling all fired up, I swung the purse right off its strap and it ended up in a tree, all because I was so incredibly happy about playing Brahms’ piano concerto. I thought it was so amazing to sit in the orchestra, to be a part of this huge organism. I thought it was really cool to play at the opera too. Strauss’ Elektra is maybe the greatest musical experience I’ve had. Playing it. I wish I could play it a thousand times.

I thought it was contemporary music that was most important for you?

That was the reason I started studying clarinet, because I thought new music was so cool. But I’m very grateful that I was able to play so much in orchestras. It means that I know what it’s like to sit there and play. How things work internally. But I want orchestral musicians to want to play new music, because there’s been so much resistance. There’s very little new music in Norwegian orchestras, after all. I’ve just seen the programme for the Philharmonic. I think there was one female composer in the whole season.

Yes, so not so many female composers either?

It’s messed up. Sorry, but it’s just all wrong. They should have new music at every concert. Tragic. I think the most fun thing is to hear an orchestra play new music. It enhances the old repertoire too, it puts it in a new light. In Germany and Austria, they present contemporary music much more often. There’s an incredible amount of good music out there, so there’s no excuse. So I feel a responsibility. I want the musicians to want to perform new music. That’s one thing that motivates me when I write, that there has to be something fun in each part, so that the musicians feel that there’s a reason why they’re sitting there playing what they’re playing.

Do you think about the audience when you write?

Absolutely. I think about how they’re going to experience the music. I don’t want the audience to feel stupid, I want the music to be accessible. I want people who don’t have any background in contemporary music to get something out of it when they come to a concert. It’s probably to do with the fact that I come from a family that’s not so immersed in modern art. If my family come to a concert, I want them to feel welcome, that they can get something out of it as well. I feel I have a responsibility to help the audience find a way into the work, maybe by telling them about it. Trying to guide them a bit.

Do you want to be understood?

I don’t want to be understood myself, but I want to give people an experience. The audience doesn’t need to understand me. They can understand the piece, in their own way. They’re supposed to get something out of it. Music is a gift, in a way.

In what way?

I remember something from a school concert, at primary school, with an African musician. He played the kora, a big stringed instrument. It was amazing. But there was a lot of disturbance from the pupils, and he turned strict and said:

Shh, you have to be quiet and listen. I’m giving you a gift, and you have to receive it.

I think that made a lasting impression. When you make music, you’re giving a gift to whoever’s listening. And I think you have to make it worth their while to sit there. A bit of a noble sentiment, maybe. But it’s something to aim for.

Many composers would say that they express themselves through their music. What are your thoughts about that?

I think I forget myself when I write. That’s what’s lovely about it. If I start thinking too much about myself, it’s no fun. That’s what it means to be in the music. So sometimes I think, where does it come from? It’s a mystery.

Where do you think it comes from?

No idea. It’s all a mystery. No, I don’t know.

Do you have any religious ideas about where the music comes from?

I don’t know about that, but maybe it’s something spiritual? I try to see what’s coming to me. Because it does come to me, in a way. I feel that ideas are everywhere. If you just open yourself up, there’s so much that’s interesting around you. So I guess I’m quite sensitive to what’s happening, I observe a lot – small things, small sounds and situations.

You’ve said that nearly everything you write down in the composing phase ends up in the finished work.

Yes.

I don’t think very many composers have that experience.

It’s rare for me to write something that isn’t included later.

That must speed up the process?

But I spend a lot of time time perfecting tiny details. And finding the material and the right instrumentation takes ages.

So it’s the preparation that takes time?

It takes a long time.

And part of the preparation involves contacting all these researchers, getting hold of recordings, and then transcribing the sounds?

And working with the musicians. I’m not sure how many meetings I’ve had with musicians during the making of Pelagic Dreamscape, but it’s quite a few. And I pay them. I like to pay them for workshopping. Just think how much practice has gone into acquiring all that knowledge. It feels good to be able to pay them, especially the freelancers.

Pelagic Dreamscape is your third orchestral work. Could you walk us through how you got here, via your two previous orchestral pieces?

Bioluminescence was first. I wrote that in Linz, where it was premiered by the university orchestra. All the composition students had the opportunity to write for orchestra if they wanted to. I felt that it was a once in a lifetime thing – that if anyone asked me to write for orchestra after I’d graduated, I wouldn’t have the nerve. Writing for orchestra is totally different than writing chamber music. So I did it, and suddenly it was being played quite a lot.

You won the Pauline Hall Competition in Norway with this piece?

Yes, so it’s been played in Stavanger and Brussels and Gent. And I can’t remember where else. I wasn’t there. Oh yes, Stuttgart, Bergen and here in Cologne.

I’ve seen a video of the performance. Is the lighting in the piece scored too?

Lots of the musicians have small LED lights, and how they use them is precisely dictated by how fireflies flash. I read a long research paper about fireflies. There are several thousand different species, and not only does each species have its own special rhythm, but it also has its own movement patterns while flashing. The way they flash is combined with a choreography. So researchers have written down these rhythm structures and movement patterns. I copied lots of these patterns and pasted them onto big sheets, and then I heard music straight away, and only needed to write it down. The fireflies wrote the whole piece for me.

It’s not a major point, I know, but how do the musicians know when to turn on these lights?

There are precise instructions in the score.

But when the room is in darkness?

They have to have some things memorised. And at the rear of the hall, out of sight of the audience, there’s a clock with a second display so that they can see how long they play this bit, and this bit. They have to memorise two things.

Not too much?

Yes, no more than two things. Then they turn on their music stand lights at a certain point. They’re turned on one at a time, so that the room gets brighter and brighter. It’s being performed at the Ultima Festival this year, at the final concert.

That was the first orchestral piece, Bioluminescence. What about the next?

That was commissioned through the KUPP programme.

KUPP, that’s a programme for young composing talent founded in connection with the Norwegian Society of Composers’ centennial in 2017.

So the orchestras could choose a composer, and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra asked if I could write for them. It was really daunting. I felt like it would have been much easier to write music abroad. In Norway I was this clarinetist who also wrote music, but abroad, I felt much more like a composer. I also knew a lot of the people in the orchestra. They’d been my teachers at the academy, and now I turn up as a composer. I felt I had so much to prove. I think I really pulled out all the stops when I made that piece.

Between Trees was very well received. It won at the Rostrum, as we’ve mentioned.

Towards the end of working on it, my mother got cancer. I moved home to care for her until the end, while I completed the piece, and I thought, this has to be really good, because it’s going to be for mum. I felt like I had to give it my everything. I talked about the piece a lot with her. It’s about being in nature, about birds and animals that she liked. The countryside around my childhood home in Sagesund.

There’s a connection between these pieces because, as you say, there are lots of recreations of sounds and movements from the real world in them.

There’s been quite a lot of that in recent years. Also in what I wrote for Ensemble Recherche last year, Habitat, which was performed at Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. And last year I wrote a big musical theatre piece too, BOWER, for a French ensemble, Soundinitiative. A forty-five minute work. It was premiered in Paris and was performed at Only Connect festival in Oslo, and at the Borealis Festival in Bergen. I directed the whole thing, and found that I liked doing it.

Maybe, as such a jack-of-all-trades, you’ll also end up as a director after a while? And conductor – then you can get things exactly the way you want them?

No, not a conductor. Or maybe?

You didn’t know that you’d be sitting here as a composer when you were here as a clarinetist ten years ago. With a commission from the orchestra to boot. So why not?

No, you never know.

It’s evident that many of your commissions come from abroad – more than we’re aware of in Norway, since this kind of music receives next to no media coverage. How did it come about that you received a commission for a major musical theatre piece, for example?

That was through Borealis and the director there, Peter Meanwell. He’s the one who put me in contact with Soundinitiative.

And how did your work with the German Ensemble Recherche come about?

When I studied in Linz, I took part in something called Klassenarbeit – four from our class were grouped with four from a class at Oxford. We met three times a year and sketched out a work as we went along. Then there was a concert at the end of it, with Ensemble Recherche. They’ve been my favourite ensemble for years. And Shizuyo Oka, the clarinetist in the ensemble, has been a major inspiration, so that was a big deal for me. Imagine, me writing something for them! So I felt that I really had to try and make it as good as possible . I didn’t think of it as just some student thing. I did my absolute best. I think that way with all my pieces, really. Try to give it everything I’ve got.

Are you a kind of in-house composer for them? You’ve written several other pieces for Recherche.

I don’t know about that, but we get along very well together. They knew me a bit from before, as a clarinetist. We’d met each other at a few festivals. So how many commissions have I had… three, I think. And there are more on the way.

For one of the pieces I made for them, I built this totally crazy instrument, together with a French instrument maker. It looked like a huge octopus. It was made of an old organ pump that blew air into these long, moveable pipes that were attached to it, and the whole ensemble could play on it. That was at Kasseler Musiktage in Germany in 2021. The piece is called Passing Cloud. I got permission to use an old sea map from the National Library in Oslo, Carta Marina by Olaus Magnus – the first Nordic sea map, from 1539. And I managed to make a film that takes the audience on a trip around the map.

Goodness. There’s something very playful about what you do, isn’t there?

My husband says, you always take chances. You don’t play it safe. And with that piece, I tried out lots of new things.

But at the same time, you do prepare thoroughly in order to make sure things work?

I’m a control freak and an experimenter at the same time.

When I consider everything you’ve told me about your sources of inspiration, your sound sources, the visual and amusing ideas and surprises, I still find it a little curious that you’re so fascinated by the traditional symphony orchestra.

I find it such fun.

Would you consider going over to the equivalent institution on the musical theatre side of things, the opera? There’s scope for so much on the stage.

I’ve always felt that the voice is the instrument I respect the most. But I have actually included some song in this orchestra piece. There’s humming. And for Recherche, last year, in Habitat, the violinist sings through a vocoder, a synthesizer with a microphone, so there’s singing in that too.

Maybe you’re moving towards opera via humming and vocoder?

I’m going to write a piece for Silje Aker Johnsen, the singer. We’ve played together since we were at the academy. I’m going to write a solo piece for her. I thought that would be a good start. And next year I’m writing a piece for Hannah Weirich, the violinist from Ensemble Musikfabrik, and Juliet Fraser, an amazing soprano. That’s going to be the next thing. So that’ll be a learning experience.

Are you now established abroad?

I’m not sure about that, but I had a piece at the Wien Modern festival last autumn, Seafloor Dawn Chorus, with Ensemble Recherche, as I mentioned. And I’ve got the Piano Concerto with Ellen Ugelvik and Klangforum Wien at Musikprotokoll in Graz this autumn.

All these commissions and engagements of yours are very prestigious. Do you get nervous?

I feel like I landed these kinds of prestige jobs very quickly. Like the first piece for Arditti. Then it was Recherche. There have been a lot of prestigious assignments, things you don’t want to mess up.

Prestige comes with a risk.

So you have to just aim even higher. But I think I’d have done that anyway. Like the brass quintet, for example, another student piece I wrote in Linz. I thought then that I should write a quintet that made brass players want to play new music, and very clearly present all the sounds that I wanted to try out. And it’s been played lots. So you shouldn’t think, oh, this is just a student piece. As a student, you should be all-in.

That seems to be something you’ve had in you right from the start?

You never know whether something’s going to be played again, so why write a bad piece? Or a halfway good piece?

It sounds pretty demanding, this way of working?

The clarinet was more of a challenge. I was extremely nervous back then. There hasn’t been that much nervousness with these pieces I’ve written. I was very nervous at the first rehearsal here in Cologne, but now that I’ve become familiar with the piece, I can just look forward to the rest.

So you won’t feel nervous at the concert tomorrow?

Well, I can get very disillusioned and say to Lars that everybody’s going to boo at the end. I can get these totally dark ideas.

Have they ever booed you?

Never.

But you still have these thoughts?

You never know what’s going to happen. We’ll just have to see. And after all, booing is better than total indifference.

I can understand that performing on clarinet is more trying on the nerves. As a composer, you’ve done the work in advance, after all. You put it in someone else’s hands. That’s a different thing.

It is. It’s a relief not to have to do it. But I think improvising is fun.

So you haven’t given up the clarinet?

No, we’re doing a concert next week, and I haven’t practised.

Oops!

I haven’t got the time, so there’s less and less of the clarinet. Writing takes so much time. It’s not just the physically sitting there, writing – it’s also going around thinking about how to do it, getting ideas. And all the mail, correspondence with musicians, festivals. I wish I could employ someone to help me.

You don’t have a manager?

No. There was someone who asked if she could do it, but I can’t afford it.

Grosser Sendesaal WDR Funkhaus
Cologne, May 20th 2023

I got a chance to talk to several of the musicians during the last break. I talked to the brass players. They’d totally misunderstood some of the  techniques, so now I’ve sorted it out. Which is good, now that the dress rehearsal of my piece is coming up.

Did you notice earlier that they’d misunderstood?

Yes, but there hasn’t been time to talk to them.

Can you explain what it was, or is it too complicated?

It’s a sound with the mute, bhrhrhrhr, which is supposed to be quite strong, but that’s not what they’ve been playing.

Strong, with a mute?

It was more bhhhh.

So it’ll make a difference?

They hadn’t realised how they were supposed to use the mute.

Had they seen the instruction video?

I don’t know. Maybe not.

I don’t suppose they learned this at the conservatory?

No, maybe not. But they’re about to start now.

Café Ludwig im Museum
Cologne, May 20th 2023

We’ve just come from the dress rehearsal, Kristine. It was quite different from yesterday’s. What’s changed?

It was very different. For one thing, the piece was four and a half minutes shorter than yesterday, that’s pretty radical.

It’s a significant change. What happened, do you think?

Well, I did tell the conductor yesterday that the tempo was too slow.

And today?

He said that he’d looked over the score again and realised that it had to be much quicker.

So he’s listened to you?

It could be that because I was so clear and definite about it, he actually gave the score another once-over.

How do you think it went?

It sounded much stronger than before. Clearer, more articulated. I’ve sat with the score the whole time during rehearsals, but this time I put it away and sat further back in the hall, imagining myself in the audience. It was a totally different experience of the work. But the work’s actually quite different than I thought it would be. When I wrote it, I thought there would be parts that were violent and noisy, that it would be extremely intense, and I don’t think it’s like that at all. I feel actually that it’s kind of contemplative, in a way.

Isn’t it also a positive thing that a score is open to collaboration? That there’s room for other people’s impulses? It might make them feel more invested in the music.

Yes, of course. I want people to feel free, and there must be room for interpretation by the conductor. That was probably Cambreling’s point. And I pushed back a little, as the composer should have a say too. And I’ve already thought of an amendment I want to make, because it’s going to be played in Bodø in 2024. I’m going to intensify some parts and add more instruments. I actually trimmed it down a little because I thought it had become too loud, too powerful. But I shouldn’t have. So I think you just have to go for it. Just follow your gut instinct.

I wanted to talk to you about form. I read the jury statement from when you won the Arne Nordheim composition prize in 2020. It seems pretty spot on. It says, if I remember correctly, that you’re not necessarily so concerned whether a piece leads to a climax. Is that how you see it?

I’ve never thought about it, but if that’s what they said, maybe it’s true. A final climax, I think it said. I like to think of the piece as always having existed. My clarinet teacher, Hans Christian Bræin, said that when you start a note, you should think that that note already exists. That made an impression on me. All music exists already, really. You just have to… well, where does it go when it stops? It’s just vibrations that carry on. This piece has kind of a circular form, I’ve just realised.

What do you mean by that?

You could start at the beginning again after it ends. I hadn’t thought of that before I heard it at the first rehearsal. When it ended, the conductor took it from the start again. It made me think, yes, it goes in a circle almost. This is probably the wrong thing to say, but there’s so much music that’s…

What? Keep going.

Sausage formed.

Sausage formed? What do you mean?

It’s like, it just starts, and then it ends. But I like things to have a buildup. So maybe, yes, more classical.

Which means that there’s a climax somewhere?

Yes, I suppose there is.

Just now, I had the impression that you weren’t necessarily aiming for a climax?

So I’m contradicting myself.

People tend to. Is there a kind of classical climax in Pelagic Dreamscape?

I thought there would be, actually. A golden ratio form. But you can’t hear it that well. Maybe next time.

Do you think it let the piece down, that the golden ration wasn’t so clear?

It’s still so new. I have to hear it a few times. Have to get to know the work, in a way.

This is the weirdest coffee I’ve ever tasted. What’s it called? Turmeric coffee?

Is it good?

I don’t know. It’s interesting.

Interesting? Always a good start.

Contemporary classical music, which we’re discussing in this book, is music that’s an extension of the classical tradition. Most contemporary composers have studied at a conservatory or a university. You’ve studied the musical past. What’s your relationship to the tradition?

I think I’m deeply rooted in classical music, since I’ve been a classical musician for so many years. It’s there, like a background, or a foundation. But I started listening to experimental music early on, especially experimental pop and experimental rock. I’ve been listening to that since I was little, since primary school.

How does that come through in your music?

Lots of it is very rhythmical. You can also hear it in the melodicism and the use of chords, which maybe come more from a kind of pop aesthetic than from classical or contemporary music. I’m not so fond of dissonant chords.

Why don’t you like dissonant chords?

There has to be a reason for them to be there. You end up with so much grey. I’m not that fond of twelve-tone music and that typical contemporary classical sound either. I feel like I’ve heard enough of that. It’s fine that other people write it, but it’s not what I think of when I think about music. It’s not what comes out. There’s also been this tradition of using a computer program that you feed notes into, and it produces tone rows of whatever notes you put in – I feel you can hear the computer program, the non-human element, in that music. But to pick up an instrument and play something without judging what you’re doing, to listen your way forward, so that it comes from your ears rather than the page, the score – I find that very exciting.

In Pelagic Dreamscape, there are harmonies and solo lines that could well be described as romantic, I think. What would you say to that?

Yes, that’s unconventional in the world of contemporary music, so I feel it can be more daunting to dare to write those kinds of melodies than twelve-tone melodies and dissonances. It’s also the more romantic side of things that comes out when I improvise. Maybe because I have that background as a musician. The music comes from the instrument itself. I don’t just improvise on clarinet. I play flute, cello, violin and lots of other stuff. When I’m sitting there improvising, I use whatever instruments I have at hand and sing along too.

They way you tell it, it sounds to me as if improvisation is a method, a way to access something intuitive? The subconscious?

Yes.

Are there many composers who work this way?

I don’t know. I don’t think of it as a method. It’s just the way I do it. It’s a bit like psychotherapy. You lie down on a sofa and say whatever occurs to you. And you maybe don’t quite know why you’re saying it. Music’s a bit the same.

It has to be interpreted?

Yes, but you have to first get familiar with it. After I’ve had a session like that, where I’ve improvised and recorded lots of stuff, I have to go for a walk. Then I come home and listen to the recording several times. Only then can I decide, is this my music? Yes, maybe this is me.

Your website shows a pretty packed concert calendar, from 2014 all the way to several upcoming concerts. Do you have time to enjoy all the opportunities you’ve had, and everything that’s gone so well?

Hmm, I don’t know. Right now I’m just thinking about the next piece I’m going to write. I’m done with this now. I’m just thinking about the next one. So I don’t rest on my laurels. On the contrary, I think: I could have done that thing better, and I could have done this thing like that, and next time I want to use this instrument. I’m always thinking ahead. Because I’ve received so much attention for the prizes I’ve won, I’ve felt an enormous pressure to deliver. So there are two sides to it.

Yes, the awards have been rolling in. You won the Arne Nordheim prize and the Pauline Hall Competition in 2020, and your second orchestral work was, as we’ve mentioned, a selected work at the International Rostrum of Composers in 2022.

It makes me feel that whatever I do has to be good. Making this piece, Pelagic Deamscape, after the Rostrum prize – that was challenging.

You’re well on your way with your next piece. You’ve been working on it here in Cologne too, in what little free time you have. I’ve been hunting for bats with you, and that’s got something to do with your work. In the side street between the hotel and the Kölner Philharmonie, there are some tall trees where bats fly around.

Yes, actually in the walls of the Kölner Philharmonie too. There’s some greenery there that they fly into.

And you’ve got a mobile phone with you that has a little, what did you call it?

It’s an ultrasonic detector, a bat detector.

It finds bats?

We can’t hear bat sounds, but they send out echolocation calls all the time. There are lots of sounds that we can’t hear. That applies generally, because the ear is selective and there’s a lot that’s outside our bandwidth. I see it as different layers, just like here in Cologne. It used to be a Roman town, then they built on top of that, and then they built on top of that. And we hear what we’re hearing now, but there are lots of other layers on top of our sounds that we can’t hear. I find it so fascinating that there are creatures we can’t see or hear, that live a life parallel to ours. A life that we’re totally excluded from.

Is the new piece exclusively about bats?

No, it’s also about nocturnal butterflies. They use echolocation too. And they communicate with scent. They send out scent signals to each other. If I were a night butterfly and put out a scent here, another night butterfly up by the WDR building could smell it.

Four hundred metres away?

Yes, because of what’s called Brownian motion, whereby scent particles push each other forward amazingly quickly. It’s exactly what happens if you’re in a room and you peel an orange. You can smell the orange far away. That’s because Brownian motion pushes the scent molecules along, without the aid of wind or anything else.

Now you’ve taken out your notebook, with a bat drawing on the cover. Did you draw that?

It’s a bit childish.

Not at all. It’s very well drawn. But it makes me think that there’s something child-like about much of what you do?

I suppose so.

You have a strong connection to your inner child?

Yes, maybe? When I was little, I found everything childish. Me, I wanted to be grown up. So maybe…

Maybe you’re making up for it now?

Making up for lost time. And I’m only going to get more and more childish. I didn’t have friends of my own age. I thought they were so childish. I was always with the grownups. My best friend was, well, back then I thought she was very old, but she was probably no more than fifty, sixty. I thought it was fun to help her in the garden and wash the dishes and that kind of thing. I didn’t play with dolls. That’s just how I was.

What’s the name of the new piece you’re writing?

Night Lives. It’s about the things we can’t see or hear around us where we live.

The nightlife in Grønland, Oslo?

Nattliv in Norwegian. It’s a performance that’s being premiered at the Ultima festival this September. It’s going to be quite an experience. An hour, maybe, at Kulturkirken Jacob.

What does one call this kind of performance?

I’m not sure what you would call it. It’s not musical theatre, because the musicians won’t be acting. It’s going to be a concert, because I think the music is very important, and I want to release it as a record. So the music can’t just be a background for lots of visual stuff. It’s going to be a whole sensory experience. Lots of surprises. Things flying around. Things lighting up. No, I shouldn’t give too much away. But we won’t be sitting in the dark. It’s not going to be scary. I don’t want the audience to be scared. I don’t like scary things. But I’ve been walking in the woods quite a lot with my husband. He tends to go along with any crazy idea. We’ve been for walks in the middle of the night, in the forest in Tvedestrand, or Sagesund. Because there it actually gets dark. Pitch dark. It’s pretty spooky, even though I’ve been walking there since I was little and know the forest well. I wasn’t scared of meeting a moose or any other animals. But imagine if a person came along? And not knowing whether there’s someone watching you… And it’s exciting, because if you just stop and sit for a while…

So I do a lot of research for my work.

Evidently.

Hotell Mondial am Dom
Cologne, May 21st 2023

Kristine, you asked what I thought of yesterday’s performance. I’ve said repeatedly that the piece is poetic, it’s moving, especially towards the end when the chorale comes in and we get these melodic sections. I’m thinking of the cello solo too. The piece suddenly becomes something else, different from what we thought it was at the beginning. What we’ve heard is suddenly shown in a new light, or a new sound, towards the end. There’s something human about it, which seems a strange thing to say given all the other creatures that feature in this music. It’s a piece I’ll remember, because there’s so much about it that’s unusual, and also because of the narrative about threatened species, and sounds that could disappear, and sounds that are a threat to others. Several of the sounds or sections were louder than before. They had more attack. They were clearer, had more character. It seemed like the musicians played more confidently.

It’s probably because they know the piece better, and the form, and have more of a feeling for what it’s about.

But how do you feel about the conductor not following through with the quicker tempo that he had at the dress rehearsal?

I had a feeling that might happen, so I wasn’t exactly surprised that it went back to how it was at the start. It seems a bit like sports talk, almost, to talk so much about tempo, but it makes quite a lot of difference. It changes the character. But there were some parts I was very happy with. At the same time, I’m itching to do some revisions, because I know that it can be much better.

So you heard these changes while listening to the concert yesterday?

Yes, I feel like I compose in my head while listening. Some pieces that I’ve written are just at rest. They’re settled. But if there’s something I’m not totally satisfied with, it’s like they’re unsettled. And this is going to bug me. I’m going to work more on it.

Do you think it’s ever going to feel totally settled? It could be that this is a piece that’s very affected by whoever’s performing it?

That’s possible. It’ll be exciting to see what happens. This piece is almost a bit biological in itself, as it’s got the one improvisatory part at least. So a lot of how it comes across is up to both the conductor and the musicians.

What was your overall impression of the concert yesterday?

To be totally honest, it feels good to get it over with, as it’s a good while since I was asked and a long time since I started on the piece. As I said, I found it hard to write a new orchestral work after Between Trees, as that got so much attention. So it feels good to know that it’s done now. It’s good that I’ve managed to do it after what felt like a lot of pressure.

So how do you think it will be to work on the ensemble piece, Night Lives, pressure-wise?

I think it’ll be easier. Partly because I feel like I want to keep on writing. That’s the best thing, I think, that there are things I want to do better, that the music is developing all the time. And I know that there will be several performances of this piece. That motivates me.

You mentioned yesterday that the music maybe just exists, it is there. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but does some of this confidence of yours come from the idea that this music is there whether the conductor and the musicians play it this way or that way?

Yes, I suppose you could interpret it like that. I can hear how the music is supposed to be. But what I found exciting about this conductor was that he was so personally involved. He really put his own stamp on it.

Have you learned anything from that?

You have to allow others to be involved musically too. There are many levels. There’s the orchestra, there’s the conductor, there’s the composer. There are these strong forces that have to work together. All the hierarchical structures in the orchestra generally, with the concertmaster on top and then all the solo instrumentalists and the whole orchestra. I like to get into all of that, to manoeuvre around it and maybe stir things up a bit. That’s why I like it when the back row gets solos too. When everybody gets a bit of a solo. Maybe it comes from Mahler, because I love playing his symphonies. Even if you’re playing third or fourth clarinet, you get some solos. That’s something I try to do, make everybody feel that their part is important, that you’re not just in a supporting role.

I remember that from the school marching band, that some horn parts only played a supporting role. Isn’t it wrong of the composer to write so stingily for certain sections? How could they endure it in marching band?

But maybe some people choose those instruments? Maybe some people like playing support? Perhaps some people like sitting in the back row of the violins. Because I’ve noticed that some people aren’t comfortable with taking a solo. For instance, if the last viola has a solo. I noticed that it wasn’t what he was used to.

You noticed it in this piece?

Yes, a bit. But it’s good that the sixth viola also gets a part.

It’s fun to see how much joy you have where your work is concerned.

Mmm.

It is an important resource to have. If you didn’t want to work anymore, them you wouldn’t have a job. It could all end one day. Is that something you’ve given any thought to?

No, you just have to base your thinking on how things are now.

Of course. But this is a job that’s totally dependent on your enthusiasm and your energy.

Absolutely. I think you just have to be open for anything. It could happen that I’ll end up wanting to do something completely different, you know? You’ve just got to immerse yourself in what you do and take it from there, see what comes of it.

Before, I thought a lot about the future and dreaded it. Especially when I played clarinet – I was scared about not being good enough, and scared of making a fool of myself at a concert. But where writing music’s concerned, I feel that I have to listen to what’s happening now, and do the very best I can. And just see what happens. If you think too far ahead in time, you don’t get as much done. But sometimes I can feel really stressed and under pressure very early in the process, maybe a year in advance. I have to start now, I haven’t got enough time. I try to find out which sound palette to use, like a painter almost. That starts to develop pretty early on. I need to have enough time and begin early so that the sounds start to establish themselves. And the rhythms.

Do you compose on paper or on the computer?

I tend to write with pencil and paper. So I often carry manuscript paper with me. Nearly always. See, here.

Yes, here are some clippings held by a paperclip. What is this?

They’re pictures of microorganisms. I lay a drawing, like this, on the manuscript paper. Then I can hear the sound of what I’m looking at.

And what are we looking at?

It’s a stentor, a one celled organism. Tiny. Magnified many times over. So, I can sit at an airport or a café. It’s the kind of thing I can do while travelling.

I don’t quite understand. You sit and look at a drawing…

It’s taken from some research website.

Okay. So you sit and look at it, and you translate what you see into notation?

Yes, I tend to glue them in. Then I can see structures, lines, rhythms, whether it’s choppy, or light or dark, whether there are air bubbles. And which way up it should be, because I can turn it around whichever way I want. Maybe that’s a crescendo? Does this last five minutes, or five seconds? Is this going to be a phrase or maybe part of a piece? This could be a piece for nine instruments.

By the way, I’d never thought of it before I talked to you, this thing about unconscious composing. That I just play what comes, without judging it. I don’t know where it comes from. I find it very interesting. Where does it come from? Because I try not to think at all.

You gave an answer yesterday when you sat on stage being interviewed live on German radio. The host asked you exactly that: Where does the music come from? Sum it up it in one sentence, he said. Had you been given the question in advance?

No.

Do you remember your answer? You said, maybe it comes from nature.

Yes.

That, too, reminds me of what you said before. It’s there. The music is there. And these organisms that you’ve just shown me drawings of, they are there, but we haven’t known about them before now. But now, researchers have found them because they actually exist.

Maybe this is a weird comparison, but it’s a bit like the BFG.

BFG?

Roald Dahl, The Big Friendly Giant. Have you read it? He’s got this big net that he uses to catch dreams. Perhaps the music’s just floating around. But it’s also a combination of all the melodies you’ve heard, all the music you’ve heard and played, and all the baggage of your whole life. Who you are. It’s about daring to let it out. It can be slightly daunting. So it’s about not stopping yourself, not talking yourself down. I think a lot of people are very critical of their own expression – oh, they’re going to laugh at me. I can have those thoughts too, but why shouldn’t I be allowed to do this? And then I hear people sing – I heard people singing the melodies after the rehearsal here with the WDR orchestra. When rehearsal’s over I can hear whistling and singing. The thing you remember is often something melodic.

It’s understandable that an artist can lack confidence in her own expression. There’s this constant reappraisal going on.

Yes.

But now that you find your music is well received, that audiences give you glowing feedback, and the musicians whistle on their way out and you’re given new commissions, that must give you self-confidence about your musical expression?

It does, yes, but I actually think that this self-confidence you’re talking about makes me feel that I have to do even better next time. Do you see what I mean? It’s not just like, oh, now I’m self-confident. It also means that I think, this had better be amazing. The potential for failure increases all the time. I think it’s also about how much energy you put into the material. If you put lots of energy into the work, there’ll be something there whatever happens. Something worth keeping. So you just have to trust that if you put in that energy, in an honest way, there’ll be something there that’s interesting. And who gets to decide what’s good or not? I feel like you just have to dare to take chances and challenge yourself. Don’t play it safe.

I’m finding it more and more difficult to be an instrumentalist now, because practising other people’s music distracts me. I just want to write now. I’m feeling pushed for time with the new piece. And having to practise and play other people’s music, like I have to next week? It feels almost like I can’t catch my breath.

Are you going to put the playing to one side, do you think?

I don’t know. I’ll just have to see. But I am going to take a break, actually, after the summer. A break from playing. To see if I miss it or not. But I enjoy playing improvised music, so, well, we’ll see what happens.

Maybe that’s the solution? To improvise with other people? Then you can play concerts, but you don’t have to play other people’s music?

I love other people’s music, it’s not that. What I love maybe above all is going to concerts.

I was thinking more about when you said that it’s distracting to practise and play other people’s music.

Yes, because then I start thinking. Could this have been composed differently?

It’s not just distracting to play other music, you have to recompose it too?

It takes up too much room in my head. I always think this way when I play contemporary music. Why is this the beginning? It should be the ending. Why don’t you give this part to the piano instead of the guitar? You should have repeated that bit four times, then the form would work better. If you’d put that bit first, you could have added a layer there, then it would work really well.

My father used to say, stick to what you know. He was skeptical when I started studying composition. Think of all that practising you’ve done for nothing, he said. But I wouldn’t be the same composer if I hadn’t been a clarinetist first. Sitting and practising all that music, going to all those rehearsals and being involved in everyone else’s music. I feel lucky to have been involved in all that for so long. And to have sat in the orchestra. Where you can hear, aah, the piccolo’s there while the double bass is there. I think musicians possess a huge amount of hidden expertise that they’re not aware of. I think there are many more instrumentalists who could write music. Being a composer has sort of disappeared from the instrumentalist tradition. It wasn’t like this before. So I hope… I do know that some people have been inspired. If you can write music, so can I. And then I think YES! That’s the best compliment you could have given me. The fact that I write music has made you start writing. Then I think it’s all worthwhile.

It’s pretty overwhelming when I consider everything that finds its way into your net – the material you find in nature, in the city, in every kind of acoustic landscape, sounds audible and inaudible, things that can be seen and things that can’t be seen. Where do you not find ideas? Plus you find them in other music. How do you choose? How do you pick your way forward through all this?

      I just have to follow my gut feeling. If I can’t stop thinking about something, there’s probably something in it. Often when I get ideas, they just drift off and I forget them. But if they keep turning up, I have to take them seriously. Start reading up on what I’m thinking about, research it, listen to the sounds. And if the sounds are interesting, and if there’s something I can express, then I think, I have to show this to somebody. More people have to know about this. I can express this in a way that can enlighten other people and get them thinking. Maybe it’s about the wonder of existence. About size and scale. What is big, what’s little? Making music is quite magical. Which reminds me. Carola sent a message today:

Music is the best we can do. It’s such a hard job, but when it’s there, it’s a wonder, like the smell of this rose.

And she’s sent a picture of a rose.

She has also said:

Music has to be fresh food for the senses.

I feel the same way. It has to be something fresh. An experience. I feel there’s so much contemporary music that’s about angst and traumatic experiences, painful feelings. And yes, those exist. I want to offer something that can be a comfort, that can give some form of refuge and optimism. Because I think the world around us has enough of the other stuff already. I don’t enjoy making music like that.

You say you work hard, Kristine. What do you mean by that?

I work every day. Never take time off. No such thing as a weekend.

You’re not afraid of burning out?

Not really. There have been a few times this past year when I’ve felt a bit worn out. I try to have fun with what I do. It’s not like it’s fun all the time, but it’s good to love what you do. And it’s very important to say, ah, I am so lucky. I try to remind myself: Just think, that music has brought me here. You have to be grateful, I think. It makes life better.

***

The text is from a book by Bodil Maroni Jensen, published in September 2024:
«Stemmer i samtidsmusikken – samtaler med norske komponister», published by Solum Bokvennen. The book title means «Voices in contemporary music – conversations with Norwegian composers», and this chapter about Kristine Tjøgersen, has been translated Lyndon Riley.

The translation is supported by Music Norway and the Norwegian Society of Composers. 
The book is supported by The Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association, The Fritt Ord Foundation, The Bergesen Foundation, Arts and Culture Norway and The Lindeman Foundation.