from Hjärtats sånger Op. 27 (1942, rev 1976)

När du sluter mina ögon

Det blir vackert där du går

Saliga väntan

Som en våg

nos 1,6 orch

A French composer, you might think on hearing the piano introduction to the first of these songs if you came across it without knowing who it was by. In fact, one of the formative influences on Gunnar de Frumerie’s development was the time he spent in Paris round 1930 as a piano pupil of Alfred Cortot. The opening of När du sluter mina ögon could almost be by Debussy. From the first entry of the voice, however, it can only be by a Scandinavian composer, not simply because the words are Swedish but also because they are set to such a characteristic melodic line and with such sensitivity to their natural rhythms and pitch inflections.

The words and the title of Frumerie’s cycle of six songs are taken from a collection of lyric poems, Hjärtats sånger, published by fellow Swede Pär Lagerkvist in 1926. Though of a younger generation himself, Frumerie evidently felt a close affinity with Lagerkvist, whose poems were a fruitful source of inspiration throughout his composing career. The distinctive quality of the Hjärtats sånger cycle - which was written in 1942 and revised thirty-four years later - is the economy and purity of language common to the words and the music. After the impressionist introduction, the setting of När du sluter mina ögon reduces the piano part to a simple rocking accompaniment in the first stanza, allowing the melody to take its shape from the words, before it exerts its gentle harmonic pressures in the second stanza. Much of the accompaniment to the fragile second song, Det blir vackert där du går, is no more than a single line, effectively offsetting the more turbulent piano part reflecting the fiery emotions of Saliga väntan. The last song in the cycle, Som en våg, again echoes Debussy in the piano introduction but then integrates its siren voices into the regular rhythms of the sea and the human heart.