STELLAN SAGVIK was born in Örebro in 1952 and studied composition for Gunnar Bucht and Lars-Gunnar Bodin, amongst others. Not only is Sagvik arguably one of the country’s most prolific composers, he also works with a remarkably wide palette. The multifaceted image he has earned is very much attributable to his having studied song, drama, woodwind instruments and journalism. He has also been a music teacher and an orchestra director at a number of establishments, Uppsala/Gävle City Theatre among them. Sagvik has also been a producer for Swedish Radio’s classical music channel and the editor of various magazines and periodicals, including Nutida Musik.

Sagvik is a high-calibre Jack of all trades and, as he says, a “utilitarian composer”, which in an art music context can almost be considered provocative. The fact remains that Sagvik’s music is explicitly musicant and written with instrumentalists and audience communication in mind. One of his most critically acclaimed works is Anna Månsdotter, an opera based on the Yngsjö murder, the psychologising personal depictions of which possess not only dramatic energy and a deep interest in the victims of incest and child abuse but also elements of tension and burlesque allusions to folk music. His fascination for the last of these is even more manifest in the melodically and rhythmically driven series 10 Swedish concertini, each of which carries a geographical subtitle declaring from which region of the country the tune originates.

Three major song suites also deserve a mention: Annaca, a cycle for tenor, mezzo and chamber ensemble based on Anna Cavallin’s relational crisis poetry; Läppar och tunga ("Lips and Tongue") for mezzo and chamber ensemble, which tells an erotic quasi-Greek love story in the words of singer-songwriter Camilla Ringquist; and Canticum Szeretni Canticum, a collection of highly charged stanzas from the Song of Songs arranged for mezzo, tenor, string quartet and organ.

Sagvik has also written a number of string quartets and symphonies, sometimes on historical and political themes. In addition to this is a large collection of choral music (he was a member of a choir for many years), notable amongst which is the a cappella choral suite Poesia Concreta (Songs of the Concrete), with words inspired by genuine graffiti. There is also the grand-scale Missa Maria Magdalena for soloists, choirs, large wind orchestra and two organs, which recounts the drama of Christ’s Passion through the eyes of Mary Magdalen.

Sagvik’s music is expressive and connected to the freetone style that has had a relatively prominent status in Swedish music, even during more modernist periods. There are also possible traces of Russian influences, at times with a stylistic proximity to Shostakovich. Sagvik’s music is not always simple or simplified, but its harsher sides are anchored in a narrative bedrock that renders it nonetheless accessible. Since 1989, Sagvik has been running his own record label, nosag records, which is also the producer of much of his huge and varied oeuvre.

Tony Lundman, November 2004
Engl. translation: Neil Betteridge
Photo: Lars Torndah

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