Please accept a Sunset

The Dreaming Reality

By Søren Schauser

Erik Højsgaard was born in Aarhus in 1954 and was Professor of Aural Training at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen for many years. Thousands of students have attended his classes and been coached in rhythm, intervals and harmonies. During this time he has been the ‘first among equals’ among us teachers across the conservatoire’s many disciplines. His poetic, melancholic personality in a world with high standards of craftsmanship has lent the institution a soul. Erik Højsgaard is the quiet authority. He always expresses himself lyrically and with careful consideration. When he speaks, people listen – regardless of the subject.

The same applies to his works. When he sets pen to paper, people listen. Erik Højsgaard has always been the lyrical expressionist in Danish music.

His works are lyrical in the sense of being pleasantly free from frills and ‘grand’ moments. In this respect, his style might be said to bear traces of New Simplicity, thus feeling very Danish: he never employs louder sounds or broader gestures than absolutely necessary.

But at the same time his expressionistic side draws the music in a nearly opposite direction: where the New Simplicity is popularly thought to say as little as possible, he has things he wants to say. Even his wordless works can be inspired by titles, phrases or sometimes by whole collections of poetry.

Erik Højsgaard operates, in fact, in a world of meanings: sounds can glide unnoticed from the foreground to the background or vice versa. Harmonies can arrive and then glide out of focus, perhaps to return later. Motives might hint at a familiar effect from the vast library of music history – only to point elsewhere in the next moment or reveal themselves as something entirely different.

The style has, overall, a dreamlike quality. Everything moves itself to a place between reality and our memories of these things. Observers have aptly, particularly in relation to the opera Don Juan Comes Back from the War (1989–92), compared his tonal language to the orchestral artistry of the Austrian composer, Alban Berg.

A wholly distinctive aspect of Erik Højsgaard’s music revolves around ‘a decisive moment’. His pieces do not meander endlessly. At some point, the listener senses that something significant may have occurred. The change isn’t necessarily noticeable at the moment itself. One mentally looks back over one’s shoulder, left with a question: if the music has clearly moved from A to C, when exactly did B happen?

The Germans often speak of the ‘Fruchtbarer Augenblick’ or ‘prägnantes Moment’ – the ‘fruitful moment’ or ‘pregnant moment’ – in the multi-genius Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s works: at some point, one can see a transformation has taken place. Yet, looking back, it often turns out in many of his writings that every moment could be interpreted as the decisive one!

Essays (2016–22) is one of Højsgaard’s loveliest pieces. Its source of inspiration cannot be mistaken: the work has its basis in the wonderful waters of Venice.

In recent years, Erik Højsgaard has visited the city in the month of January. ‘In this month there is a stillness in the city, a calm’, he writes, ‘it is a bit chilly, some days full of sunshine, others foggy and hazy – and the city reveals a different side of itself to the one we normally see.’

The first four movements each reflect an aspect of the city: ‘Water’, ‘Dust’, ‘Time’ and ‘Mirror’ send those of us with a love for the place wandering through memory. The music glimmers, then rasps slightly, before finally venturing into a labyrinthine portrayal of times and places.

The fifth movement is entitled ‘Venezia’, pure and simple. According to the composer, the soprano soloist in this movement came into the picture very late. The explanation for his inclusion of song lies in a literary influence: some years earlier he came across Joseph Brodsky’s magnificent, Watermark (1992). Brodsky called Venice a paradise. The Russian writer is himself now laid to rest on the city’s idyllic cemetery island. His book, with up to fifty ‘snapshots’, ranks among the finest texts about the city ever written and has both inspired Erik Højsgaard in creating the individual titles and found its way into the final movement in the form of quotations.

Udstillingsbillede (‘Picture at an Exhibition’) (2008) also stems from something visual: the title plays on the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for piano (1874). Erik Højsgaard’s inspiration was L.A. Ring’s half-expressionistic work, Folk som går fra kirke (‘People Leaving Church’) (1889).

The painting is a major attraction at Fuglsang Art Museum and a masterpiece of Danish art from around the turn of the twentieth century. It depicts a small group of people heading home after Sunday service, each in desolate procession. The composer has described the figures as full of ‘resignation and melancholy’, yet he gives them more active music towards the end – perhaps as an expression of inner turmoil and the prospect of challenges awaiting them at home?

Please accept a Sunset for soprano and sinfonietta from 2023–24, finally, is rooted in the art of words: the work is inspired by – and in its own way a commentary on – the poets involved, with the American Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) at the forefront.

In her time, Dickinson was seen as something of a recluse: she was ‘the woman in white’ in her small community, without family or much contact with the outside world. Yet she possessed an inner life of grand proportions, leaving behind nearly 1,800 poems on everything from eroticism to a delightful day in the garden, and even the joyful messages of the Gospels.

For many years, her verses remained relatively unknown in Denmark. That this is not the case today can be attributed in part to Erik Højsgaard’s efforts: he first worked on her texts in Six songs of autumn (1976), and continued with her beautiful A Sloop of Amber slips away in two songs for mixed choir (1985).

Emily Dickinson had – he discovered later – revised that very poem, resulting in an entirely new version. Naturally, he couldn’t let that pass unaddressed! Please accept a Sunset builds on the poem’s final version. The title is a note in Dickinson’s hand to the poem’s recipient – a local botany professor. Listeners will also hear phrases from other poets, the recently deceased Patrizia Cavalli the most significant among them.

Dreams. Misty memories. Echoes, reminiscences, hints. Images weave in and out of one another in Erik Højsgaard’s matchless universe.

Søren Schauser is an author, philosopher and music historian. He lectures in theoretical subjects and music history at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.