Hans-Ola Ericsson

Hans-Ola Ericsson (born 1958) is a composer and organist who specializes in contemporary organ literature.

Hans-Ola Ericsson was born in Stockholm. He studied composition with Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough and Luigi Nono, and organ with Olivier Messiaen. As an organist, Ericsson is notable as an interpreter of the music of Olivier Messiaen, and has recorded his complete works for organ on the label BIS.

Ericsson's earlier works were closer in style to those of Klaus Huber or Luigi Nono, but this compositional approach became restrictive, and Ericsson went through a period of compositional silence in between 1984/85 and 1999. Ericsson's more recent music draws more freely from various styles, and concentrates, to a certain extent, on musical timbre and space, as well as referential ideas in music. For example, his work "The Four Beast' Amen", for organ and electronics, begins with the organ in dialogue with recordings of organs from Hamburg, Stade, Norden, Cappel and Lüdingworth. The style refers to older organ works, such as those of Frescobaldi or Buxtehude, but with all of the organs overlapping in such a way that everything is blurry. The second movement changes completely in style, concentrating on sounds created by the wind chest of the organ. Some of the later movements of this work focus on differences in tuning between some of the organs that we heard in the beginning.

Works

* "...and all that remains is silence..." for choir, 1984
* Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend, for organ and electronics, 1985
* The Four Beasts' Amen, for organ and electronics 1999/2000
* Canzon del Principe - An intabulation on an intabulation, for organ and electronics, 2002

External links

* http://www.moderecords.com/profiles/hansolaericsson.html