Sven-David Sandström (30 October 1942, in

Motala Motala () is a locality and the seat of Motala Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with 29,823 inhabitants (41,956 in the entire municipality) in 2010. It is the third largest city of Östergötland, following Linköping and Norrköping. ...

– 10 June 2019) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

classical composer of operas, oratorios, ballets, and choral works, as well as orchestral works.

Life and career

Sandström studied

art history Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

and musicology at Stockholm University. He also studied musical composition at the

Royal College of Music, Stockholm The Royal College of Music, Stockholm ( sv, Kungliga Musikhögskolan i Stockholm) is the oldest institution of higher education in music in Sweden, founded in 1771 as the conservatory of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. The institution was mad ...

. He was a faculty member at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm, and

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest ca ...

Jacobs School of Music The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, is a music conservatory established in 1921. Until 2005, it was known as the Indiana University School of Music. It has more than 1,500 students, approximately half of whom ar ...

, where he taught for fifteen years. Among his works are ''The High Mass'', a Requiem, concertos for flute, guitar, piano, and cello, and the 2001 opera, '' Jeppe: The Cruel Comedy'' on a libretto and originally directed by Claes Fellbom, who commissioned the work for the centennial of the Swedish opera company. Fellbom translated the opera into English and directed its first production in that language at Indiana University in February 2003. In 2006, Sandström's

Ordet - en passion ''Ordet'' (, meaning " The Word" and originally released as ''The Word'' in English), is a 1955 Danish drama film, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. It is based on a play by Kaj Munk, a Danish Lutheran priest, first performed in 1932. The film w ...

was performed on 24 March in Stockholm. Broman PF. Ordet – en passion. Introduction to Swedish Radio performance, accessed 4 January 2010
/ref> A number of his works were inspired by significant choral works by

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

and other composers, but reinterpreted in Sandström's very personal style. These include a set of the six

Bach cantata The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas (German: ), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost. As far as known, Bach's earliest cant ...

texts in Bach's structure (double choir plus four-part chorale), a reinterpretation of the text of Handel's ''

Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...

'' commissioned and premiered by the

Oregon Bach Festival Oregon Bach Festival (OBF) is an annual celebration of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and his musical legacy, held in Eugene, Oregon, United States, in late June and early July. About the festival The festival's programming is three-fold. It ...

in 2009 and also performed at the

Rheingau Musik Festival The (RMF) is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres. Concerts take place at culturally important locations, such as Eberbach Abbey and Schloss Johannisberg, ...

that year, and works by

Purcell Henry Purcell (, rare: September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest Eng ...

. His work draws on ideas from

modernist music In music, modernism is an aesthetic stance underlying the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories o ...

, minimalist music,

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

, and

popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fu ...

. Indeed, in Act II of ''Jeppe'', the chorus sings the line "O Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz" in harmony based on the original Janis Joplin melody. He also incorporated elements of

Tejano music Tejano music ( es, música tejana), also known as Tex-Mex music, is a popular music style fusing Mexican and US influences. Typically, Tejano combines Mexican Spanish vocal styles with dance rhythms from Czech and German genres – particular ...

in his work. Sandström wrote

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...

s for ' (

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...

), and for the television films ' (

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phi ...

), Lars Norén's ' ( 1996), and ''Gertrud'' (

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

Featured students

* Marie Samuelsson

References

Per F. Broman. ''Sven-David Sandström''. Stockholm: Royal Academy of Music and Atlantis, 2012

External links

Sven-David Sandström
on

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

svendavidsandstrom.com on Wayback Machine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sandstrom, Sven David 1942 births 2019 deaths 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers Contemporary classical music in Sweden Indiana University faculty Litteris et Artibus recipients Swedish opera composers Male opera composers Swedish art historians Swedish classical composers Swedish male classical composers 20th-century Swedish male musicians 20th-century Swedish musicians 21st-century Swedish male musicians People from Motala Municipality Deaths from cancer in Sweden Musikförläggarnas pris winners