Together (2021)

Together was commissioned by Oslo International Church Music Festival. The work is about the ways people are together, and ways we meet the other.

A Mass about the relationships between people in a time where many are isolated and culture cultivates fictions and fantasies about the sovereign, single individual.

Together is written for six vocal soloists, percussionists who also use their voice, and piano / electronics. The text is written by Henrik Hellstenius and is inspired by texts of the American sociologist and author Richard Sennet, the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the French author and mystic Jeanne de Salzmann.

The work is intended as a meditation on the relationship between "me and the other(s)". How I relate to people I meet, work with, and live with, is the question. I must deal with people I do not understand, who I do not like or with whom I strongly disagree. But how do I do it? How do I relate to "the other", when "the other" is so different from myself that I cannot use my usual strategies?

In a time of strong divides and hard separation between political opponents and economic classes, it is more necessary than ever to look at how we can interact. Liberal capitalism daily tells the western man fairy tales about the individual choices and how they define us. Technology goes hand in hand with the economy and creates solutions for experiences and actions that isolate individuals, more than they gather them, so we must look for new ways of interacting. Ways that do not depend on the old structures, which in many western countries have lost some of the unifying power they previously had. We must realize that we need new strong narratives of being together, which balance the overall narrative of our supposed sovereign individuality, and the deep gaps between the people we see around us. A lot is about economy and class, but maybe also about new stories that are based on the basics of what holds us together; how we can manage to achieve things when we work together, things that we can never manage alone.