Thomas Jennefelt

Swedish Contemporary Classical Composer

Swedish composer, born April 24, 1954 in Huddinge. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm from 1974 to 1980 for Gunnar Bucht and Arne Mellnäs, amongst other teachers. The attention to vocalisation is salient in his works, which extend from choral music to opera. Warning to the rich is an early and successful example of the former, and has been played the world over since its inception in 1977. Other acclaimed choral pieces include O Domine and Dichterliebe (I-X), composed to the same poems by H. Heine that Robert Schumann used, and the original a cappella suite Villarosa sequences sung to a self-created, Latinesque language. Many of his works have earned international popularity, with their trademark profusion of choral colour, often underpinned by a regular pulse and repetitive rhythm. These features, along with a decidedly free-tonal character imbued with a melodic lyricism, are also detectable in his instrumental works. At times, this is coupled with pictorial qualities, as in the filmically evocative orchestral piece “Musik vid ett berg” (Music by a mountain) or the serenely melancholic trumpet concerto “Stockholm i maj”.