Karin Rehnqvist has composed some short poems by the French poet Eugène Guillevic (1907–1997) – Le Chant.

The piece, which is a canon for 12 voices, is composed for the Rilke Ensemble with its conductor Gunnar Eriksson for its 40th anniversary in 2020. That anniversary concert had to be postponed due to the corona pandemic, and will instead end in October 2021.

At the same time, the ensemble Det Norske Solistkor (The Norwegian Soloist’s Choir) with conductor Grete Pedersen wanted something new for their 70th anniversary in October 2020. So the composer let them ‘borrow’ the newly written work and thus get to do the premiere.

The Swedish premiere of Le Chant will thus be with the Rilke Ensemble in Gothenburg on 16 October 2021.

It all started with Gunnar Eriksson asking Karin Rehnqvist if she could write “a canon, short, preferably twelve-part and that can be scratched quickly…”

– It was a wonderful request at just the right time for me, says Karin.


Texts from Le Chant, a poetry suite by Eugène Guillevic from 1990

Qui entend le chant

Se dit: j’existe,

Je crois que je suis

Sans plus de limited


Écoute-moi,

Répète le chant,

Écoute-moi,

Avec tout

Ce qui est à toi

Dans le monde.


This is how it sounded with the Solistkoret Ung (Solois’s Choir Young) when Le Chant was performed at the anniversary concert in Ris Church, Oslo, on October 17, 2020.



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