Rondes

I wrote Rondes in the spring of 1964 at the request of Sveriges Radio's music department, which was then in the process of organizing a boarding school for the Radio Choir and the former Chamber Choir (now Eric Ericson's Chamber Choir). The idea was probably to get some sort of experimental choral score to bite into. Lars Edlund did a rehearsal during the boarding school, but the first public performance didn't come until the fall of the same year.
In the 1960s, I - like many other composers - was interested in composing with timbre as a form-forming element. Then it was also close at hand to stretch the expressive possibilities of the voices and instruments, so I wrote a piece that was not based on any text but on other sounds that can be produced with the voice but which may not even appear in any language. In addition, at this time (as now!) I was interested in the visual aspects of music performances, including the possibility to experiment with the movements of musicians and singers on the stage. Both of these pages are included in Rondes.
The spectacular features of the piece have since contributed to it gaining a lot of attention. It has been featured on Swedish choirs' tours abroad, which in turn has led to foreign choirs also including the piece in their repertoire. Rondes is one of my most frequently performed works and it has been sung in many countries around the globe, in America, Africa, Asia and Australia.
Folke Rabe, 2000-03-24
Amendment
In Rondes there has been a graphically unclearly printed cluster in the tenor part on page 1. The notes in this cluster should be, from bottom to bottom: C#, D#, F, G. This has now been clarified by the publisher, Gehrmans in Stockholm.
Folke Rabe, 2009-02-11