Muohta

Muohta is the general word for snow in Sámi language, and snow is what the piece is about.Listeners are invited into a series of frozen soundscapes that span from meditative quietness to the odd contrasts of texture that may engender a sense of risk and unease.

The piece depicts slow changes that are barely visible or perceptible to human senses. When the piece was performed for the first time – along with Joseph Haydn’s The Seasons in Oslo in 2017 – the composer noted that the context had inspired him to attempt a step away from concepts of progress based on controlling nature, and instead engage with an indigenous experience of living with nature.

The piece is in 18 sections, each based on a word in the Sámi language related to snow. The sound of these words represent the only phonetic material used by the choir in this music. Some of the words describe snow directly, others its impact on everyday human life – for example, ulahat means “an over-snowed winter trail which is barely visible”.

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The composer uses various composition techniques in order to obtain the desired richness of expression and soundscapes. The harmonic structure of the opening section appears, reminding of a baroque ritornello, five times during the piece, every time clothed in diffferent textures. At other places, hexagonal symmetrical patterns between pitches occur, inspired by the structure of snowflakes. There is also a clear influence present from the composer's experience with free improvisation, as events in various vocal and instrumental groups happen in parallel, as seemingly independent processes. Finally, the physical structure of snow phenomena inspire musical structures, i.e. wave-shaped rhythmical shifts, dissolving canons, doppler effects etc.

To get into detail with the phonetics of Sami language, the composer transcribed recordings of the 18 spoken words, played back at 3x slow speed. This resulted in passages where the choir pronounces certain words in a slow, "ghost-like" way, and also in the separation of the individual sounds in a word, detaching from eachother and becoming purely musical objects.