"I really don't know exactly how I do it when I write music. I sit here at the piano in the studio and pretend that what I am playing right now does not exist. I do not read music. It is possible that it would be simpler if I could see and read a score, it's also possible that my music would change were it to be a written piece. As it is, I play by listening. First the piano a while, then I swing over to the computer when I begin to work on the arrangement. "Without the aid of modern technology, I wouldn't be able to produce my music quite so easily. But otherwise it is not that remarkable. Such has always been the way for musicians who don't read music. The melodies have been created at the spur of the moment, memorized and then distributed later. "I don't remember in which order I made the songs for Kristina. But I do know that the melody which came last was "Du måste finnas" (You must exist). This is the song where Kristina, after having been subjected to inconceivable suffering and hardship, eventually doubts the existence of God. If He does not exist, then she is unable to persevere. That song is, in essence, the heart of the story, and I realized it at an early stage. I wanted to put all the grief, all the yearning into that song. I had in mind a complex and intricate little "symphony". "Alas! That wasn't the way it turned out. "If I had written that song first, "Du måste finnas" would certainly have been rather tricky. But when the rest of the music was finished the situation was completely different. At that point it was quite natural to do the song with a standard verse and refrain. To do something pure and super simple in order to emphasize the central importance of the musical. Now I've seen the performance many times and every time I feel that the audience is sincerely captivated right at that point. "That does not necessarily mean that I know what I did. One doesn't know what one does when it becomes what one wants, and then later it turns out that that's how others wanted it as well. If one knew that, one would continuously be doing things over. "My youngest son and I visited the locale of the story in the U.S. We saw Taylor's Falls and Glader Cemetery, where Kristina would have been buried. I was in the church and even sat in the café where Vilhelm Moberg also sat in his time. It was a way to familiarize myself with the setting. It is interesting that Taylor's Falls actually exists. It is interesting that the events which take place in the novels are concurrently documentary and fictional. But what one can never imagine in our generation, as opposed to during Moberg's time, is the emigrants' daily existence. The unbelievable hardship. The hunger, migration and travelling to some place completely unknown, the feeling of standing in the middle of nothing and persuading oneself that at this moment hear and now, we are home. Today's refugees can certainly identify with the emigrants' desire to be elsewhere and their feeling of homesickness. But for the Swedish citizen of today it is practically unimaginable to understand the bottomless poverty in Småland and the enormous difficulties of life which people experienced. Not that we considered this during the auditions. But in hindsight I think it is a favorable point that we don't have any tall blonde artists in leading rolls. "The night after the première I didn't sleep at all. By nine o'clock the next morning I sat with members of the ensemble reading the newspapers. Everywhere they were writing that the musical was a success. The TV stations broadcast as their lead story how successful the show was and I was able to bask in that feeling a long time. With that feeling of how happy one can be about something one has worked so hard to achieve. I thought that the joy I felt can be a buffer for another occasion when things don't turn out so well. "And then of course it is a shame that we cannot know what Vilhelm Moberg would have thought. It would have been great to hear him say, 'You did real well on that, fella's.' " Spring 1998 Previous page | Last page The Musical | Background | Interactive guide | Merchandise | Downloadables | Swedish