Two Faces of a Cathedral: Ákos Rózmann’s Black Illusions and Organ Piece No. III/a

Abstract

Abstract After composer and organist Ákos Rózmann (1939–2005) moved from his native Hungary to Sweden in 1971, it became his conviction that instrumental composition had no future, and he committed himself completely to the electroacoustic studio. An important part of Rózmann’s self-characterization and the early reception of his music was the statement that his electroacoustic compositions were the results of working as a spiritual medium. While the author demonstrates the relevance of this statement, he also challenges it by presenting an exception, Black Illusions (2003), Rózmann’s only work admittedly created as a sounding autobiography. He also presents Rózmann’s last finished composition, Organ Piece No. III/a—a “dizygotic twin brother” of Black Illusions—and the differing ways in which the two pieces are related to St. Eric’s Cathedral of Stockholm. One of them thematizes the church as a place of personal earthly suffering, while the other presents it as a symbolic stage of otherworldly processes.