What People Are Saying: Torun Kirby Torbo
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Torun Kirby Torbo
Journalist, Norwegian
Broadcasting Company
Oslo, Norway
What excites me about SDG:
I am very happy to know that there is an organization like SDG. There is a lot of sacred classical music around, but all too often it is treated as “absolute music,” with no regard to the spiritual aspect. Here is an organization that lifts up the message inside the pieces and reminds us that the themes for the masses, the passions and the oratorios are texts with deep and profound meanings.
I also love the fact that SDG commissions new sacred works, thus extending the tradition of the great classical composers, and that SDG has no economic interests in doing so. It is purely for the love of the Word in music.
My favorite SDG experience
I am fairly new to SDG, but I have already had some strong musical experiences. Most notably the performance of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, performed in Naarden, the Netherlands, June 2010. I couldn’t go there to see it, but live streaming technology enabled me to follow the entire performance from my own computer. I also had the pleasure of interviewing conductor John Nelson for the Norwegian Radio. He came across as a very energetic and deeply engaged musician, with a genuine feeling for the spiritual content of the music.
My favorite sacred music
Being a traverso player, I have played a very large amount of sacred music in my time. For me, it is a wonderful experience because, like singing, playing a wind instrument is a way of linking the body to the soul.
There are so many great pieces that I have a very hard time choosing. But maybe the one that has moved me the most is a simple little tune by Tallis, sometimes referred to as the “Third Tune of 1567.” It was used for a Fantasia by Vaughan-Williams, but I knew the “original” first, because my orchestra has played it as part of the liturgy in services. It is an amazingly calm, serene piece of music, and with a good choir and a good arrangement for the orchestra it gives a great opportunity for reflection and meditation.
A bit about me
I am Norwegian, 36 years old, mother of two small kids, and married to an American tenor (from Springfield, Illinois). We live in Oslo, where I work as a music journalist and play historical flutes (mainly baroque) as a freelancer, on the side. My education is within Early Music, but logistics and family life have made it necessary for both of us to calm down our travelling and get a more “regular” job; he works in the administration of the Norwegian Opera, I work for the main culture channel of the Norwegian Broadcasting Company. I have worked nearly full time at the radio now since 2008, and I am warming to the creativity of it. Our church life is connected to the American Lutheran Church in Oslo, where the classical music is not very present, but we get our fill of sacred classical music through regular participation in masses, oratorios and passions.
