January 5, 2013 the Danish composer Hanne Ørvad passed away after fighting the illness sclerosis for a long time.
Hanne Ørvad was a professional singer in the Danish National Chamber Choir for almost 25 years before she became a composer. As a composer she was very inspired by words and often composed works for voice and with texts that supply the meanings of the musical context. She once said at the beginning of a lecture:
"I am a singer and a writer of music, and my natural mode of expression is music and sound. I think in sounds and tones, and I produce them, partly in the form of sung sounds and partly as heard, written-down sounds. And it's a long way from that to the spoken word."
In one way or another there has always been music, and above all song, in Ørvad's life, and there are over 50 titles in her work list, where the human voice is used in the majority of them, and a quarter of them are choral works.
Texts often have a greater meaning in Ørvad’s works, both the thoughts and utterances that are inherent in the words, and the particular expression of the actual spoken sounds. The clash of consonants, the colours of vowels, the rhythms of words to a great extent provide the material for the works. In this way Ørvad's music becomes entirely her own.