Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Choir & Eric Ericson Chamber Choir conducted by Christian Lindberg.
I - De döda på torget (0:00) - Massakern (10:50) - Nitratens män (19:13) - Döden (24:33) - Hur fanorna föddes (29:16) - Jag kallar på dem (30:38) - Fienderna (36:25) - Här är de (43:16) - Alltid (46:32)
Pettersson's Symphony No.12 was composed between May 1973 and January 1974, being commissioned by Carl Rune Larsson for the 500th anniversary of the Uppsala University. The commission (one of the few Pettersson ever took) requested a work "contemporary in a profound sense". Petterson was inspired by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's book of poems "Canto General", using several poems as basis for a single-movement choral symphony. The piece was premiered on September 29 of 1977, being positively received although described as ill-suited for the occasion.
The nine poems that Allan Pettersson set to music are taken from the fifth part of "Canto General", entitled "The Sand Betrayed". They describe a massacre of innocent demonstrators that took place in Santiago de Chile on January 28 of 1946, known as the Plaza Bulnes massacre. On that day a manifestation took place in said plaza organized by the Communist Party of Chile, being attended by almost 20,000 people. This was done as a reaction against the illegalization of unions after saltpetre workers announced a strike. The manifestation itself was brutally suppressed by the Chilean police, with fifty people being injured and six dead. Several victims, such as 19-year-old unionist Ramona Parra, are quoted in Neruda's work. Pettersson would also use Neruda's "Canto General" for the 1974 cantata "Vox Humana".
The symphony became unexpectedly highly topical in August 1973, when a military junta led by Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende, beginning a repressive dictatorship that would last until 1990. Despite all of this, Pettersson remarked that the symphony was not political in nature, but that it signified a protest against all forms of cruelty between human beings. The score is preceded by the following foreword: "All of human history consists of man's cruelty to man — as in the beginning when one individual was set against another, and the weaker of them was struck down. And when the large popular collectives developed, this basic motif already existed and it was furthered by certain politicians into a persistent, appalling theme — that of gratuitous cruelty."
The symphony was subtitled "The Dead in the Square", the title of the first of the poems, and it was composed for choir and orchestra, the only one of his symphonies with vocal parts. The choir sings largely uninterruptedly, often very forcefully and in difficult registers, which makes the choral parts very demanding. Pettersson frequently lets the music go against the rhythm of the text. The style of the writing is recognizable from others of his symphonies with shifts between highly chromatic passages, sections that can best be described as atonal or as having free tonality, and others with exchanges between simple minor chords. The symphony contains few passages in which the listener can rest for any length of time in a well-defined tonality. And when this does occur, there are usually "disturbing" voices which maintain the tension and the anxiety. The listener is kept in a dramatic iron grip throughout just about the entire lengthy symphony. The text is characterized by cruelty and grief, but in the final strophe hope is rekindled, something that Pettersson chose to express in a vibrant chord of C major.
[Musical analysis is found in the comments section]
[Activate subtitles to see the lyrics in Swedish/English]
Picture: Photograph of the state repression against the protesters during the Plaza Bulnes massacre (1946).
Sources: tinyurl.com/2cbguqzz and tinyurl.com/27l3ld8q
To check the score: tinyurl.com/274r9jlc
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Choir & Eric Ericson Chamber Choir conducted by Christian Lindberg.
I - De döda på torget (0:00) - Massakern (10:50) - Nitratens män (19:13) - Döden (24:33) - Hur fanorna föddes (29:16) - Jag kallar på dem (30:38) - Fienderna (36:25) - Här är de (43:16) - Alltid (46:32)
Pettersson's Symphony No.12 was composed between May 1973 and January 1974, being commissioned by Carl Rune Larsson for the 500th anniversary of the Uppsala University. The commission (one of the few Pettersson ever took) requested a work "contemporary in a profound sense". Petterson was inspired by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's book of poems "Canto General", using several poems as basis for a single-movement choral symphony. The piece was premiered on September 29 of 1977, being positively received although described as ill-suited for the occasion.
The nine poems that Allan Pettersson set to music are taken from the fifth part of "Canto General", entitled "The Sand Betrayed". They describe a massacre of innocent demonstrators that took place in Santiago de Chile on January 28 of 1946, known as the Plaza Bulnes massacre. On that day a manifestation took place in said plaza organized by the Communist Party of Chile, being attended by almost 20,000 people. This was done as a reaction against the illegalization of unions after saltpetre workers announced a strike. The manifestation itself was brutally suppressed by the Chilean police, with fifty people being injured and six dead. Several victims, such as 19-year-old unionist Ramona Parra, are quoted in Neruda's work. Pettersson would also use Neruda's "Canto General" for the 1974 cantata "Vox Humana".
The symphony became unexpectedly highly topical in August 1973, when a military junta led by Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende, beginning a repressive dictatorship that would last until 1990. Despite all of this, Pettersson remarked that the symphony was not political in nature, but that it signified a protest against all forms of cruelty between human beings. The score is preceded by the following foreword: "All of human history consists of man's cruelty to man — as in the beginning when one individual was set against another, and the weaker of them was struck down. And when the large popular collectives developed, this basic motif already existed and it was furthered by certain politicians into a persistent, appalling theme — that of gratuitous cruelty."
The symphony was subtitled "The Dead in the Square", the title of the first of the poems, and it was composed for choir and orchestra, the only one of his symphonies with vocal parts. The choir sings largely uninterruptedly, often very forcefully and in difficult registers, which makes the choral parts very demanding. Pettersson frequently lets the music go against the rhythm of the text. The style of the writing is recognizable from others of his symphonies with shifts between highly chromatic passages, sections that can best be described as atonal or as having free tonality, and others with exchanges between simple minor chords. The symphony contains few passages in which the listener can rest for any length of time in a well-defined tonality. And when this does occur, there are usually "disturbing" voices which maintain the tension and the anxiety. The listener is kept in a dramatic iron grip throughout just about the entire lengthy symphony. The text is characterized by cruelty and grief, but in the final strophe hope is rekindled, something that Pettersson chose to express in a vibrant chord of C major.
[Musical analysis is found in the comments section]
[Activate subtitles to see the lyrics in Swedish/English]
Picture: Photograph of the state repression against the protesters during the Plaza Bulnes massacre (1946).
Sources: tinyurl.com/2cbguqzz and tinyurl.com/27l3ld8q
To check the score: tinyurl.com/274r9jlc
