You Are the Earth Beneath You (Du är jorden under dig) is a large-scale work for soprano and orchestra, written to texts by Kerstin Söderholm (1897-1943).

​

The work is in six movements, each of the six poems being selected from Söderholm’s debut anthology Röster ur tingen (1923) and translated from Swedish to English by Sebastian Hilli.

​

The movements are:
I. I Walk in a Dazzling Light

II. I Fill in Stillness

III. Sunshine Morning

IV. Take Me Earth!

V. You Are the Earth Beneath You

VI. Rest

​

The poems, introspective in nature, trace the narrator’s relationship with themselves, the Earth, and the entire universe. They reveal feelings of existential anxiety, helplessness, exhaustion and a longing for purpose.

Nature plays a prominent role in the poems, having a symbolic and concrete presence throughout all six poems. Nature emerges as a force that is at once powerful, beautiful, sensual and embracing, and at times threatening or comforting. Serving as a metaphor, it bridges the narrator’s inner world and their connection to the wider world.

Like nature itself, sometimes still and sometimes flowing, unpredictable and ever-evolving, the music emerges from surrendering to the stream of emotions and to the cycle of life.

The work is commissioned by and dedicated to Anu Komsi.