Baritone: Hannes Öberg
Piano: Erik Lissel

This is a song cycle based on the five poems from William Blake's Songs of innocence that deal with themes of the night. 
The songs are arranged in the following sequence:

1. Night
2. A cradle song
3. A dream
4. The little boy lost
5. The little boy found

Recorded live in Sunne kyrka, August 12 2013.

The Night songs is the first larger work I wrote after finishing College. They were written during an intensive week in September 2012 and became my first larger work to be performed abroad (in Vienna by Anthony Schneider and Rosemary Barnes in May 2013) as well as the first larger work to recieve multiple performances.
The songs were originally written for tenor Martin Lindau and pianist Rasmus Andersson, both of whom I studied with at Ingesund College of Music. Unfortunately they have yet to perform the piece.
Instead the Swedish premiere (heard here) was held by baritone Hannes Öberg and pianist Erik Lissel as part of their program "Sånger ur natten" (Songs of the night).
They have also been mentioned in the publication Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly (vol. 49 No. 4, 2016).

Night Songs Op. 6 (complete)

This is the second of my six Goethe-Lieder. 

The complete opus contains the following settings:

1. An den Mond
2. Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
3. Der König in Thule
4. Meeres Stille
5. Wanderers Nachtlied
6. Die schöne Nacht

Texts by: Johann Wolfgang von Goehte
Music by: David Unger

Baritone and piano: David Unger

Sechs Goethe-Lieder Op. 14 No. 2 - Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

This is my first prelude and fugue for piano. The prelude is a short fuguration prelude and the fugue is in strict counterpoint in three voices.

Prelude and fugue in d minor (complete) played by Stijn Claeys, for piano

This is my setting of Atle Burmans text Jag anar någons närhet nu (I can sense someone's closeness now) performed live by:
Cecilia Alrikson, soprano
Eric Lammers, guitar
Recorded in Figeholms kyrka, June 18 2023

Jag anar någons närhet nu, for song and guitar

This short sonata is paying hommage to Joseph Haydn, who's piano sonatas I studied while learning to compose in sonata form. The first movement is based on sketches from way back 2015, when I first tried my hand on composing my own sonatas. It was heavily revised in 2023, when I added it to a rondo composed in 2021 to complete a two movement sonata, that pays hommage to Haydn's short sonata in the same key (Hob. XVI:51), which in turn, although it has no dedicatee in the published editions, was sent to English composer Maria Hester Park as a thank you for some pieces sent to him by her in 1794. Hester Park's Sonata in C Major Op. 7 (from 1796) was, among others, one of the inspirations for my second piano sonata. So in a way this hommage is to the both of them.

The two movements are:
1. Allegro (Sonata-allegro form)
2. Vivace (Five part rondo form)

Piano Sonata No. 3 "Hommage" in D Major Op. 29 No. 1 (complete)

This is a small Magnificat composed as the final project for the composition class I took at Luleå University in the fall of 2023.
It is scored for a chamber setting of mezzosoprano, SAB and string trio and consists of three movements, wtih an opening choral movement, a solo recitative and a three voice canon:

1. Magnificat (SAB and strings)
2. Fecit potentiam (mezzosoprano and cello)
3. Gloria Patri (SAB and strings)

According to my professor "The choral writing in this is masterful", which of course was wonderful to hear. 

In lack of a real recording of the work, you are here presented with the midi from my MuseScore program.

Magnificat in Bb Major Op. 28, for mezzosoprano, SAB and string trio

In the fall of 2024 I celebrate 20 years since I started studying composition.
As a way of marking that I decided to collect these movements, all modelled on other composer's works, into one coherent piano sonata.

The respective movements are all modelled on a separate composers work.

Mvt. 1 "Allegro molto" is modelled on a movement by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Mvt. 2 "Andante cantabile" is modelled on a movement by Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831)
Mvt. 3 "Tempo di minuetto" is based on a musical game by Johann Philipp Kirnberger (1721-1783)
Mvt. 4 "Vivace" is modelled on a movement by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)

The idea for composing movements based on other composer's work came from an excercise found in Carl Czerny's book The School of practical composition Op. 600 published in 1830 in which he too recomposes the same movement by Mozart I have used for the first movement.

Piano Sonata No. 5 "Sonata parodia" in D Major Op. 31 (complete)

My fourth sonata is very much related to the third in that it to a large degree is composed upon old sketches, that have been cleaned up and recomposed. 
The title "Den lille prinsen" means The little prince and that is because of the small format but at the same time somewhat regal, although innocent character of the movements, especially in the slow minuet that makes up the second movement.
This is also by far my easiest sonata to play.
The sonata consists of the following movements:

1. Allegro vivace
2. Tempo di minuetto

Piano Sonata No. 4 "The little prince" in G Major Op. 29 Nr. 2 (complete)

This is my second string quartet, composed in September 2024.
"Den grälsjuka" means The quarrelsome and refers to the conflict between the violins at the beginning of the first movement, when the second violin tries to "correct" the phrase endings of the first violin, who only after eight measures follows suit and does what the second violin (and in the fifth measure even the viola) tries to get it to do.

It is composed in three movements:

1. Allegretto con spirito
2. Adagio sostenuto
3. Tempo di minuetto

String quartet No. 2 in A Major "Den grälsjuka" Op. 32 (midi recording)

This is my second guitar sonata composed in January 2025, performed live in Vetlanda church March 25th 2025 by guitarrist Eric Lammers.

Sheet music to be published by Bergmann Edition alongside my first Sonata in D Major late 2025 to early 2026.

Guitar sonata No. 2 "The autumn evening" in a minor Op. 33 No. 2 (live performance).

This is a short prelude and fugue written for a collegue at work, back in 2019 (this is the revised version from 2023).
The two movements are connected by the theme of the prelude which comes back as countersubject in the fugue. 

Since I work in educating church cantors I have long wanted to write an organ fugue.
But since I do not play the organ myself, it didn't come naturally, until I listened to Bach's prelude and fugue in D Major, and found that an organ fugue can actually be humourous as well as well constructed by all the rules that comes with the genre.
I hope that my piece conveys some of that sense of humour as well as being contrapuntally sound, albeit being a much smaller and, if I dare say so, less pretentious work.

Prelude and fugue in C Major Op. 20, for organ (midi recording)

This is a short piano sonata in the Classical style dedicated to my mother for her 70th birthday.
It consists of three movements in the following sequence

1. Allegro scherzando (Sonata-allegro form) 
2. Andante semplice (varied ABABA form) 
3. Presto amabile (Five part Rondo form)

The Jane Austen sonata began its life as a Lied ohne Worte (the second movement) inspired by music from the movies of Jane Austen's books, hence the title.
To this I added what was originally intended as an opening movement to a never completed violin sonata and thought that I'd call it a two movement sonatina.
But as my Mother's 70th birthday was coming up I thought that I'd give her a special gift and composed the Rondo finale based on three themes spelling out the musical cipher of her three names (Ingrid Eleonora Unger) and so the sonata was complete.
In fact the last revisions where made as late as the morning of her birthday! 

Piano Sonata No. 1 "In Jane Austen's salon" in Eb Major Op. 21 (complete)

This is my string quartet in d minor.
The name Ave Maria comes from a short quotation of my song Ave Maria in the middle of the second movement.
It consists of three movements:

1. Allegro poco drammatico
2. Allegretto - Andante - Allegretto
3. Allegro molto agitato - Tempo di marcia - Allegro molto agitato

The score has been published by Gusthold Music Publisher and can be found here:

www.gustholdmusic.com

The String quartet in d minor started as an example on the white board during a lecture on part writing for strings. The white board example can still be heard unchanged as the first eight bars of the second movement.
The eight bars then turned into a full movement as I was teaching contrasts and how to possibly build upon a first material.
To that movement I later added the first and third movements to create a complete work for the school's string quartet.
Since the students were all rather early in their development all parts are written completely in first position on all instruments.
In May 2020 the work was published by Gusthold Music Publisher in USA. 

String quartet No. 1 in d minor "Ave Maria" Op. 12 (complete)

Soprano: Cecilia Alrikson
Piano: Terés Löf

1. Escape at bedtime (text: Robert Loius Stevenson)
2. The more loving one (text: Wystan Hugh Auden)
3. The angel (text: William Blake)

Recorded live at Västervik Chamber Music Festival August 14, 2020.

Some have said that this may be the best pieces I have written all together. Whether that is true or not I leave to others to decide. But writing these songs I was very inspired, not least by Liza Lehmann, whom I had just discovered at the time, and her wonderful song cycle "The daisy chain" where she too sets Stevenson's Escape at bedtime, although her song is called Stars.
Inspired by her writing I set the first two songs in this cycle within two days in the fall of 2014.
The final song, set to a poem from Blake's "Songs of experience" is written in a more Schumannesque fashion, with the odd feature of starting in Major and ending in Minor.
All together, the three songs represent the protagonists relation to the night from childhood, through adolecense and old age, starting off rather naive but gradually becoming more serious and ending with an outburst. 

Three nocturnal songs Op. 11 (live performance)

This is my second piano sonata "Joie de vivre" in C Major.
It consists of four movements in the following sequence:

1. Allegro molto (Sonata-allegro form) 
2. Scherzo (Scherzo and Trio) 
3. Andante semplice (ABA form) 
4. Allegro giocoso (Seven part Rondo form)

This is my second "Grand Sonata", following my Violin sonata No. 1, including both a dance movement and a slow movement, in this case the second movement is a Scherzo.

The first movement starts with a scalar motif inspired by Maria Hester Park's C Major sonata op. 7, but whereas she uses the scalar figure to develop a very fluent lyrical theme in the style Mozart I am more influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn in the exposition, with its short contrasting phrases and sudden shifts in dynamics. The development following is however in pure Mozart in style starting in the tonic minor and moving through g minor and D Major before cadencing in A Major and then moving back through a dramatic passage over the circle of fifths. 

The second movement is an a minor Scherzo which owes its opening figure to the piano concerto of Robert Schumann, but what follows is a typically classical Scherzo, with a C Major Trio section with much reminicense of the style of Haydn's Minuets. 

The third movement, in F major, is written in a mostly two voice texture influenced by the figured bass style of the Baroque (some have told me they get a "feeling" if not a direct influence of Domenico Scarlatti). 

The last movement is in a Haydnesque contrapuntal style with formal influences from the seven part rondos of Sofia Dussek. Influences of Muzio Clementi are also strong in this movement which rounds off the sonata by stating its three themes in the same key order as the previous movements (A is in C Major as the first movement, B in A minor as the second and C in F major as the third movement was).

The work is dedicated to my wife Desiree with much love. 

Piano Sonata No. 2 "Joie de vivre" in C major Op. 23 (midi recording)

I am a music teacher at Oskarshams Folkhögskola, where I teach classical singing, composition, music theory and chamber music. 
I am also a singer with primarily art songs on my repertoire, a hobby composer and poet and a founding member of the Mönsterås Jazz and Chamber Music Society.
I studied composition at Ingesund College of Music and Baroque counterpoint at Uppsala University and mostly write vocal music for song and piano, and/or choir but eventually compose for other instruments and ensembles as well.
I have been called "a radiant talent in finding the essentials in different musical styles" (Arvika Nyheter, December 4, 2006) and regional news paper Barometern wrote that my music shows "good insight in choice of melody and harmonic part writing" (September 25, 2012).
My music has been performed in Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Sweden and USA.

Notable works are:

"Three nocturnal Songs Op. 11", song cycle of three songs for soprano and piano. Premiered by Cecilia Alrikson and Natalja Shakova in Oskarshamn, Sweden in 2018.

"Night songs Op. 6", song cycle of five songs for baritone and piano. Premiered by Anthony Schneider and Rosemary Barnes in Vienna, Austria in 2013.

"Ave Maria - String quartet in d minor Op. 12", string quartet in three movements. Published by Gusthold Music, USA in 2020.

"Av hjärtat, sjung! Op. 22", cantata in five movements for STB soloists, SATB and childrens choir, string quartet and piano. Comissioned for the opening concert of the four day festival "L'Esprit - upplev 1700-talet" (L'Esprit - Experience the 18th century) in 2020.

"Joie de vivre - Piano sonata No. 2" Op. 23, sonata in four movements for solo piano. Composed in 2020.

"Jaktsonaten - Violin sonata No. 1 Op. 13", sonata in four movements for violin and piano. Composed in 2016.
 
I have been published by:

Gusthold Music Publisher (www.gustholdmusic.com) 
- String quartet in D minor "Ave Maria Op. 12" (May 2020)

Flauto d'Amore Editions
(www.flautodamoreproject.com)
- Danza, for Flauto d'Amore or C-flute (June 2020)

Psalmportalen (www.psalmportalen.se)
- Three congregational hymns (Herre Gud, vi lovar dig, När det känns som att allt ljus försvinner and Ett litet barn, Marias son) (Summer 2017)

I hope you will find something here to listen to that you will enjoy!

Photography for my profile image: Anna Broette

David Unger | Composer

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