Sten Hanson

Sten Hanson (1936–2013) was a Swedish composer, sound poet, and cultural organiser central to the international development of text-sound composition. A key figure at Fylkingen — Stockholm's society for contemporary music and intermedia art — from 1968, he led its language section and co-organised the landmark Text-Sound Festivals that brought the form to global attention. He served as chairman of the Swedish Composers' Union from 1985 to 1994 and was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. His compositions, among them Che and The Sonosopher Retrospective, combine spoken language with electroacoustic processing in ways that resist the boundary between poetry and music.