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Listening to Eternity

The Music, Spirituality, and Creative World of Composer Tommie Haglund

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Pub Date 2 Sep 2025 | Archive Date 13 Nov 2025
Swedenborg Foundation | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles

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Description

Listening to Eternity invites readers on an extraordinary journey through the life and creative process of Tommie Haglund, one of Sweden's most renowned contemporary classical composers. His music, often described as introspective and spiritual, has touched audiences worldwide. One of the book's most compelling aspects is its exploration of the connection between Haglund's music and his spiritual life. The composer's relationship with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg weave through the narrative.

Listening to Eternity invites readers on an extraordinary journey through the life and creative process of Tommie Haglund, one of Sweden's most renowned contemporary classical composers. His music...


A Note From the Publisher

Interviewee, Tommie Haglund; Introduction by John Mills

eBook: 9780877857365

Interviewee, Tommie Haglund; Introduction by John Mills

eBook: 9780877857365


Advance Praise

Haglund’s music—and his personal story—is a spiritual revelation in an otherwise spirit-poor time. Such a book is an important contribution to the literature on Swedish classical music and is written in such a way that it is accessible to the wide audience that has taken his music to their heart.

Erik Wallrup, Associate Professor of Aesthetics at Södertörn University, Stockholm, and author of Being Musically Attuned: The Act of Listening to Music.

Listening to Eternity is a timely book. Gracefully written, poised and insightful, it offers an intimate and engaging portrait of one of Sweden’s hidden secrets. Tommie Haglund is that rare example of a composer who has heard the heavenly choirs and has devoted his life to sharing the experience.

Stephen McNeilly, Swedenborg Society Executive Director

Tommie Haglund is a composer for whom everything is connected. There is not a meaningless note in his work, no padding, no superficial effects, only a presence so deep that it intervenes in the serious listener's life. How everything is charged with meaning becomes even clearer when you read his biography.

Torbjörn Elensky, Author, Culture Writer and Essayist

A powerful and beautiful book! I was engrossed in every detail. Yardumian takes us on a fascinating journey as he opens our ears, minds and hearts to the transformational music of the highly lauded Swedish composer Tommie Haglund, connecting us to our “inner universe”, our “sanctuary for the soul”. This is an inspirational story of human suffering . . . and the joy of transcendence, through the harmonicity of Artistic Musical Creativity, personal resilience, incandescence, empathy, subtlety and authenticity, guided by Truth.

Chika Robertson, Professor of Violin, The Royal Academy of Music, London

In this beautiful array of scintillating and sometimes shockingly personal interviews, readers are given a rare glimpse into the inner life of one of Scandinavia’s greatest contemporary classical composers. Not just lovers of classical music will find much of interest in this

kaleidoscopic take on Tommie Haglund’s life and work—anyone who has sensed a mystical glimmer of wonder and awe behind the everyday, or become attuned to their own patterns of synchronicities (or, in Swedenborgian terms, correspondences) can resonate with the arc of Haglund’s story, a journey that spans from coastal Sweden to rural France, Maggie Thatcher’s drab England of the 1980’s to smoke-filled secret initiation rituals of the Ojibwa in Canada. Haglund’s music remains little known outside of Europe, and this book broadens an appreciation for not only his essential place in the broader development of modern classical music, but also that special category of visionary Swedish artists—among them August Strindberg and Hilma af Klint—whose work bears the imprint of their intense encounters with the works of Swedenborg.

Devin Zuber, Associate Professor of American Studies, Religion, & Literature, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley 

Haglund’s music—and his personal story—is a spiritual revelation in an otherwise spirit-poor time. Such a book is an important contribution to the literature on Swedish classical music and is written...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9780877853664
PRICE US$24.95 (USD)
PAGES 277

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