This cantata was written to a poem by Johannes Jørgensen, who had previously provided the text for Nielsen's "Hymnus Amoris." Now Nielson wrote one of the most original and musically advanced of all compositions. Even the opening section of this tripartite composition is in a style which is a great departure from established musical language, at least as radical as anything that was being done in Vienna or Paris at the time.

And the central section, depicting a nightmare, is yet more radical. Nielsen's biographer Jack Lawson considers it as original as "The Rite of Spring," Stravinsky's masterpiece of ten years later. Nielsen described this as "the tumult of its many voices." A critic at its first performance (Copenhagen, 1905) wrote that it was "the wildest chase of the falsest notes" and predicted that even Nielsen's strongest supporters were "on the verge of withdrawing all allegiance" from the composer.

S¿vnen might have earned historical honors from commentators who have studied Nielsen's career and output, but it shares the fate of most of his ten cantatas: Except for "Springtime on Fyn" they are rarely performed.

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