Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0015/00158.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00158}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Denmark
Danish Music After 1945}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Knud Ketting}
$Affiliation{Press and Cultural Relations}
$Subject{music
danish
musical
works
composer
opera
composers
new
first
copenhagen}
$Date{1988}
$Log{}
Title:       Denmark
Book:        Fact Sheets on Denmark
Author:      Knud Ketting
Affiliation: Press and Cultural Relations
Date:        1988

Danish Music After 1945

     When Denmark in May 1945 again flung open her doors to the free world,
music educator and later professor Gunnar Heerup took stock in the journal
Levende Musik (Living Music): "For a good many years now we have in Denmark
both voluntarily, smugly, and involuntarily, impatiently been living on our
national heritage; but necessary as the national genius may be as the origin
of all things it is equally inadequate in the further progress of culture.
We are facing the danger that the cultures of Russia and the United States
will embrace each other across the Pacific and leave a vacuum above Central
and Northern Europe. We must counter that danger by attracting the cultural
upheavals from East and West to our country; we believe that they will not
crush us but only enhance our national life in a long and rich future."

     With these words Heerup, consciously or subconsciously, struck out
against the mighty shadow of Carl Nielsen. It had loomed large over Danish
musical life since the composer's death in 1931 and it would be several years
before the national genius would pick up some truly fresh impulses. When they
did arrive it was from neither East nor West but, as in the past, from the
South.

     The first postwar years were dominated by composers who in the 1930s had
found their individual ways of self-expression in music, although all had that
unmistakeably Danish sound: Jens Bjerre (b. 1903); Svend Erik Tarp (b. 1908);
Jorgen Jersild (b. 1913); Svend S. Schultz (b. 1913); and Knudage Riisager
(1897-1974). And all were to some degree inspired by France in style and
instrumentation. Bernhard Christensen (b.1906) had devoted himself
particularly to jazz while Finn Hoffding (b. 1899) together with Jorgen
Bentzon (1897-1951) had done much for popular music education. Vagn Holmboe
(b. 1909) drew on folk music by way of B*ela Bart*ok while Herman D. Koppel
(b. 1908), a superb pianist as well, most clearly of all took Carl Nielsen as
his point of departure and was the last to rehearse the Nielsen piano works
under the direction of the composer himself. In Flemming Weis (1898-1981)
neoclassicistic expressions were joined with a pronounced musicianly
temperament. Both Hoffding and Holmboe have moreover been important teachers
of composition at the Copenhagen Conservatory. Among the major works written
during these years are Riisager's spirited Czerny paraphrase, Les Etudes,
which together with Harald Lander's choreography conquered the great stages of
the world; Bentzon's Racconti for varying chamber orchestrations with a
strongly personal polyphonic style; Hoffding's The Arsenal at Springfield for
soloists, chorus and orchestra to the lyrics of Longfellow (1953); Schult'z
beautifully sombre opera Harvest (1950); and among the symphonic literature
Tarp's Symphony in E flat (1949), and Holmboe's Fifth Symphony which was first
performed at the International Music Festival in Copenhagen in 1947 and
contains obvious elements of the musical metamorphosis technique that would
later become this composer's hallmark.

     Koppel's light, lyrical Fifth Symphony might symbolically be called the
coping stone of this period. It won the contest for a symphonic work for the
inauguration of the newly erected concert hall in Tivoli Gardens in 1956. The
former concert hall had been blown up during the German occupation.

Two individualists

     A few composers do not fit neatly into the overall picture of Danish
music life at the time. This is true above all of Rued Langgaard (1893-1952)
who throughout his life remained loyal to the late Romantic School which Carl
Nielsen and his contemporaries had roundly denounced. From 1940 he served as
an organist at Ribe Cathedral where he had reason to feel isolated from the
musical circles who wanted nothing of his compositions, often written in
feverish haste. In our time renewed interest in the late Romantic period has
led to first performances of a number of unplayed Langgaard scores, most
recently the Biblical opera Antichrist. But even today it is difficult to get
a complete overview of his production, in terms of neither quality nor
quantity despite the dedicated efforts of the young musicologist Bendt
Viinholt Nielsen.

     Ebbe Hamerik (1898-1951) demonstrated his strong personality as a
composer of operas and symphonies. His opera Marie Grubbe (1940) has joined
the ranks of Danish national operas with a lyrical outlook and melodies
reminiscent of folk tunes. But it is equally characteristic of his position in
Danish musical life that two of his operas received their first performance
abroad while his last musical drama, the polytonal The Dreamers (1949), based
on a novella by Karen Blixen, lay idle until the Jutland Opera in Arhus
produced it for the stage in 1974, 23 years after Hamerik's death.

The Comet

     The occupation was the time when a comet started soaring towards the
galaxy of Danish music: Niels Viggo Bentzon (b. 1919), a graduate in music
theory, organ and piano playing from the Conservatory in Copenhagen who had
his debut as a pianist in 1943. To the public he was already known as a
composer. And things have moved fast since then. So far he has turned out
nearly 500 compositions, mainly instrumental music but of such variegated
nature which defies description in brief. Most characteristic of his early
works is his preoccupation with the technique of metamorphosis which also Vagn
Holmboe has cultivated. An example of this period in the creative life of
Bentzon is his Fourth Symphony (1949) which appropriately is entitled
Metamorphoses.

     Around 1960 Bentzon, together with several other Danish composers, was
caught by the potentialities of the twelve-tone technique which already 10
years earlier he had dealt with in the first book in Danish on the subject.

From Darmstadt to Denmark

     In the summer of 1946 the West German town of Darmstadt launched its
annual international courses in new music. These courses were to become an
important source of inspiration for composers from all over the world and the
international breakthrough of Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among
others.

     Danish composers too, went to Darmstadt. Among the first was Axel
Borup-Jorgensen (b. 1924) who had himself intensively studied the twelve-tone
technique in the music of Arnold Schonberg and Anton Webern and saw his
impulses reaffirmed in studies in Darmstadt in 1959 and 1962. Borup-Jorgensen
has not made direct use of the composing styles he became acquainted with in
Darmstadt but in his personal style of expression we find several twelve-tone
characteristics: an almost aphoristic concentration coupled with a huge
richness of detail in rhythm, dynamics and sound. He has written mostly
chamber music but internationally he is best known for two orchestral works,
Nordic Summer Pastoral (which in 1965 won a composition contest sponsored by
Denmark's Radio) and Marin (1970).

     Poul Rovsing Olsen (b. 1922) has supplemented his inspirations from
Darmstadt with studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. His
studies of music ethnology have inspired him to borrow traits from Arabian and
Indian music. In his later works such as the Lorca opera Belisa (1966)
serialism has clearly been supplanted by the Gallic and non-European
influence.

     Jan Maegaard (b. 1926) has won international fame as an expert on
Schonberg and has stayed in the United States for several periods. In a
limited but exquisite production he has continued his development along the
course charted by his Schonberg studies and the Darmstadt School, unaffected
by later trends towards the socalled 'new simplicity', and rediscovered
major-minor tonality.

An avantgardist before avantgardism

     An isolated figure in Danish music is Gunnar Berg (b. 1909). He was born
in Switzerland, the son of a Swedish mother and a Danish father. Not until he
was a grown-up man and working as an engineer did he acquire first-hand
knowledge of Danish musical life. While taking a private music education he
wrote a number of works but the critics had scant sympathy for him when in
1945 he made his official debut in Copenhagen with an evening of his
compositions. In 1948 he left for Paris and during the following decade he
travelled in Central Europe, practically without any contact with Danish
musical life. A turning point came with his introduction to the French
composer Olivier Messiaen and his circle, and he also met Karlheinz
Stockhausen at the 1952 Darmstadt course. In 1957 he returned to Denmark
together with his wife B*eatrice Berg, a pianist, who until her premature
death in 1976 would interpret not only her husband's recondite music for the
piano but also introduce Danish concertgoers to a number of other avantgardist
piano works. In physical circumstances, which have at times been desperately
inadequate, Berg has uncompromisingly continued to compose in his
characteristic brief, crystalline style which only in recent years has
attracted the attention of a wider circle.

Bypassing Darmstadt

     Among the composers who consciously avoided the influence from the South
is Svend Westergaard (b. 1922). He studied in Italy but his compositions are
clearly rooted in the Nordic tradition, perhaps with a shade of Bartok. His
production is modest in volume but of exquisite quality.

     Peder Holm (b. 1926) too stayed away from the avantgardist camp. His
contribution to Danish musical life lies mainly in the educational aspect and
most of his compositions were commissioned.

     Ole Schmidt (b. 1928) is equally well known as a composer and conductor.
He is responsible for a widely acclaimed complete recording of the Carl
Nielsen Symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra. To some extent his
compositions betray his past as a jazz pianist and are all pervaded by the
fascination with rhythm found in a performing musician.

     Henning Wellejus (b. 1919) has become Denmark's most durable
representative of neoclassicism. With great craftsmanship he devotes himself
to a style designated to please the audience, and in the public debate he has
often come out against the less accessible music forms.

     Leif Kayser (b. 1919) not only has a music education but following
studies in Rome of philosophy and theology he was ordained. As a symphonist
he builds on Carl Nielsen and in his orchestral works he has demonstrated his
mastery of instrumentation which since 1964 he has been passing on to his
students at the Conservatory in Copenhagen.

Church musicians

     Bernhard Lewkovitch (b. 1927) who was raised in the tradition of the
Catholic faith has developed into the major composer of contemporary Danish
church music. Organ music aside, purely instrumental music occupies only a
minor role in his production which in addition to large works also features
choral movements and chorals for organ all of which are widely used in the
Danish national liturgy.

     For Leif Thybo (b. 1922), an organist and composer, Stravinsky has been
the principal inspiration. Among his works is the opera The Immortal Story
(1971) based on the text of Karen Blixen, but he is known chiefly as a
composer of church music. He has performed his own works on extensive tours
of Europe and the United States.

Norgard and Norholm

     Per Norgard (b. 1932) began his career as a composer as an eager
champion of Nordic unity in music. His encounter with the international
avantgardist movement at festivals for new music in Rome in 1955 and Cologne
in 1956 resulted in a radical reorientation and in recent years Norgard has
won international acclaim with works whose tonal basis derives from a
so-called infinite series and has rhythmic and time proportions which are
rooted in the Golden Section, known from ancient times but so far never
practised in music. For his opera Gilgamesh (1973) Norgard was the first
Dane to be awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1974. His most recent
major work is his Third Symphony for chorus and orchestra (1976) which plays
for more than one hour and was one of Denmark's contributions to the concerts
of the European Broadcasting Union.

     Already in his school days Ib Norholm (b. 1931) wrote his first opera,
The Snail and the Rose Hedge, from a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen. For
his musical point of departure he drew on the Carl Nielsen tradition but his
encounter in the late 1950s with the Central European avantgardism caused a
radical shift in style to serial music which in turn in the mid-1960s was
superseded by a pluralistic style equating traditional and innovative
elements. Today Norholm is one of the few Danish composers who has
successfully combined the lyrical melodious tradition with significant new
experience. His musical drama in particular, e.g. The Young Park (1970) and
The Garden Wall (1976), has impressed the Danish music audience.

     Both Norgard and Norholm have also been greatly important as mentors
for the young generation of Danish composers. After teaching for some years at
the Conservatory in Copenhagen Norgard, together with a large group of his
students in composition, in 1963 left for the Jutland Conservatory of Music in
Arhus where jointly with the Director of the Conservatory, the composer Tage
Nielsen (b. 1929) he became the centre of an unusually fertile environment for
new musical compositions. After teaching at the Funen Conservatory of Music in
Odense for some years Norholm has since 1973 (together with Niels Viggo
Bentzon) been teaching composition theory at the Conservatory in Copenhagen.
Norholm has also been a central figure as chairman of the Society of Young
Musicians, the Danish section of the International Society for Contemporary
Music (ISCM), during the period 1973-80

Fluxus

     In the early 1960s the Fluxus movement, inspired by the American George
Maciuna, reached Denmark. Few Danish composers embraced this form of artistic
nihilism but the happenings served at the Fluxus Festival of the Society of
Young Musicians in Copenhagen in November 1962 created a vehement debate and
turned the broad public against all recent progressive music. Poet Klaus
Rifbjerg was prompted to make this commentary:

     I have confidence in you!
the inverted graphics of empty note sheets furious orchestras, challenged
conductors fuming association members, pregnant critics red-hot soloist - I
have confidence in you!

     Henning Christiansen (b. 1932) was the Danish composer who most eagerly
made the Fluxus effects his own. However, his turning point as a composer did
not happen until the mid-1960s when he changed his style to almost provocative
simplicity. A good example of his deliberately broadly aimed musical message
is his music for the movie version of Hans Scherfig's novel The Clerk Who
Disappeared.

Electronic music

     In the scanning of the extremes of musical effects electronic music has
found adherents in Denmark as well. In this context the Danish town of
Holstebro was to put its imprint on developments when in 1967 it hired Jorgen
Plaetner (b. 1930) as town composer with own electronic music studio. Plaetner
had already before that time been into electronic music. Among his principal
taped compositions are Figures in Water (1971).

     Other Danish composers as well have left the lure of the infinite
universe of electronic music. For many years Else Marie Pade (b. 1924) was one
of the most active, and after working for at time in Stockholm at the
Elektronstudiet Bent Lorentzen (b. 1935) has created a number of works in
which he has managed to combine electrophony with traditional musical effects,
for instance in the witty chamber opera This Sounds Like Something by Mozart
which was first performed by the Kiel Opera in 1974.

     Jens Wilhelm Pedersen (b. 1939), a musical Jack of all trades who under
the name of Fuzzy gained national fame, has also worked with electrophony
while Per Norgard was commissioned by Denmark's Radio to write electronic
intermission music for television (1970) which aroused strong reactions among
the viewers. Recently Gunner Moller Pedersen (b. 1943) has publicised
electronic music through the Danish Society for Electronic Music and frequent
concerts in the handsome and unique indoor garden of the New Carlsberg
Glyptotek in Copenhagen.

Pluralism of style

     Around 1970 a pronounced reaction emerged to the thoroughly organised
principles of composition of the Darmstadt School and its complex,
non-thematic music. The picture still appears so mixed and with the details in
such close perspective that a generalisation seems out of place. A few general
trends do stand out, however. Stylistically, the frequently used term 'new
simplicity' applies to a large number of works which does not imply, though,
that they have reached a larger audience than the complex music of the 1960s.
At the same time composers have shown a much greater taste for and capability
of getting involved in musical life as performers, intermediaries and
organisers. Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (b. 1932) has often worked with
collage-like forms in which combinations of strongly contrasting elements of
style assume a grotesque, dryly humouristic effect. He himself points to
Samuel Be@ckett as one of his major sources of inspiration.

     Yngve Jan Trede (b. 1933) is of German origin and settled in Denmark in
1966 after studying in Hamburg and Rome. Many of his more recent works were
first performed by the Musica Danica Ensemble in which he is himself active
both as a pianist and harpsichordist.

     Erik Norby (b. 1936) is the Romanticist among contemporary Danish
composers. He has unashamedly espoused the programme music at which others
look askance and has won international acclaim for his symphonic poem The
Rainbow Snake (1975) which was impressive not least because of its richness of
sound and skillful instrumentation. Mogens Winkel Holm (b. 1936) has
undertaken important jobs as an organiser and has also worked as a music
critic. As a composer he has made a name for himself primarily through his
musical dramas, among them the chamber opera Sonata for Four Opera Singers
(1969) and several ballets, the latter in collaboration with his brother,
choreographer Eske Holm.

     Sven Erik Werner (b. 1937) was employed by Denmark's Radio 1963-70, and
since 1974 he has been serving as Director of the Funen Conservatory of Music
in Odense. Several of his works, e.g. the opera The Holy Communion (1973) and
the TV opera So Much Has Been Created (1974) reflect a personal confrontation
with a Catholic background.

     Svend Nielsen (b. 1937) achieved a combination of a frequently
through-composed serial style with a lyrical timbre polyphony of an almost
neoimpressionistic variety. Among his principal works is Nuages (1972), a sort
of programme symphony describing several cloud formations.

     Ingolf Gabold (b. 1942) has during several periods been employed by
Denmark's Radio. His production consists almost exclusively of vocal music
which is tied to extramusical ideas and concepts, often borrowed from the
depth psychology of Jung. In 1971 his TV opera Seven Scenes for Orpheus won
him the Salzburger Opernpreis.

Youngest generation

     Early on Ole Buck (b. 1945) who like other important young composers
was educated by Per Norgard at the Jutland Conservatory of Music, made a
name for himself with a series of works of crystalline clarity.

     Karl Aage Rasmussen (b. 1947) has made a much valued contribution as
organiser and musical director of the Elsinore Players, an ensemble which also
internationally has succeeded in asserting themselves as interpreters of
contemporary music. His own musical style is clearly marked by speech-song and
collage effects.

     Bo Holten (b. 1948) is a composer, music critic and director of Ars Nova,
a vocal ensemble specialising in the performance of medieval and Renaissance
music as well as contemporary music. Not surprisingly most of his works
contain vocal elements. His interest in modern English music is also reflected
in his own works, e.g. in his first opera The Bond (1979) based on a short
story by Karen Blixen.

     Poul Ruders (b. 1949) was educated by Ib Norholm and also works as an
organist. His speech-song and montage technique may be heard in the choral
work Stabat Mater (1974) which in addition to the ancient sequence uses a
crass speech-song collage by the composer himself.

     Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952) has been hailed by several critics as the
greatest talent among the youngest composers. In 1970 he founded, together
with his composer colleague Svend Aaquist Johansen (b. 1948), the Lyngby
Young Musicians who are devoted to the performance of contemporary works.
Abrahamsen is also an active musician while Aaquist Johansen on several
occasions has conducted performances of new music.

DUT and AUT

     While the new orchestral music reaches the Danish music audience
primarily through the radio and the concerts of the regional orchestras, much
of the new chamber music becomes known through concerts arranged by the
Society of Young Musicians in Copenhagen (DUT) and Aarhus Young Musicians in
Arhus (AUT). Both DUT and AUT collaborate with Denmark's Radio on some of the
concerts. Thus some of the concerts included in Denmark's Radio's January
Festival of New Music, Musical New Year, are produced in direct cooperation
with DUT while the Danish Radio also reports exhaustively on the greatly
concentrated effort made by AUT every spring since 1978 to make the Numus
Festival a success. The current directors of DUT and AUT are Svend Aaquist
Johansen and Karl Aage Rasmussen, respectively, and a similar organisation is
being planned for Odense in order to further the contact between the Funen
concert audience and contemporary music.

The Music Act and MIC

     As the first country in the world Denmark in 1976 obtained a special
Music Act in which it is stated quite clearly that musical activities must
and should become part of everyday life of the Danish people. Among the new
initiatives of the Act was the establishment of a Music Information Centre
whose explicit purpose is to disseminate knowledge of Danish music and Danish
musical life not only in Denmark but also abroad. MIC, the abbreviated title
of the Centre, was formally opened in October 1980, and thus Denmark has
caught up with the other Nordic countries in endeavours to strengthen the
position of its own music, nationally as well as internationally.

Bibliography

     Nearly all composers referred to in article are treated in more detail in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980).

     John H. Yoell: The Nordic Sound (Boston, 1974).

     Musical Denmark. Annual publication containing articles, lists of first
performances and gramophone records. Published since 1952 by Det danske
Selskab, Kultorvet 2, DK-1175 Copenhagen K.

     Additional information available from the Music Information Centre DAMIC,
Skoubogade 2, DK-1158 Copenhagen K.