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The Many Patterns of Per Nørgård

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Martin Anderson
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Extract

Per Nørgård makes an improbable Grand Old Man. For a start, he's not nearly old enough; though he was 65 on 13 July this year, you wouldn't imagine to look at him that he was much past his mid-forties. Nørgård, moreover, cuts no establishment figure: he is a large, imposing man, with a thatch of reddish-blonde hair splashed on top of a rugby-player's frame that suggests he is about to explode into action at any moment. But Grand Old Man he already is: with the deaths of his teachers Vagn Holmboe (last September, at the age of 88) and Finn Høffding (this March, at an Olympian 98), Nørgård is now the senior figure in Danish music; there are older composers, of course, but none of his international standing. He doesn't act the part, though: his gestures are gentle, his conversation calm. Indeed, he talks about himself and his music with a quiet conviction that draws in the listener like a youngster listening to a bedtime story.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 202 , October 1997 , pp. 3 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Several musical friends in Denmark have remarked (independently) upon the diligent, unobtrusive solicitude with which Nørgård kept an eye on the wellbeing of Hølmboe and Hoffding, as the health of his two former teachers declined in their last years.

2 ‘Evening Land’, Nørgård's op. 10, an early (1954) setting of a text by the Swedish poet Pär Lagerkvist.

3 Nørgård's discovery of the ‘infinity row’ or ‘infinity series’ underlies almost all the music he wrote from the late 1950s until around 1980. The infinity row – using fractal techniques two decades before they entered general discussion – expands from a single interval, mirrored up and down symmetrically, thus creating new intervals, themselves mirrored in turn, and so on. The procedure can be applied melodically, rhythmically and harmonically. A clear and cogent exposition of the principles underlying Nørgard's use of die infinity row can be found in Erling Kullberg, ‘Beyond Infinity’, in Beyer, Anders (ed.), The Music of Per Nørgård: Fourteen Interpretative Essays, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1996, pp.71–93 Google Scholar.

4 Available, , with the Sinfonia austera (No.l) of 1955 Google Scholar, on Chandos CHAN 9450 (Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra c. Leif Segerstam) and, with Symphony No.4 (1981), on Point PCD 5070 (Aarhus Symphony Orchestra c. Jorma Panula).

5 Recorded, with Nørgård's second opera Gilgamesh (1971–72), on dacapo DCCD 9001 (Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra c. Oliver Knussen).

6 Available, , with the Piano Concerto (Concerto in due tempi, 1994–1995)Google Scholar, on Chandos CHAN 9491 (Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir c. Leif Segerstam) and, with Twilight for orchestra (1976–77), on dacapo DCCD 8901 (Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus c. Tamá;s Vetö); this same performance is coupled with Twilight and Luna on dacapo/Marco Polo 8.224041.

7 Available on dacapo/Marco Polo 8.2224031–32 (Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus c. Jan Latham-Koenig); the coupling is the Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, For a Change.

8 The original Danish title of this, the fourth (1982) of Nørgård's five operas, is Det guddommelige Tivoli.

9 1981; recorded, with Symphony No.5, on Chandos CHAN 9533 (Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra c. Leif Segerstam).

10 The Concerto in due tempi of 1994–95.

11 A note on the back of the Chandos disc states that: ‘The Fifth Symphony is written in one continuous movement whose structure is, according to the composer, open to interpretation’. This recording is divided into four tracks, a subdivision which Nergard ‘feels […] may be helpful for those coming to the piece for the first time’.

12 Recorded on Chandos CHAN 9491, with Per Salo as soloist (the coupling is Symphony No.4 – cf. note 4 on p.5).