Official: Dane wins biggest composer prize

Word is out that this year’s $100,00 Grawemeyer Award for music composition has gone to Hans Abrahamsen.

The announcement of the award is not due until next Monday but, as we said, word is out.

If there’s such a thing as a happy Dane, Hans is it.

The award is for his song cycle, ‘let me tell you’, with texts by Paul Griffiths.

UPDATE: It appears Musical America has been obliged to take down its leak of this award.

2nd UPDATE: It has just gone live.

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Nov. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — let me tell you, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, has earned Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen the 2016 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

**Note: Due to a news embargo break this information, originally scheduled for Nov. 30 @ 10 p.m., is being announced early**

Abrahamsen’s half-hour work presents a first-person narrative by Ophelia, the tragic noblewoman from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” The libretto by Paul Griffiths is adapted from his 2008 novel—also titled “let me tell you”—and consists of seven poems created using only the minimal vocabulary that Shakespeare originally scripted for Ophelia.