Death of a Danish pioneer, 91

Death of a Danish pioneer, 91

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norman lebrecht

January 19, 2016

Else Marie Pade, imprisoned under the German occupation, became an electronic music pioneer after a 1952 meeting in Darmstadt with the musique concrète inventor, Pierre Schaeffer.

Her 1959 breakthrough work, ‘Symphonie magnetophonique’, is composed entirely of everyday sounds.

 

Else Marie Pade

More here (in Danish).

Comments

  • Furzwängler says:

    Sounds kind of similar to Hoffnung’s Symphony for Three Vacuum Cleaners with Electric Kettle Obligato – – or whatever it was called.

  • Robert says:

    When I was a university music composition student 30 years later the professors were still doing this sort of stuff and imagining they were being very experimental and daring.

  • Cubs Fan says:

    Here’s another candidate for “Who Killed Classical Music”. This is just noise, suitable for a cheesy 1960’s sci-fi thriller.

  • John Borstlap says:

    This poor lady exchanged one prison for another.

    The German theorist / musicologist / composer Wolfgang Andreas Schultz published an interesting study in which he shows that much new music after WW I and after WW II had psychological characteristics, entirely comparable with the emotional state of traumatized people.

    http://www.wolfgangandreasschultz.de/schultz_avantgarde_en.pdf

  • Paul Smithson says:

    Hello Norman, You must be *so* proud of these informed, articulate comments left by readers. In fact Pade was a composer blessed with sensitive ears and a brilliant imagination. Her work deserves to be celebrated by those for whom listening still matters.

    • John Borstlap says:

      It would be more appropriate to phrase it as follows: ‘…..by those for whom listening to sonic art still matters’. Musical imagination is something different from sonic imagination.

      • Paul Smithson says:

        I’d say it’s revealing that practically every answer you leave here – and on the Spectator website last week – shuffles around exactly the same handful of well worn cliches and descriptors. A bit like your music – which shows neither musical nor sonic imagination – and only a rudimentary grasp of technique. Your comments are narrow-minded and too often misogynistic. You really are a boring little man, with a deeply trivial mind.

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