The Many Patterns of Per Nørgård

Author(s): Martin Anderson

Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 202 (Oct., 1997), pp. 3-7
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/945758
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Martin Anderson
The Many Patterns of Per Norgard
Per Norgard 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. Norg'ard, 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
H0ffding (this March, at an Olympian 98),
Norgard 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.
'I was born close to Copenhagen [in the
suburb of Gentofte]. My parents moved to this
part of town, Norrebro, where they had a shop,
in the old handworkers', artisans' quarter here. I
like this quarter very much, and I have returned
here after living in other places. So in fact I am
living where I was growing up. It has a special
kind of... well, I was walking in that cemetery'
- Norgird points through the window over
the road - 'where I can see the graves of my
grandfather and my grandmother. So you are
living, not in a kind of memory, but where the
memory is concrete, and I like that. I also have
an apartment on Langeland, a little island, so I am
permanently moving between the two places.
'My parents were both born of very poor
workers; and my father was one of nine children.
I recently found this photograph from that time -
I think it has much charm - with my grandfather,
whom I never knew, and my grandmother,
whom I did know. They moved to Esbjerg on
Jutland. Later I was told by my father (and he
didn't know this until the later years of her life)' -
Norgard indicates his grandmother - 'that he' -
the finger moves to his grandfather - 'was the son
of a big farmer, who was [called up as] a soldier
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before before the turn of the century. His cousin
took care of the farm - and sold it and went to
New Zealand and returned insane. In this way my
grandfather was totally without a penny, and so
he went to work as a miller, an artisan. He was
lucky to settle at the German frontier, which at
that time came much closer into Denmark. He
bought the mill on very good terms and met
my grandmother. They were thus living on the
border when they fell in love with each other and
wanted to marry - but they were told that they
had to become German. They didn't want to
become German but they still married because
they were very strong people. Then they were
taken by the German police and sent to the
Danish border, and the mill was confiscated.
Can you imagine such a start to life? And at that
time there was no work to get in Denmark. So
you see why he inherited such a terrible hate of
the Germans!
'That was the background, though I was
growing up in very well-to-do care, because
my parents were very good, very loving. They
started early, making a shop which quickly (1923)
specialized in bridal gowns. It grew, and they
had much fun there. She was sewing and he was
selling. They wanted to present their sons with
the music possibilities they never had, so I
began playing as a little child.' Were there many
other children? 'Just one, a brother five years
older than me. We were always making things
together. I began composing at the age of ten. I
preferred to compose from the beginning. I
would listen to Beethoven, Wagner and so on,
but I always felt there was something lacking, and
I thought I had to find out what it was. I felt that
music was lacking something; I thought I had to
get something together myself, and I am
approaching that goal slowly.
'I began making very childish classical music,
and then began making songs and dances for
"tecnis", sort of drawn movies: my brother
would make texts and I made cartoons which we
would show to the family. Then one day, in 1949,
when I was 15 years old, I got a sheet of
manuscript paper and wrote "Sonata" on the top,
and I have not stopped. I went to Vagn Holmboe
4 The Many Patterns of Per N0rgard

two years after that, I studied composition and corresponded with him, and Aftonland2 is dedi-
counterpoint with him. I asked to have that cated to him. So all through the '50s there was this
because I had read Stravinsky's autobiography fascination with darkness. I wanted to go up to
and he said that harmony was boring. But Finland. I was always fascinated by Finland, and
Holmboe started teaching and even gave me free by the sound of Sibelius's orchestra. I was never
lessons, mind! He became my teacher when I really close to Sibelius, but I got very kind
went to the Conservatory, where I was also answers to my letters: he wrote that he very
taught by Finn Hoffding.1 The I went to Paris seldom received letters expressing such under-
where I studied with Nadia Boulanger. I didn't standing of his music. I didn't want to approach
study anything in particular with her. Holmboe him; I just wanted to tell him that I, as a young
and her had talked a little bit together, and she composer who had studied Schoenberg and
liked what she saw: it was very Nordic, my music, Bartok, found that there was a future which
and she liked the Nordic tone. So she spoiled me would surpass them in his way of composing.
in some ways when I compare myself to my It has become a quite established view today that
colleagues, who had to make enormous, complex his form of expression is unique: not particularly
harmonic exercises: she just let me compose and his handling of tonality, though there are some
show her the result. I was occupied on my own very strange things there, but the forms and how
composition. It was a kind of inner emigration: they develop.
you feel that you should be going north, not south.' 'Anyway, I found that this '50s period for me
Would it be fair to characterize Norgard's became so complicated, like branches growing up
music as obsessed with the notion of time? 'I off trees, with those many modalities of metre,
have always been occupied with the idea of time,and so on. It exploded in the kind of unified
right from the beginning. That was the start for
method of the infinity row, which I found around
my being a composer. It was connected with what
the end of the '50s.3 It was very strange, because I
I mentioned to you earlier about feeling that was
I looking for something which I did not know
was lacking something. I found out by hearing existed. But you could see I was working closer
something that was a little close to what was and closer to something where the germ of a
lacking: it was one of Bach's cantatas, a motif, as little as just two tones, will unfold
movement with the full orchestra [Norgird starts
infinitely. So, in fact, it was small forms in small
forms in small forms, and so on. (Fractals
singing Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring], and then the
chorale comes in, very slow, in almost an appeared later, in the '70s.) It gave me the
inferential metre. That was a hint of what I hadpossibility of a radical new basis of law. Even
before then the modality of the Nordic sound
been striving at - to realize this mystery that we
would have been quite limiting. But I didn't
live in such different rhythms together. We have
throw myself into complicated music. In fact, I
each our own speeds, and inside ourselves we are
combinations of a lot of different competing hated most of the Darmstadt music I listened to: it
forces. Our intellectual potential, for instance, iswasn't modem for me at all. I admired the
being used just now, and at the same time we areintensity with which they worked; I just thought
feeling whatever we are feeling at the moment. they had totally the wrong attitude to it! To make
As human beings we are having so many cycles ata series of twelve durations, to make a series of
the same time that I felt the music of the futuretwelve dynamics, and so on - that was really
childish, and still is. And it is obscuring the real
should contain this as evident, a pulse, a modality
mystery and truth that there are twelve tones,
within a greater frame of time, a cycle. Time is
times.' because there are twelve tones: you can't say: "oh
So this fascination with the multiplicity of
patterns within time is what underlies the 2 'Evening Land', Norgard's op. 10, an early (1954) setting of a
development of his music? 'This is the centre of it text by the Swedish poet Par Lagerkvist.
in some ways. It is represented in all of what I am 3 Norgard's discovery of the 'infinity row' or 'infinity series'
doing, in different phases of my work. When I underlies almost all the music he wrote from the late 1950s

look back, it is quite evident that there was a until around 1980. The infinity row - using fractal techniques
two decades before they entered general discussion - expands
concentrated period on the Nordic sound. I had
from a single interval, mirrored up and down symmetrically,
a big attraction to the music of Sibelius. I thus creating new intervals, themselves mirrored in turn,
and so on. The procedure can be applied melodically,
1 Several musical friends in Denmark have remarked rhythmically and harmonically. A clear and cogent exposition
(independently) upon the diligent, unobtrusive solicitude
of the principles underlying Norgard's use of the infinity row
with which Norg5rd kept an eye on the wellbeing can
of be found in Erling Kullberg, 'Beyond Infinity', in Anders
Holmboe and Hoffding, as the health of his two former
Beyer (ed.), The Music of Per Norgard: Fourteen Interpretative
teachers declined in their last years. Essays, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1996, pp.71-93.

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 The Many Patterns of Per Norgrd 5

Per Norgdrd (photo: Chester Music Ltd.)

it may as well be a scale of thirteen tones", reminds me very much of Balinese music - which
because of the system of fifths, where the natural I didn't know until '75. I was so fascinated to
sounds tell us they are very close to those twelve. discover that Balinese music moves with these
When it comes back, it's a little higher but you kind of meeting points, with unisonos and
can recognize the first one - so there are twelve. different rhythmic layers, with the speed fastest
Those for me are very important things. above and slowest in the gongs at the bottom.
'So when I went into this modernism in the That's exactly what I was doing in Voyage into the
'60s, with chromaticism, quarter-tones, whatever, Golden Screen in '685 and my Second Symphony
combined with new possibilities of hierarchical from '70. So I had to go to Bali in 1975.
music with the infinity row, there were many 'But before then I had found out that naturally
kinds of experiments possible. Around 1970 the you can't keep up all these kinds of pulsations:
possibilites of the infinity row were sort of being you'd go crazy or bored; it's too solipsistic or
separated - with my Second Symphony, for limited. So I started with the possibilities of
instance.4 You should listen to it one day with rhythmic irregularities within those hierarchical
your eyes closed, and treat it with a kind of frames, though not with the pulse. I found that
meditating feeling. It's the closest I think I've both proportions were fabulous: you make them
been to minimal music. It's not minimal because hierarchical in canonic ways, where it's never
it's always developing, it's never repeated. It's totally canonic in duration but in proportions.
just one row working out on many levels. It Combined with the infinity row it works
4 Available, with the Sinfonia austera (No.1) of 1955, on beautifully together. I felt as if I could just make
Chandos CHAN 9450 (Danish National Radio Symphony
Orchestra c. Leif Segerstam) and, with Symphony No.4 5 Recorded, with Norgird's second opera Gilgamesh (1971-
(1981), on Point PCD 5070 (Aarhus Symphony Orchestra c. 72), on dacapo DCCD 9001 (Danish Radio Symphony
Jorma Panula). Orchestra c. Oliver Knussen).

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6 The Many Patterns of Per Norgdrd
it and hang it on the wall. But I never did this
because for me all kind of techniques are in the
patterns I find, in life, nature, and so on. This
kind of pattern is for me the language of
possibility, but it's not the expression itself. I find
in all the music which I admire, which moves me
(I mentioned Sibelius and Balinese music, and
there's Schubert and Bach - I discover composers
slowly: I am only beginning to discover Beethoven
for myself), there are the kinds of pattern that are
close to the patterns of nature, and that's what
fascinating about fractals: they are nature-like. So
it's not the expression, but it's the inevitable
vehicle for expression. And so I adore working
with this kind of music - it's not "style" or
"texture".
'In the '70s, I composed the Third Symphony6
and Siddhartha7 as the main works. They were a
kind of synthesis, a kind of highlight - my
heyday! - since they were very well received;
the Third Symphony even became a rather
popular work. It was a kind of explosion of all
this hierarchical and symphonic, almost Classical/
Romantic sound, but it's almost a constructional
kind of a drive.'
Norgard had been busy imposing, discovering
order for around two decades. His rigorous (but
seemingly effortless) systemization of sound
was about to be disrupted. 'But then [c. 1980] I
encountered the pictures and texts of Wolfli,
the Swiss schizophrenic.' Adolf W6olfli's bizarre,
surrealist, explosively energetic work had an
immediate effect on Norgard, who seems almost
to have been waiting for the catalyst. 'I wasn't
aware of what had happened but I stopped making
hierarchical music and went into composing from
bar to bar. So I sort of turned over the process in
my head: what I was doing in the '60s, I was now
doing again in the '80s, but totally otherwise.'
Is Norgard sometimes surprised to find out
what he has done? 'That's why I do it. I don't
know what I am doing. I never have a plan for any
kind of form. I would find that totally impossible.'
So when he stands back from a finished piece,
that's the first time he sees the structure? 'Yes,
exactly, because I do not have a big problem
about form. I have had a feeling for form from
6 Available, with the Piano Concerto (Concerto in due tempi,
1994-95), 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. Tamas
Vet6); 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.
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the very beginning - Holmboe remarked on that
from the start. He showed me Haydn pieces I had
never seen and I talked about them, and then he
saw that I was able to see music very quickly and
know what it was about. So that's not my
problem. Therefore I leave it aside and go into
what is funny for me, and that is to go into the
moment. Sometimes there is a hint in something
and I have to follow that; otherwise it just unfolds
moment for moment, and I like that.'
And Norgard's approach has now stayed the
same since the 1980s? 'Yes. In the '80s it started
with The Divine Circus8 and my Fourth Symphony,9
which are W6olfli works both. At the beginning of
this period I realized that by being free I found
new ways of rhythm. I would never have found it
by sticking even to those rich ways of the early
'70s. It's like an egg: when it is fertilized, it
becomes chaotic. And through this chaos the
possibility of growth comes. So I got into a kind
of chaos in the '80s, and by leaving it from
moment to moment in composition those new
kinds of rhythms (which I feel have culminated
now in my Piano Concerto10) are reaching a kind
of simultaneity - which, in fact, I had a dream of
as a child, of music consisting of one line. Well,
there's a physicist who is talking about the
possibility of the universe consisting of just one
particle and moving with incredible speed, so that
it makes a pattern all over the universe: your
nose, my nose, leaving, going back to the first
place, so that we have all moved a little. It's
a fascinating, intoxicating, strange idea, an
enormous idea, because there's always a con-
nexion. It has been found through experiment
(by Alain Aspect), a confirmation of Neils Bohr's
theories - theories which Einstein hated because
he said "There's no logic in the universe". The
argument, which has been heavily debated ever
since, is that everything affects at once anything in
the universe. It's like everything: people's ways
of living, the weather, the climate - it all may be
chaotic. Maybe it's just good fortune that Europe
has had this underserved good weather because of
the Gulf Stream for a hundred thousand years;
there are now signs that the Gulf Stream will
change, and then Europe will again become the
cold place that, geologically, it deserves to be.
Chaos is fascinating, because you have an order
behind chaos, and chaos behind order. That fits
very well with my feeling of life, too.'
8 The original Danish title of this, the fourth (1982) of
Norgird'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.
 The Many Patterns of Per Norgdrd 7

I know from my own professional field of Symphony, where there is an acceleration to the
activity - the dismal science - that there is a last movement. It has to stop because at a certain
growing body of theory linking economics, point you can't accelerate more: it is down to the
fractal theory, chaos. Ludwig Lachmann and smallest unit. But if you imagine that those
G.L.S. Shackle (two of the harder-line econo- smallest units are always overtaken by bigger
mists of the subjectivist 'Austrian School' whose patterns taking in the perception of your eyes, in
best-known proponents are F. A. Hayek and this way, imperceptibly, you will always follow
Ludwig von Mises) argued against the idea that the bigger, slower waves of the acceleration,
economies tend towards equilibrium; economic because they are multi-layered, they can scope
activity, they said, is stable - but it is also chaotic. into different layers. That is the process of the
Norgard, way ahead of me, nods encouragingly. composer, which has been extremely difficult.
'I know that; it's fascinating. There is also the 'My Fifth Symphony is a culmination of that;
fractal aspect in sound. There was one example in fact, it is one - almost chaotic - acceleration
given by an American expert in electrical from the beginning; once it starts, it is taken over.
disturbance in communications. There were I describe it as in one movement, though in fact it
special complications in disturbance always isn't.1l It was a big shock for me to be able to hear
taking place, and they could never find out why.it because it is very, very violent. It lasts around
They studied it and studied it. Then they looked40 minutes. It was finished in '90 and I revised it
at it in the chaotic way, in the fractal way, andin '92 because the first 20 seconds were a failure,
found out that every time there were those a total failure. I couldn't tell anybody at the first
disturbances in different places in the Unitedperformance, which was conducted by Esa-Pekka
States, there were two fields of activity ofSalonen, that the beginning is bullshit, and so I
disturbance, in the complication pattern of therecomposed it totally. This kind of wildness is not
telephone system: there was a first pattern, then a expressionist. Poul Ruders said it's the most
pause, then another pattern, and then no more.physical music I ever composed and that, if I
This could last for three hours. It was divided intodidn't get hurt, it's the kind of music that might
three phases, with activity in the two outer onesbe composed by an elephant. Composed by an
and with no disturbance in the middle one - into elephant! That's a very fine comment, I feel.
infinity. This is a fractal aspect you can get inSomeone else compared it to an afternoon's
sound, so it's very nice to see that we musiciansvoyage sitting on a dragon. It seems like an
are not alone in the world.' anarchistic, wild piece. But after this it has
Can Norgard see similar patterns in his ownconcentrated to a more crystal-like wildness
music - patterns, indeed, that might allow him towhich, I think, will be really basic. The Piano
see where his music is going? 'I can see clearly aConcerto has been one of the most difficult
pattern when I look back, because then I see how things I have done.12 Imagine a speed which is
the different periods have been when they havenever one speed: it's always in two speeds, but
been left aside for a time. I needed the infinitynot just one-to-two, two different pulses, so
row at that time, working with speed and severaldifferent that they can't be more different, and
layers of rhythm, because that was the onlyyet they are both held together in a very special
possible realization of those ideas. That was theproportion, so that the other speed is always
way it developed itself rhythmically, but usingclose.' Norgard ends his disquisition with an
the infinity row. If you imagine the accelerations,image probably no one else would have thought
any kind of classical acceleration will stop of: 'There are all these hierarchical branches,
eventually - for example, in Beethoven's Fifth naturally, so it is rather like a rainbow of speeds.'

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 Norgird '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).

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