Per Nørgård obituary

The Guardian

11-06-2025

'I don't know where the lyrical element comes from,' the Danish composer Per Nørgård, who has died aged 92, once remarked. 'I can't construct the lyrical element. It is like when you stick your head out of the window on a spring morning and can simply sense the scent of flowers in the air. It can't be controlled. In a way, the lyrical element is the sensual side of existence, which always comes as a gift.'
One of the most lyrical expressions of that gift among Nørgård's 400 works was in the finale of his small-orchestral diptych Voyage Into the Golden Screen, composed in 1968. Ironically, its free-flowing melody derived not from chance 'scenting of [music] in the air', but rather the technical dictates of Nørgård's then newly formulated 'infinity series', where the notes follow mathematically from the proportions of the 'golden ratio' and the Fibonacci series: a telling musical counterpart to the prevailing Scandinavian concern, across all the arts at the time, of design-driven expression.
As a young man, taught by the great Danish symphonist Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music, Nørgård had become fascinated with the music of Sibelius and the underlying concept of musical metamorphosis, where themes and motifs gradually evolve into new entities.
However, the infinity series became a primary building block of Nørgård's music, whether laid out straightforwardly, as in the Second Symphony (1970), or as an unlimited thematic reservoir in his operas (including Siddhartha, 1974-79, and The Divine Circus, 1983), symphonies, 13 concertos – including two for percussion, the first, For a Change (1982-83), based on the Chinese 'wisdom book' I Ching, the second, Bach to the Future (1997), reworking three Bach preludes – and a large body of vocal and chamber music, including 10 string quartets.
The end results sometimes baffled early audiences; Kalendermusik (1970), written to accompany the test card on Danish television, was broadcast until audience protests prompted its removal after a few months; others proved contentious through their complex, seemingly chaotic inspirations and textures, as with the choral triptych Wie ein Kind (1979-80) and the Fourth Symphony (1981), two of a group of works derived from the ideas of the Swiss artist and psychiatric patient Adolf Wölfli. At other times, the results could be disarmingly spare in texture, for example in his music for the Oscar-winning film Babette's Feast (1987).
Nørgård was born in Gentofte, on the northern edge of Copenhagen, to the tailor Erhardt Nørgård and his wife, Emmely, who ran a business specialising in wedding attire. Per loved to draw and with his elder brother, Bent, made up cartoon stories. It was a musical family (Erhardt played the accordion) and both brothers studied the piano, Per from the age of seven.
His innate musical ability showed early and he was admitted as a boy chorister into the Copenhagen Municipal Choral School in 1942 before going to Frederiksberg grammar school. By 17 he had set his mind on becoming a composer, producing his first work, Sonata capricciosa, in 1949.
Holmboe took him on as a private pupil in 1950-51, before becoming one of his teachers at the conservatory in Copenhagen, where Nørgård studied between 1952 and 1955. Following graduation, the conservatory staged a well-received all-Nørgård concert in January 1956.
By the end of that month Nørgård had married, been awarded a Lili Boulanger award, and moved with his young wife, the singer, dancer and ethnomusicologist Anelise Brix Thomsen, to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, whose former pupils included Aaron Copland, Roy Harris and Astor Piazzolla.
Returning to Denmark in 1957, he began teaching at the Funen Academy of Music in Odense (until 1961), writing for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken (1958-62) and, from 1960 to 1965, teaching at the conservatory in Copenhagen, where one of his pupils was Carl Davis. Finding the atmosphere too conservative, he moved – taking his students with him – to the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus. There, he taught some of the most important Nordic composers of the ensuing generations, including Hans Abrahamsen, Hans Gefors and Bent Sørensen.
His own music extended his influence much further, to composers across Europe from Thomas Adès to Wolfgang Rihm to the Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen conducted the premiere of Nørgård's Fifth Symphony in 1990 at a concert featuring the Fifth Symphonies of Sibelius and Nielsen, to celebrate their 125th anniversaries.
Nørgård was the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Nordic Council music prize (1974, for his opera Gilgamesh), the Léonie Sonning music prize (1996) and the Wihuri Sibelius prize (2006). In 2005 his glorious, expansive choral-and-orchestral Third Symphony (1972-75) – which was given its UK premiere only at the 2018 BBC Proms – was incorporated into Denmark's official Culture Canon.
He received the Marie-Josée Kravis prize for new music in 2014; the following year the Vienna Philharmonic's recording of Symphonies Nos 1 and 8, conducted by Sakari Oramo, won the Gramophone award for contemporary music; and in 2016 he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music prize for lifelong service to music.
Nørgård's marriage to Anelise ended in divorce in 1965; he is survived by their children, Jeppe and Ditte. Helle Rahbek, whom he married in 1966, died in 2022.
Per Nørgård, composer and teacher, born 13 July 1933; died 28 May 2025