Hans Abrahamsen

Hans Abrahamsen Born December 23 1952 Is A Danish Composer. Hans Abrahamsen Started By Playing The French Horn But Even At A Very Young Age He Showed A Remarkable Talent For Composition. In 1969 He Began To Study French Horn At The Royal Danish Academy Of Music In Copenhagen But Already In 1970-71 He Had His First Lessons In Composition With Niels Viggo Bentzon. In 1971 He Studied Composition At The Royal Academy Of Music In Århus Where He Was Taught Composition By Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. He Has Also Studied With Per Nørgård And György Ligeti. From 1975-81 He Went Back To Copenhagen To Study Music History And Music Theory. In His Early Career Hans Abrahamsen Was A Key Figure In The Danish New Simplicity Movement Which Reacted Against The Complexities Of The Darmstadt School. Despite The Small Scale And Brevity Of Many Of His Works His Music Often Has An Epic Quality Creating The Impression That Behind The Scarcity Of Material Lie Expansive Concepts And Dense Thought. An Early Beginner – His First Published Works Date From When He Was Sixteen – Abrahamsen Started Out With A Flair For Rediscovering Fundamentals. By The Age Of Thirty He Had Produced A Sizeable Output Several Orchestral Works Nacht Und Trompeten A Luminous And Dramatic Nocturne Was Commissioned By The Berlin Philharmonic Two String Quartets And Numerous Other Pieces Mostly Instrumental Including Another Fine Example Of Wintry Musical Poetry Winternacht. In 1984 Came A Set Of Seven Piano Studies Later Increased To Ten Some Of Which In Their Furious Processes Strikingly Anticipated Ligeti’s Of The Following Year. Ligeti Briefly His Teacher Had Been One Of His First Heroes For Exactness And Beauty Along With Steve Reich. Now The Debt Was Repaid And A Door Opened. Abrahamsen Immediately Arranged Six Of The Studies To Make A Companionpiece For The Danish Première Of Ligeti’s Horn Trio An Arrangement Subsequently Reworked With Cello In Place Of Horn As Traumlieder He Also Recomposed Four Of The Pieces For Large Orchestra. That However Did Not Come Until Twenty Years Later. The Path Leading On From The Piano Studies Turned Out To Be Not So Self-Evident And Abrahamsen’s Productivity Slowed Then Stopped. Meanwhile He Was Finding A New Outlet As An Arranger Notably Of Pieces By Johann Sebastian Bach And Carl Nielsen. Of Original Compositions Only A Brief Rilke Setting Herbstlied Interrupted His Silence Between 1990 And 1998. Having Returned To Creative Activity With A Couple More Piano Studies He Then Produced His First Extended Work In A Decade And A Half The Piano Concerto He Completed In 2000. Here Not For The Last Time A New Beginning Had Deep Roots In His Past – In The Turbulent Lopsided Ostinatos And The Contrasting Stillnesses Of The Piano Studies And In The Polyphony Of Type And Topic That Went Back To Winternacht And Beyond. The Concerto Is Also Thoroughly Characteristic In Being At Once Intimate And Tightly Crafted As Close To Robert Schumann As It Is To Stravinsky. Once Again However What Might Have Seemed A Breakthrough Proved An Impasse And It Was At This Point That Abrahamsen Turned Again To His Piano Studies To Remake The First Four As Four Pieces For Orchestra 2004 . Rivaling Ravel Or Boulez For Orchestral Transformation And Scored For A Large Grouping That Includes Wagner Tubas And Plentiful Percussion These Movements Discover In The Keyboard Originals Not Only Unsuspected Intimations Of Bewitching Sound But Also An Unforeseen Expressive Power. Abrahamsen’s Work As An Orchestrator Or Reorchestrator Has Gone On With A Reduction Of Nielsen’s Last Symphony And An Arrangement Of Debussy’s Children’s Corner Now Alongside The Sequence Of Major New Works That Opened In Earnest With Schnee. His Third String Quartet 2008 In Four Short Movements Is A Relatively Simple Piece That Remains Deeply Puzzling. It Starts With A Purely Diatonic Invention Such Things Had Happened Before In His Music For Example In The Final Movements Of His First Quartet And Of His Wind Quintet Walden That Might Easily Be A Folk Song And That Seems To Hold The Key To The Movements That Follow – A Key They Can Never Refind. Microtonal Tunings Are Absent Here But Return In Wald For Fifteen Players 2009 Which Like Schnee Is At Once Natural Depiction In This Case Of Shadowy Forests Cultural Evocation Of Horn Calls Hunts And Lurking Mystery And Elaborate Musical Construct. The Self-Similarities Of Tangled Woodland Are Echoed At Several Levels From That Of The Opening Tremulation Fourths Played By Two Violins Microtonally And Metrically Displaced From One Another To That Of The Large-Scale Variation Form. The Ominous Yet Captivating Misaligned Fourths From The Start Of Wald Come Back At The Beginning Of The Work That Followed The Double Concerto For Violin Piano And Strings 2010-11 . There Are Flakes Too From Schnee Such As The Chilling-Exhilarating Quasi-Unisons Of High Piano And String Harmonic Or The Dancing Figures Of The Two Fast Movements. Yet This Is Also A Work With Its Own Character Reaching To Moments Of Bursting Brilliance Or Consolatory Embrace. Each Composition Joins Its Companions As A Sibling Related But Distinct. Abrahamsen’s Fourth Quartet 2012 Begins In A Glacial World Of High Harmonics And Ends In A Typical Use Of Rhythmic Intricacy To Create Irregular Dance. His Let Me Tell You 2013 A Monodrama For Soprano And Orchestra Again Finishes In A Winter Landscape But Is Perhaps Most Remarkable For Its Reinvention Of Vocal Melody Keenly Expressive On The Part Of A Composer Who Had Written Very Little For The Voice. His Concerto For Piano Left Hand Left Alone 2014-15 Is Again A Drama A Story Of Conflict Solitariness And Communal Exhilaration And Proves Him Ready For The Next Challenge He Has Set Himself That Of Opera On A Subject Made For Him Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. read less