Vagn Holmboe

Vagn Gylding Holmboe (Danish pronunciation: [ʋɑʊ̯n ˈhʌlmb̥oːˀ], 20 December 1909 in Horsens, Jutland – 1 September 1996 in Ramløse) was a Danish composer and teacher who wrote largely in a neo-classical style (Rapoport 2001).

Life

Vagn Holmboe was born into a merchant family of dedicated amateur musicians. Both parents were playing the piano. His father earned his living as a maker of colours and lacquers at Horsens.[1] The Danish journalist Knud Holmboe was his elder brother.

From the age of 14, Vagn Holmboe took violin lessons. At the age of 16, he began formal music training at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in 1926 on the recommendation of Carl Nielsen. He studied under Knud Jeppesen (theory) and Finn Høffding (composition).

After finishing his studies in 1929 he moved to Berlin where, for a short period, Ernst Toch became his teacher (Rapoport 2001). During his time in the German capital he met the Romanian-born pianist and visual artist Meta May Graf (1910-2003) from Sibiu/Hermannstadt. She had studied at the Musikhochschule Berlin since 1929 having had Paul Hindemith as one of her teachers.[2] The couple married in 1933 and left Berlin for Romania where they visited obscure and remote villages and studied Transylvanian folk-song.[3] Subsequently they moved to Denmark settling in the Danish capital Copenhagen in 1934. While his wife Meta gave up her musical career to pursue her passions in the visual arts, photography in particular, Vagn gave music lessons privately and composition began to possess him in this period. Many of these early compositions have never been performed. Similar to the research already done in Romania, he pursued his studies of folk-song with much field-work throughout Denmark including the Faroes and Greenland. Many overtly folk-linked compositions including the Inuit Songs are a result of these activities.

From 1941 to 1949, he was a teacher at the Royal Institute for the Blind, and from 1950 to 1965, he taught at the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen having been appointed a Professor there in 1955. Prior to this appointment, he also worked as a music critc for the Danish daily Politiken from 1947 to 1955.[4]

Vagn Holmboe's students included Per Nørgård, Ib Nørholm, Bent Lorentzen, Arne Nordheim, Egil Hovland and Alan Stout. See: List of music students by teacher: G to J#Vagn Holmboe.

Vagn and his wife Meta had bought a piece of land at lake Arresø in Ramløse/Zealand in 1940 where they set up their homestead "Arre Boreale" (Latin for Northern Arresø) in the 1950s spending there the rest of their life together.[5] Vagn Holmboe was a decided nature-lover who lived in the countryside until his death in 1996, and over the years personally planted 3000 trees on his land by the lake Arresø in northern Zealand.[6]

Music

Holmboe composed about 370 works, including 13 symphonies, three chamber symphonies, four symphonies for strings, 20 string quartets, numerous concertos, one opera, and the late series of preludes for chamber orchestra, as well as much choral and other music, in addition to some early works that never received opus numbers. His last work, the 21st string quartet, Quartetto sereno, was completed by his pupil Per Nørgård.

Musical metamorphosis of thematic or motivic fragments characterize most of his works between the years 1950 and 1970 (similar to Jean Sibelius). His earlier works show the influence of East European composers such as Béla Bartók; his work also shows the influence of Igor Stravinsky, Carl Nielsen and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Major works

(M. — Meta number — for Metamorphosis. Might also be said to be named after his wife, Meta May Holmboe... numbering system assembled by Prof. Rapoport. This information from The Compositions of Vagn Holmboe.)

Commercial recordings of his symphonies by Owain Arwel Hughes are still available, as are recordings of his string quartets, chamber concertos, and some other works. His choral or brass music, or his wind Notturno from 1940 may be performed more often than his works for full or chamber orchestra.

Private tapes exist of performances conducted by Holmboe; these were made by Nikolai Malko and/or by Fritz Mahler, but are rare, and difficult to obtain.

Books

Sources

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ VAGN HOLMBOE (1909-1996) A COMPACT BIOGRAPHY, musicweb-international.com
  2. ↑ Meta May Holmboe, gravsted.dk (Danish)
  3. ↑ VAGN HOLMBOE (1909-1996) A COMPACT BIOGRAPHY, musicweb-international.com
  4. ↑ Vagn Gylding Holmboe, gravsted.dk
  5. ↑ A testimonial written by Vagn Holmboe at Arre Boreale in 1991, arden.no
  6. ↑ Vagn Holmboe, dacapo-records.dk
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, March 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.