Arne Dørumsgaard (7 December 1921 – 13 March 2006) was a Norwegian composer, poet, translator and music collector. He started his professional career as a composer, but is also known for his translations of Eastern poetry and for his large collection of sound recordings.
Early life
Arne Dørumsgaard was born in
Fredrikstad
Fredrikstad (; previously ''Frederiksstad''; literally "Fredrik's Town") is a List of cities in Norway, city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Viken (county), Viken Counties of Norway, county, Norway. The administrative centre of the ...
to teachers Peder Dørumsgaard and Kitty Hilda Kristoffersen. He initially took piano lessons in Fredrikstad, and later studied piano,
harmonics
A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the '' fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', ...
,
counterpoint, and
orchestration in
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...
. He debuted as a composer already as a 13-year-old and had his very own composer debut evening at the age of 20.
Career
Dørumsgaard wrote well over 100 songs to texts of
Arne Garborg
Arne Garborg (born Aadne Eivindsson Garborg) (25 January 1851 – 14 January 1924) was a Norwegian writer.
Garborg championed the use of Landsmål (now known as Nynorsk, or New Norwegian), as a literary language; he translated the Odyssey into ...
,
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun (4 August 1859 – 19 February 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to consciousness, subject, Point of view ...
,
Hans Henrik Holm
Hans Henrik Holm (18 January 1896 Р27 September 1980) was a Norwegian poet and folklorist. He made his literary d̩but in 1933 with the epic poem ''Jonsoknatt'', the first in a series of seven volumes. His published the trilogy ''Bygdir i so ...
,
Jacob Sande,
Ragnvald Vaage Ragnvald Vaage (29 April 1889 – 27 June 1966) was a Norwegian poet, novelist and children's writer.
Biography
He was born at Husnes in Kvinnherad, Norway. His parents were Ola Larsson Vaage (1844–97) and Ragnhild Larsdotter Oppsanger (1855â ...
,
Arnulf Øverland
Ole Peter Arnulf Øverland (27 April 1889 – 25 March 1968) was a Norwegian poet and artist. He is principally known for his poetry which served to inspire the Norwegian resistance movement during the German occupation of Norway during Wor ...
, and others. He also wrote several piano works and a
film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...
. In the 1940s Dørumsgaard worked as a music theory teacher and a newspaper music critic.
He wrote several arrangements to vocal music from the period 1250–1850. These arrangements were recorded by
Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad (12 July 1895 – 7 December 1962) was a Norwegian opera singer, who was the outstanding Wagnerian soprano of her era. Her triumphant debut in New York on 2 February 1935 is one of the legends of opera. Giulio Gatti-Casa ...
,
Teresa Berganza
Teresa Berganza Vargas OAXS (16 March 1933 – 13 May 2022) was a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with roles such as Rossini's Rosina and La Cenerentola, and later Bizet's Carmen, admired for her technical virtuosity, mu ...
, and
Gérard Souzay
Gérard Souzay (8 December 1918 – 17 August 2004) was a French baritone, regarded as one of the very finest interpreters of mélodie (French art song) in the generation after Charles Panzéra and Pierre Bernac.
Background and education
He wa ...
among others. Dørumsgaard ended his composer career before turning 30.
He started in 1949 to work on translations of Chinese, Japanese and Korean poetry into
Norwegian language
Norwegian ( no, norsk, links=no ) is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regio ...
. The reproductions of Oriental poetry from the earliest dynasties up to the 20th century were published in 25 volumes between 1951 and 1985.
In 1976–1988 Dørumsgaard was a cultural adviser to the Norwegian government.
His collection of sound recordings was among the world's largest private music collections, consisting some 100,000 items.
The collection documents especially the interpretation and performance of European music. Dørumsgaard sold the collection to the municipality of
Stavanger for the symbolic price of 1
Norwegian krone in 1984. The collection still stayed in his possession and under his management. In 2002 the collection was physically transferred to Stavanger where it is managed by the
Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound. The collection is growing still: it had in 2017 some 120,000
LP records, 50,000 78 RPM records, 10,000
magnetic reel tapes, 5,000 cassettes, thousands of printed items, and many kinds of recording and playback machines.
Recognition
Dørumsgaard was a Norwegian state stipendiary since 1975. He was awarded the
Bastian Prize
The Bastian Prize ( no, Bastianprisen) is a prize awarded annually by the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators.
The prize, established in 1951, is given for translating a published work into Norwegian language. The award is a statue made ...
in 1979, and was appointed honorary doctor of literature in
Taipei University in 1982, for his work with the reproductions of the ancient poetry of the East. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the
Order of St. Olav in 1994 for his work in music and literature.
Private life
Dørumsgaard and pianist Tora Øwre married in 1942 and had two children. The couple divorced in 1946. He married lyricist and painter Nella Valenza in 1971.
After the second world war Dørumsgaard was upset by the way the Norwegian state treated Kirsten Flagstad and in 1950 started a self-imposed exile in France. He moved in 1968 to the village of
Marzio
Marzio is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Varese in the Italian region Lombardy, located about northwest of Milan and about north of Varese. The origin of the name ''"Marzio"'' could derive from the Latin name "Marcius" or it cou ...
in northern Italy where he lived until his death in 2006.
See also
*
Music of Norway
Much has been learned about early music in Norway from physical artifacts found during archaeological digs. These include instruments such as the lur. Viking and medieval sagas also describe musical activity, as do the accounts of priests and pil ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorumsgaard, Arne
1921 births
2006 deaths
People from Fredrikstad
Norwegian composers
Norwegian male composers
20th-century Norwegian translators
20th-century Norwegian male musicians
Norwegian expatriates in Italy