Else Marie Pade (2 December 1924 – 18 January 2016) was a Danish composer of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
. She was educated as a pianist at the ''Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium'' (
Royal Danish Academy of Music) in Copenhagen. She studied composition first with
Vagn Holmboe
Vagn Gylding Holmboe (, 20 December 1909 – 1 September 1996) was a Danish composer and teacher.
Life
Vagn Holmboe was born in Horsens, Jutland, into a merchant family of dedicated amateur musicians. Both parents played the piano. His fa ...
, and later with
Jan Maegaard, from whom she learned
twelve-tone technique
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
. In 1954, she became the first Danish composer of electronic and
concrete music. She worked with
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His inno ...
and
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...
, as well as
Pierre Boulez.
Pade was active in the resistance during the Second World War, and was interned at the
Frøslev prison camp from 1944 until the end of the war.
Early life
Pade was born in
Aarhus. In her childhood, she was often bedridden with
pyelonephritis
Pyelonephritis is inflammation of the kidney, typically due to a bacterial infection. Symptoms most often include fever and flank tenderness. Other symptoms may include nausea, burning with urination, and frequent urination. Complications may ...
. She listened to the outside world and created "aural pictures" out of the sounds. These sounds, real sounds, became the basis of her actual musical works. As a protected child, she came with her mother outside of town and went to the theatre. The first music lessons took place in the home where the mother tried to teach her piano playing, but when she did not bother practising scales, she got her mother's piano teacher, Miss Moller. Later she had music lessons at the People's Music School in Aarhus, where the director, Edoard Müller, a music agent in N. Kochs School, had witnessed Pade's talent and offered her music education at the People's Music School. Pade replied that they could not afford it, and then Müller called the parents and established a system. Else gained insight into jazz thanks to the People's Music School. She borrowed a portable gramophone from a friend and heard
New Orleans jazz. When she was about 16 she began playing in a jazz band, "The Blue Star Band", which played at school dances and associations. Pade later took piano lessons with Karin Brieg.
It was through Brieg that she came into the
Danish Resistance. One day Else spat at a column of German soldiers who marched in Aarhus' city center. A soldier stepped out of line and ran after her, but Else knew the city and escaped, taking the tram to Brieg who lived in
Klintegården. Brieg said that if she were to resist, she had to join the Resistance, and so Pade joined a women's group with her.
Resistance and imprisonment
Pade began by distributing
illegal newspapers after 20 August 1943, and in 1944 she received training in the use of weapons and explosives. She joined an all-female explosives group aimed at identifying the telephone cables in Aarhus with resistance organiser
Hedda Lundh
Hedda Lundh (1921–2012) was a Danish journalist and schoolteacher who, under the German occupation of Denmark in World War II, was a Danish resistance fighter. Based at the time in Aarhus, she is remembered as a railway saboteur, explosives ex ...
. The idea of this survey was that the wires would be blown up when the British invasion came, so the Germans could not use the telephone network. However the plan was cancelled when the
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...
took place.
On 13 September 1944, Pade was arrested by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
. Through a prison window she saw a star flash and heard music coming from inside herself. Next morning she scratched the tune into the cell wall with a buckle from her girdle. It was the song "You and I and the Stars" ("Du og jeg og stjernerne"). She was sent to Frøslevlejren, where she began composing, and decided to train in music. In Frøslevlejren the prisoners held song evenings to keep their spirits up. The songs included Pade's songs and other songs arranged by Karin Brieg. These works were released on CD on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation: ''Songs in the Darkness: Music Frøslevlejren 1944–45''.
Composing
After the war, she read at the Conservatory of Music, first as a pianist, but because of the after-effects of her stay in Frøslevlejren she could not do this and trained instead as a composer. In 1952 she heard a
Danmarks Radio
DR (), officially the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in English, is a Danish public-service radio and television broadcasting company. Founded in 1925 as a public-service organization, it is Denmark's oldest and largest electronic media enter ...
programme on
Musique concrète and its creator
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His inno ...
. It reminded her of her own childhood conception of sounds and timbres. Via family in France, she contacted the French radio
RTF and Schaeffer. She got the chance to see studies on RTF and Pierre Schaeffer had his workshop and got an appointment to get sent home material. In the same year she read Schaeffer's book ''À la Recherche d'une musique concrete'' (On the trail of concrete music).
''A Day at Dyrehavsbakken''
This, inspired by Pierre Schaeffer, became Denmark's first concrete and electronic music work: ''A Day at Dyrehavsbakken''. After having posted a synopsis for DR, as Jens Frederik Lawaetz read, she agreed to make background music for a TV show for the new Danish television. The background music was Denmark's first practical musical work created by many recordings from
Bakken, in which she was assisted by technicians from DR.
''Symphonie magnétophonique''
The work is
musique concrète describing everyday life in a day in Copenhagen: morning dawning with its routines, the way to work, time in the office or the factory, then the trip home from school or work to domestic routines in the evening, and finally the day is ending and a new one can begin.
''Seven Circles''
This was composed after visit to the
planetarium at
Expo 58 in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. The composition shows the night sky with the stars and their movement relative to each other. The work is based on
Ligeti's principles of sound colours,
Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music.
Born in Mon ...
's
serialism and
Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...
's mathematically organized score.
Darmstadt School
Her interest in the new music caused her and many other composers to travel to
Darmstadt and follow Stockhausen, Ligeti and Boulez's courses at the
Darmstädter Ferienkurse
Darmstädter Ferienkurse ("Darmstadt Summer Course") is a regular summer event of contemporary classical music in Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany. It was founded in 1946, under the name "Ferienkurse für Internationale Neue Musik Darmstadt" (Vacation Co ...
. Pade participated in 1962, 1964, 1968, and 1972. Stockhausen has used her ''Glass Bead Game'' as an example when he lectured on electronic music.
''Grass blade''
Nini Theilade
Nini Arlette Theilade (15 June 1915 – 13 February 2018) was a Danish ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher.
Early life
Theilade was born in Purwokerto, Dutch East Indies. Her mother, Joanna Catarina, was of Polish, German, and French extra ...
and Pade became friends after meeting at El Forman's apartment, where many art-interested people gathered. Together they did a TV ballet, ''Grass Blade'', based on a poem by El Forman, with choreography by Theilade.
See also
*
List of Danish composers
A list of notable Danish composers:
__NOTOC__
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
*Thorvald Aagaard
* Truid Aagesen
* David Abell
*Hans Abrahamsen
* Aksel Agerby
* Harald Agersnap
* Georg Frederik Fer ...
References
Sources
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External links
Kvinfo profileDanish Film Institute profile*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pade, Else
Danish classical composers
Royal Danish Academy of Music alumni
Danish female resistance members
Musicians from Aarhus
Electronic musicians
Danish electronic musicians
1924 births
2016 deaths
Danish women classical composers
Danish resistance members