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Symphony No. 8
Per Nørgård
P
er Nørgård is the most recent recipient of the
New York Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis
Prize for New Music. Bestowing the award in
June 2014, Music Director Alan Gilbert observed:
His compositions couple intellectual rigor
with expressive urgency, and span a wide variety of genres, with eight symphonies, several concertos, six operas, and two ballets
among his orchestra scores alone. ... It has
been fascinating to trace the unique path he
has forged, which has included his invention
of the Infinity Series — his own fresh approach to serialism.
Nørgård began studying composition with
Vagn Holmboe at the age of 17, then pursued advanced instruction at the Royal Danish Academy
of Music and with the renowned French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. In addition to the Infinity Series, through which new intervals can be
created ad infinitum, he is also involved in explorations about the stratification of time; his
Concerto in Due Tempi (a piano concerto) was
premiered at the 1996 ceremony at which he was
awarded the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. His
compositions are also famous for drawing frequent inspiration from the works of the Swiss
artist, poet, and composer Adolf Wölfli, a visionary figure who spent much of his life institutionalized due to schizophrenia. Among other
honors Nørgård has received are the Carl Nielsen
Prize (1969 and 2002) and The Nordic Council
Music Prize (1974). From 1975 to 1982 he served
as chairman of the Danish Composers’ Society.
Many American listeners will remember his
score for the 1987 film Babette’s Feast.
Nørgård first took the plunge into the symphonic genre in 1955, unveiling a Symphony
No. 1 (subtitled Sinfonia austera) that displayed
a “northern” feeling in the tradition of Sibelius.
The preceding year, in fact, he had sent the
aged Sibelius a fan letter, writing:
Your music is, in a way that far exceeds your
contemporaries, in touch with the elementary, innermost and quite timeless forces of
existence, with nature in the broadest sense.
I felt this mystical connection with existence
at the same time as I became aware of my nature as indefinably northern. The pure northern air, the powerful darkness and the
crystal-clear, undimmed light; this, the
Nordic feeling for nature, is today one of the
most precious things in my life.
His Symphony No. 8, composed more than a
half-century later, is cut from rather different
cloth, and yet at its opening — and frequently
thereafter — one glimpses the same Nordic sensibility, a glittering aloofness, an almost ghostly
(but not threatening) suggestion of some incorporeal being hovering in an atmosphere of distilled clarity. In an interview on the website of
the Danish new-music organization SNYK
(translated by Christopher Culver), Nørgård said:
IN SHORT
Born: July 13, 1932, in Gentofte, Denmark
Resides: in Copenhagen, Denmark
Work composed: 2010–11, on commission
from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra;
dedicated to John Storgårds
World premiere: September 19, 2013, at
the Helsinki Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland, by
the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, John
Storgårds, conductor
New York Philharmonic premiere: this performance, which also marks the U.S. Premiere
Estimated duration: ca. 35 minutes
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The first movement has decided on a portal
to enter. This is in the form of a “floor” in the
middle, whose material is bound by a sort of
gravity. It is a type of horizon, a line in the
middle and it moves between a rhythm
which consists of dotted eighths and then
quarter-notes in triplets, very close to each
other, but it provides a variant between what
is falling, set against triplets. They stand
therefore opposite a rising and falling, which
in a way is relentless and could theoretically
go on forever, because when the one that is
rising reaches the middle, where the other is
falling down to, they could in principle pass
through each other.
In a formal program note, Nørgård wrote:
The first movement opens with sculptural
rising and falling scales. Visually the sound
may call to mind, say, spirals or ziggurats
(temple towers). Brisk music leads to the climax of the movement. The second movement is slow and sensually melodious and
has three interludes of greater timbral
melodic action. The third movement begins
very restlessly but towards the climax the
tempo gradually begins to accelerate. An oscillating pianissimo murmur ends the movement — and the symphony.
Elsewhere, he has said:
If you look at the third movement, its
rhythm is puzzling, because there doesn’t
seem to be any pulse. It’s like blades of grass
that sprout up.
Instrumentation: four flutes (two doubling
alto flute, and one doubling piccolo), three
oboes and English horn, three clarinets (one
doubling E-flat clarinet) and bass clarinet, three
bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, four
trumpets (one doubling piccolo trumpet), three
trombones, tuba, timpani, orchestra bells, vibraphone, xylophone, marimba, crotales,
chimes, eight Thai gongs, low gong, tam-tam,
wind chimes, oil drum (steel drum), suspended
cymbal, three cymbals, cowbells, maracas,
wood block, Chinese blocks, metal staves, tambourines, bongos, small drums, military drum,
bass drum, harp, piano, celeste, and strings.
In the Composer’s Words
In an interview on the SNYK website, Per Nørgård shared his thoughts about the essential idea of a symphony:
A symphony is a work where the motion, the momentum, is like a clear
unfolding of the material. When it has a relentlessness, something —
as Sibelius called it — compelling about what one is dealing with. What
might be compelling could simply be that the work radiates a “suchness,” where one can say that it is just a question of having an inevitable
way in which it unfolds its basic material. This will not be found, for
example, in a series of variations, where you can have one more variation or one less. In a symphony the material imposes itself on you, so
to speak.
The symphonic can be compelling in many ways.
The compelling character of a symphony for me lies in the fact that
it is never something that is explicitly stated. That is, the symphonic material is precisely not just material; it is in a state which ensures that it
never gets through with itself. That state can be the unity behind it then.
As Poul Ruders once put it, the symphony is like a big bear that one
wrestles with.
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