Ludvig Irgens-Jensen

Ludvig Irgens-Jensen (born April 13, 1894 in Christiania , † April 11, 1969 in Sicily ) was a Norwegian composer .

Life

Irgens-Jensen came from the Irgens family . He first studied philology at the University of Christiania and also took private piano lessons with the pianist Nils Larsen. He taught himself the craft of composition by himself . He drew a lot of attention in 1920 with the publication of his first songs, which were considered to be incredibly modern in the musical life of Norway at that time.

In 1928 Irgens-Jensen submitted his Passacaglia for orchestra to the International Schubert Competition on the 100th anniversary of Franz Schubert's death . In the end it was defeated by Kurt Atterberg's Symphony No. 6 and only received the second prize in the Scandinavian composers department. Nevertheless, the work was performed worldwide in the following years and helped Irgens-Jensen to become internationally known.

The composer achieved another great success in 1930 with his choral symphonic work Heimferd , which was composed on the 900th anniversary of the death of St. Olav II Haraldsson and won first prize in a composition competition organized for this purpose. Heimferd quickly became popular in Norway and has been an important milestone in the history of Norwegian choral music ever since.

During the Second World War Irgens-Jensen composed numerous songs based on poems by Norwegian resistance fighters in order to protest against the German occupation of his home country. The pieces were illegally distributed under pseudonyms and smuggled via Sweden to Great Britain, where they were broadcast on the local radio. In Norway these resistance songs became so well known that they could even be printed with unproblematic texts, since the original texts were generally familiar. Irgens-Jensen's main compositional work of these years is his only symphony in which the distress and the desire for liberation were audibly reflected.

In 1945 Irgens-Jensen received a state grant that guaranteed him financial independence. In 1969 he died two days before his 75th birthday while staying in Sicily.

Audio language

Ludvig Irgens-Jensen was a highly educated man who traveled a lot and spoke several languages. He was accordingly well informed about the latest developments in European music. At the beginning of his career he was heavily influenced by French Impressionism and approached atonality in his early songs . Soon, however, he found a style that was much more tonally based in the tradition of German late romanticism , in which the predominantly polyphonic spelling and the preference for modal expressions in the harmony are particularly noticeable, which ensured that Irgens-Jensen's music in his home country as "Old Norwegian" was received. However, he rarely took up elements of the actual folk music of Norway. Characteristic for Irgens-Jensen are also wide, vocal melodies and a clear, lightened, but nevertheless very effective instrumentation.

Irgens-Jensen is considered one of the most important Norwegian composers of the interwar period and, above all, as a mediator of Central European musical culture, had a strong influence on the younger generation. However, since he resisted the tendencies of the musical avant-garde that emerged in the post-war period , his work was soon considered out of date and gradually faded into the background. From the 1970s onwards, the composer's works were played more frequently again. His song cycle Japanese Spring is performed regularly in Scandinavia .

Works

Orchestral music

• Tema con variazioni (1925, revised 1934 and 1949)
• Passacaglia (1928, revised 1934 and 1952)
• Partita sinfonica (1937, revised 1939)
• Symphony in D minor (1942)
• Canto d'omaggio (1950)
• Air (1959)

Chamber music

• Violin Sonata in B flat major
• Piano quintet

Vocal music

• Heimferd , dramatic symphony (oratorio) for solos, choir and orchestra (1930)
• Japanese Spring , song cycle for voice and piano (1957)

Web links

• Article about Ludvig Irgens-Jensen
• Video of a concert performance of the Passacaglia