8/6/21

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Per Nørgård (1932- )

Last week marked one full year since my last post in this blog series. In that time, I’ve experienced two semesters of undergraduate studies amidst the ongoing pandemic and, with that, many trials of my work ethic and emotional fortitude. While I’m sure that is a sentiment shared by countless people, it seems increasingly important to remember our passions and the joy that come from pursuing them. While this past year gave way to a noticeable decline in my own compositional output, I found myself undeniably and persistently attracted to the field of music. The inability to push my own creation was paralleled by a growing appetite to consume and digest more music, be it romantic, avant-garde, or contemporary pop. Yet, at some point in that time, I recognized how these two processes did not necessarily have to be at odds with each other – which brings me to why I am writing this post. I was touched by how many people (from so many of my social circles) followed this series since I began it in April 2020, and the motivation to continue it was not because of this alone. I found that the more I pushed myself to articulate what it was in these various pieces that made me tick, the more I wanted to chase the feeling of gaining insight and create it in my own music. Now, one year removed, I hope to sincerely continue that pursuit here.

The piece I’ve selected for this re-introductory post is a work by Danish composer Per Nørgård, written between the years of 1972 and 1975. Nørgård is one of the leading pioneers of spectralism, a style of composition in which the music is focused on its own acoustical properties, or “sound for sound’s sake.” This genre developed out of the music of composers like Giacinto Scelsi, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti, and Karlheinz Stockhausen – but perhaps one of the biggest influences on Nørgård’s music is my own personal favorite composer, Jean Sibelius. In fact, as a young composer, Per Nørgård wrote a letter to Sibelius, and received a kind reply from a then compositionally silent giant of late-Romanticism. Unlike the Finn, however, Nørgård’s music eventually developed into having serialized structures like the music of Arnold Schoenberg (albeit spectral rather than atonal). Today’s piece, Symphony No. 3, is a perfect example of this mathematical approach: Nørgård uses a pattern called the “infinity series” which, like fractals, is defined by a simple shape propagating indefinitely at an increasingly larger scope. For more information on how this is achieved in terms of melody, harmony, and rhythm, it would be best to read Per Nørgård’s own article (written in 1974 – while he was working on this symphony), titled Inside a Symphony.

A meaningful analysis of the infinity series’ application in the two-movement Symphony No. 3 would go far beyond the breadth of this post, so I will instead delve into its effect. The serialized design defines a perceptible logic to the music, one that seems to evolve and shape itself more and more as the piece progresses. It is almost as if the music is moving as one single unit, despite the monstrous size of the orchestra Per Nørgård calls for in this symphony (which even extends to include a double choir in the second movement). I would even argue that it transcends the description of “organic,” and is much more worthy of “human” as each aspiration grows to nearly reach fruition before it restarts, collapses, or overshoots. Furthermore, it is almost uncanny how these patterns of denying listeners’ expectations mirrors the extreme cases of pre-cadential extension that were a trademark of composers in the mid- and late-Romantic periods. Nørgård even fulfills these expectations in moments like the last few minutes of the first movement, in which the orchestra finally convenes on cadential unified entrances. The sublimity of this final fleeting moment is also accentuated by Nørgård’s use of harmony – much of the work is unabashedly tonal, pivoting through harmonic areas by means of shared tones and/or circle-of-fifths progressions. Yet the orchestra does not comfortably land on the opening pitch of C (with several pitches of the harmonic series extending above it) until the very end of the first movement.

The second movement is a beast of its own, with much more prolonged periods in which the music seems to be searching for direction. Committing yourself to it, however, will yield a reward on par with the gifts of history’s greatest symphonists, and not just because of its well-timed inclusion of chorus atop an orchestral texture (consider Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 or Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2). The listener’s satisfaction from this movement will also come from the ever-gratifying system in music, simplicity emerging from complexity. As Per Nørgård worked on Symphony No. 3, he also created his own “preliminary studies” – smaller works which explored the limits of applying the infinity series and polyphony, informing his ongoing progress on the symphony. The most important of these was the choral work Singe die Gärten, mein Herz, die du nicht kennst (1974), which he eventually integrated as the climactic material at the end of Symphony No. 3.

However you perceive this monumental work, begin with an open mind. That tends to be a suggestion I make with most of the pieces I discuss in this blog series, but I believe it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of the sentiment periodically. Even before I had any understanding of the inner workings of this piece, I was deeply moved by the journey it takes the listener through; there is no Classical era form to hold onto, just the ever-expanding growth from one idea and texture to the next. Hopefully, you may also see similarities (however distant) between this music and that of Jean Sibelius, particularly in his later orchestral works. To me, both seem to reach for an exhaustive sonic landscape that is able to move the listener through euphoric heights and unforeseen depths in a single nuanced gesture. Perhaps it is just the Scandophile in me speaking, but I do like to think that the great Nordic composers were onto something. On that note, I’ve linked a recording of Nørgård’s Symphony No. 3 with the score below. It is my goal going forward to continue this blog series on a monthly basis, which will give me the freedom I need to work on this alongside my academic studies. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this piece in the comments below.