Magnus Lindberg
Encyclopedia
Magnus Lindberg is a Finnish composer
and pianist. He is currently the composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic
.
in Helsinki under Einojuhani Rautavaara
and Paavo Heininen
, beginning with piano. He attended summer courses in Siena
(with Franco Donatoni
) and Darmstadt
(with Brian Ferneyhough
). After graduating in 1981, he travelled widely in Europe, attending private studies with Vinko Globokar
and Gérard Grisey
in Paris
, and observing Japanese drumming and punk rock
in Berlin.
. This piece was written for and premiered by the new-music ensemble Toimii
("It Works" in the Finnish language
), which Lindberg founded during the summer of 1980. Also around the same period, Lindberg founded an informal grouping known as the Ears Open Society including Lindberg and his contemporaries Eero Hämeeniemi, Jouni Kaipainen
, Kaija Saariaho
and Esa-Pekka Salonen
. Lindberg is a trained pianist and has performed several of his works as part of Toimii.
Kraft (1983-85), another piece written for Toimii, is Lindberg's largest work to date, with harmonies of over 70 notes and a meter-high score. It uses traditional instrumentation as well as percussion on scrap metal and spoken word. After finishing it Lindberg found it hard to compose, and with the exception of 1986's Ur, which he called "Kraft in chamber form", he entered an extensive creative hiatus which was to last for over two years. During this time he was not only rethinking his style but also recovering from a tropical disease contracted during travel in Indonesia.
Kraft made use of a chaconne
-type structure where the progression of the piece is based on a repeated chain of chords. It was this idea that served as the basis for Lindberg's next style. He returned with an orchestral trilogy consisting of Kinetics (1988), Marea (1989-90), and Joy (1990). Though Lindberg became less interested in electronic manipulation of sound, he continued to explore the possibilities of compositional software, and Engine displays complex computer-generated counterpoint. Since Joy, Lindberg has shown a gradual refining of his style, orchestrations and harmonies. This showed itself first in the work for chamber ensemble, Corrente (1992) (and its subsequent orchestral version, Corrente II from the same year), and Duo Concertante (1992). In these works, Lindberg showed influences ranging from Pierre Boulez
and Tristan Murail
to Igor Stravinsky
and Minimalism
. His symphonic work Aura (1994) reflects a newer, more eclectic style.
Since then, Lindberg has built upon these developments, further refining his style, which now leans toward a type of new tonality hinted at in works such as Joy and Aura. This development has culminated in one of his most popular scores to date, his Clarinet Concerto (2002), which has a folk-like melody and rich orchestration.
(1986), the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers
(1986), the Nordic Music Prize (1988) for Kraft, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for large-scale composition (1992).
Lindberg became the new composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic
with the 2009-2010 season, at the invitation of the incoming music director Alan Gilbert
. The September 2009 opening night gala of the Philharmonic, which was Gilbert's debut as music director, featured a well-received new work by Lindberg, EXPO.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and pianist. He is currently the composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
.
Education
Lindberg studied at the Sibelius AcademySibelius Academy
The Sibelius Academy is a university-level music school which operates in Helsinki and Kuopio, Finland. It also has an adult education centre in Järvenpää and a training centre in Seinäjoki. The Academy is the only music university in Finland. It is among the biggest European music universities...
in Helsinki under Einojuhani Rautavaara
Einojuhani Rautavaara
Einojuhani Rautavaara is a Finnish composer of contemporary classical music, and is one of the most notable Finnish composers after Jean Sibelius.-Life:...
and Paavo Heininen
Paavo Heininen
Paavo Heininen is a Finnish composer and pianist. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where he was taught composition by Aarre Merikanto, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Einar Englund, and Joonas Kokkonen...
, beginning with piano. He attended summer courses in Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
(with Franco Donatoni
Franco Donatoni
Franco Donatoni was an Italian composer.Born in Verona, he started studying violin at the age of seven, and frequented the local Music Academy...
) and Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
(with Brian Ferneyhough
Brian Ferneyhough
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...
). After graduating in 1981, he travelled widely in Europe, attending private studies with Vinko Globokar
Vinko Globokar
Vinko Globokar is a French avant-garde composer and trombonist of Slovene descent.His work is noted for its use of unconventional and extended techniques, closely allying him to contemporaries Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann...
and Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary music.-Biography:Gérard Grisey was born in Belfort, France on 17 June 1946. He studied at the Trossingen Conservatory in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire de Paris...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and observing Japanese drumming and punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
in Berlin.
Compositions and style
Lindberg's juvenilia include the large orchestral work Donor, composed at age 16. Quintetto dell’Estate (1979) is generally held to be Lindberg's first opus. His first piece performed by a professional orchestra was Sculpture II in 1982, the second part of a trilogy whose first and third sections were long unwritten. His first great success came with "Action-Situation-Signification" (1982), the first work in which he explored musique concrèteMusique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
. This piece was written for and premiered by the new-music ensemble Toimii
Toimii
Toimii is an ensemble for new music founded in the spring of 1980 by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg with several other young composers and instrumentalists connected with the Sibelius Academy...
("It Works" in the Finnish language
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
), which Lindberg founded during the summer of 1980. Also around the same period, Lindberg founded an informal grouping known as the Ears Open Society including Lindberg and his contemporaries Eero Hämeeniemi, Jouni Kaipainen
Jouni Kaipainen
Jouni Kaipainen is a Finnish composer.Kaipainen was born in Helsinki. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki under Aulis Sallinen and Paavo Heininen.- Works for the Stage :...
, Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer.Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by...
and Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.-Early career:...
. Lindberg is a trained pianist and has performed several of his works as part of Toimii.
Kraft (1983-85), another piece written for Toimii, is Lindberg's largest work to date, with harmonies of over 70 notes and a meter-high score. It uses traditional instrumentation as well as percussion on scrap metal and spoken word. After finishing it Lindberg found it hard to compose, and with the exception of 1986's Ur, which he called "Kraft in chamber form", he entered an extensive creative hiatus which was to last for over two years. During this time he was not only rethinking his style but also recovering from a tropical disease contracted during travel in Indonesia.
Kraft made use of a chaconne
Chaconne
A chaconne ; is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and...
-type structure where the progression of the piece is based on a repeated chain of chords. It was this idea that served as the basis for Lindberg's next style. He returned with an orchestral trilogy consisting of Kinetics (1988), Marea (1989-90), and Joy (1990). Though Lindberg became less interested in electronic manipulation of sound, he continued to explore the possibilities of compositional software, and Engine displays complex computer-generated counterpoint. Since Joy, Lindberg has shown a gradual refining of his style, orchestrations and harmonies. This showed itself first in the work for chamber ensemble, Corrente (1992) (and its subsequent orchestral version, Corrente II from the same year), and Duo Concertante (1992). In these works, Lindberg showed influences ranging from Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
and Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail is a French composer. His father, Gérard Murail, is a poet and his mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of his brothers, Lorris Murail, and his younger sister Elvire Murail, aka Moka, also write, and his younger sister Marie-Aude Murail is a French children's writer...
to Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and Minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
. His symphonic work Aura (1994) reflects a newer, more eclectic style.
Since then, Lindberg has built upon these developments, further refining his style, which now leans toward a type of new tonality hinted at in works such as Joy and Aura. This development has culminated in one of his most popular scores to date, his Clarinet Concerto (2002), which has a folk-like melody and rich orchestration.
Awards and honors
He has received a number of composition prizes, including the Prix ItaliaPrix Italia
The Prix Italia is an international Italian television, radio-broadcasting and Website award. It was established in 1948 by RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana in Capri...
(1986), the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers
International Rostrum of Composers
The International Rostrum of Composers is an annual forum organized by the International Music Council that offers broadcasting representatives the opportunity to exchange and publicize pieces of contemporary classical music...
(1986), the Nordic Music Prize (1988) for Kraft, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for large-scale composition (1992).
Lindberg became the new composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
with the 2009-2010 season, at the invitation of the incoming music director Alan Gilbert
Alan Gilbert (conductor)
Alan Gilbert is an American violinist and conductor. He is currently the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, making his debut performance as the orchestra's music director on September 16, 2009.-Early years:...
. The September 2009 opening night gala of the Philharmonic, which was Gilbert's debut as music director, featured a well-received new work by Lindberg, EXPO.
Works
- Musik för två pianon (Music for Two Pianos) (1976)
- Arabesques for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn (1978)
- Quintetto dell' estate for fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, clarinetClarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
, violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and pianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
(1979) - Linea d'ombra (1981)
- "...de Tartuffe, je crois..." for piano quintet (1981)
- Sculpture II (1981)
- Action-Situation-Signification (1982)
- Tendenza for 21 players (1982)
- Ablauf (1983)
- Ground for harpsichordHarpsichordA harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
(1983) - Kraft (1983-85)
- Metal Work (1984)
- Stroke for cello (1984)
- UR (1986)
- Twine for solo piano (1988)
- Kinetics (1988-89)
- Marea (1989-90)
- Joy (1989-90)
- Moto (1990)
- Steamboat Bill Jr. (1990)
- Jeux d'anches for solo accordionAccordionThe accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
(1990) - Clarinet Quintet (1992)
- Duo Concertante for solo clarinet and cello (1992)
- Corrente for chamber orchestraOrchestraAn orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
(1992) - Corrente II for symphony orchestra (1992)
- Decorrente (1992)
- Kiri (1993)
- Songs from North and South for children's chorus a cappellaA cappellaA cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
(1993-2008) - Coyote Blues for large chamber ensemble (1993)
- Away for solo clarinet (1994)
- Aura (in memoriam Witold Lutosławski) for orchestra (1994)
- Piano Concerto (1994)
- Zungenstimmen (1994)
- Arena for orchestra (1995)
- Arena II for orchestra (1996)
- Engine (1996)
- Related Rocks (1997)
- Feria (1997)
- Cantigas (1997-1999)
- Campana In Aria for horn and orchestra (1998)
- Cello Concerto (1999)
- Gran Duo for wind orchestra (1999-2000)
- Parada
- Fresco
- Corrente - China Version (2000)
- Jubilees for piano (2000)
- Partia for cello solo (2001)
- Etude I for piano (2001)
- Dos Coyotes (2002)
- Bubo bubo (2002)
- Bright Cecilia: Variations on a Theme by Purcell for orchestra (2002)
- Chorale for orchestra (2002)
- Clarinet Concerto (2002)
- Jubilees for chamber ensemble (2002)
- Counter Phrases for chamber ensemble (2002-2003)
- Concerto for orchestra (2003)
- Mano a mano for guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
(2004) - Tribute for orchestra (2004)
- Etude II for piano (2004)
- Ottoni for brass ensemble (2005)
- Sculpture for orchestra (2005)
- Violin Concerto (2006)
- Konzertstück for cello and piano (2006)
- Seht die Sonne for orchestra (2007)
- Trio for clarinet, cello and piano (2008)
- Graffiti for chorus and orchestra (2008-2009)
- EXPO for orchestra (2009)
- Al largo for orchestra (2010)
- Souvenir for large ensemble (2010)
Sources
- Stenius, Caterina. 2006. Chaconne: En bok om Magnus Lindberg och den nya musiken. Med verkförteckning av Risto Nieminen. Helsinki: Söderströms. ISBN 951-52-2356-3
External links
- Magnus Lindberg @ Boosey & Hawkes
- Entry at the Finnish Music Information Centre
- Magnus Lindberg page at Ondine Records
- Interview with Lindberg conducted by Kirk Noreen and Joshua Cody in 1999.