Else Marie Pade. The concrete music and the sound vault of reality
Written by: Henrik Marstal and Ingeborg Okkels
In the post-war era in Central Europe, the appearance of the new electronic sound technologies helped change the music, the composition process and also the way of thinking that was traditionally connected to both. Using the reel-to-reel tape recorder the composer could work with a sound material that primarily consisted of everyday sounds and which was therefore an integral part of the surrounding reality.
The reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was actually intended to be yet another commercial communication technology like the gramophone and the juke-box, turned out to hold some unique possibilities as a composition tool. Not only was it possible to record any imaginable sound on tape, one could also subsequently manipulate it by e.g. changing the playing speed, playing the tape backwards or cut it in pieces and then "glue" it together in new combinations - the possibilities were endless.
In Paris, Pierre Schaffer and his circle presented in 1948 a special musique concrète i.e. a "concrete music" which primarily consisted of microphone recorded real sounds stored and subsequently manipulated on magnetic tapes. In other words: sounds from the surrounding everyday, e.g. the busy steps on the streets, the noise from the trains, coughs, laughs and even the sound of music from gramophone records. Four years later in Cologne, Western Germany, a sound studio was established, in which the so-called "elektronische Musik" was produced and had Karlheinz Stockhausen as one of the producers. As opposed to the French movement, in the Cologne studio, they worked only with sounds produced in the sound studio - i.e. not concrete sounds. By using sine generators, oscillators and other tools, which were all originally meant for physics experiments, they sought to create an entirely abstract music, with its basis in the neutral sine tone, compositional treated according to serial principles. Both the French and German undertakings evoked considerable reactions also elsewhere in Europe, if often of a more negative than positive nature.
Even though the two movements both musically and ideologically were completely opposed, the audience as well as the critics and the musicians often regarded them as two sides of the same coin. The critic went that these new sounds, whether the sounds of everyday life or of the physics apparatus, in both cases had absolutely nothing to do with regular music. The two schools therefore provoked so strongly that they both got an attention which probably did not really measure up to their actual spread and importance.
In Denmark, the composer and pianist Else Marie Pade was among the first to really acknowledge the creative possibilities of the reel-to-reel tape recorder. Using the sound laboratories of Danmarks Radio (Danish Broadcast Corporation), and supported by a small staff of technicians, she composed a number of electronically based works. They were primarily based on the idea of musique concrète, but gradually she also used techniques from the "elektronische Musik".
Up until the middle of the 1960es, Else Marie Pade was an almost tireless pioneer and advocate for the electronic music, and what helped her was a generally willing attitude among technicians, presenters and executives. Through broadcasts, articles and background music for radio dramas and TV shows, she spread out the knowledge of the new magnetic tape music in spite of a seemingly equally tireless resistance from the established composers and commentators of that time. Not least the music press happily resorted to very specious and ironic devices when it commented or reviewed her "music".
Perhaps therefore it is suggestive that Else Marie Pade was apparently that Danish post-war composer who was most pronouncedly involved in the leading avant-garde circles in Central Europe in the 50'es. Through a number of trips to various courses and events and as a fellow organizer of study groups regarding electronic music in Copenhagen - often including guests from abroad - she established connections to such prominent profiles as Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luc Ferrari, John Cage, Bengt Hambræus and many others.
The shock waves in young Danish composer circles caused by the infamous and often reported car excursion to the ISCM festival in Cologne in 1960 by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Ib Nørholm and Per Nørgård therefore hardly upset Else Marie Pade. The general isolation of Danish music life from contemporary trends since 1945, which the three composers here acknowledged with an almost too certain manner, never included her (1). At that time, with works such as "Seven circles" and "Symphonie magnétophonique ("Symphony for tape") and music for radio plays, she had long ago proved that it was possible to create serious Danish music on a very different basis than Sibelius, Nielsen and Holmboe - the holy trinity in Danish music life in the post-war era (2).
If, in a Danish connection, one can talk about a "split history" in Karl Aage Rasmussen's meaning of the expression, then Else Marie Pade definitely belongs to that part of the composers of the post-war era that from the beginning was pushed into the background by a dominant, more tradition-bound and homogenous mainstream music. Or one might say - to use yet another wording by Rasmussen - that she belongs to the group of "the forgotten, the indisposed, the difficult", despite, after contemporary Danish conditions, her unique international orientation. After her music to a certain extent had been listened to and discussed in the years up until the late 1960'es, it has only been listened to a limited extent since then. This might come particularly from the fact that none of her works can be found recorded on LP or CD. However, her music does not sound like something that should be pushed into the background. The works which this article's writers have had the opportunity to listen to in connection with this article are indeed odd and indisposed in many ways. They are marked by an almost childish desire to tell a story, a distinct playing tone of voice and an atmosphere of something which is on the one hand very unworldly and dreamingly, on the other hand abysmal and oppressively present. Sometimes the works are also marked by something liberating humorous, pragmatic and optimistic, which the short "description" of "Symphonie magnètophonique" elsewhere in this article will hopefully illustrate.
We met the now 76-year old composer in her home in Charlottenlund for a talk about her destiny as a composer, the joys and sorrows of her career plus her international acquaintances.
- Else Marie Pade, how come it was concrete music you got interested in?
- I got interested because of one night in 1951 when in the radio show "Horisont", I heard about Pierre Schaeffer who had come up with this new kind of music (3). Here he talked about a "sound universe" by which we were all surrounded. And this was something which I already as a child had thought about - and heard in my mind's ear. I felt that the world was like one big vault with sounds inside. Of course I loved classical music and other kinds of music very much, but I actually must say that the abstract things and sounds inside my head were more real to me than the "concrete" reality was, what with all its sonorous music. My parents were not happy about the music, because it was during the Second World War; i.e. a time when people thought that especially the girls would go the dogs if they chose to pursue a career in music! So my parents did everything they could to pull me in the opposite direction. Therefore, in deep secrecy, I started taking piano lessons with a teacher of the music academy in Århus. However, what happened was that we were both caught by the Gestapo because we were both members of a sabotage group, which she had gotten me into.
This was in 1944, and at that time I was 19 years old. We were both arrested and ended in the "Frøslev Lejr" where we stayed until the Liberation eight months later. The stay in the camp turned out to be sort of my luck, because here I met a number of people who understood my desire to adopt a musical career instead of being employed in the post and telegraph service, such as my parents wanted me to. These people each subscribed a monthly amount when we came out of the camp which would finance my studies at the academy of music. Among my "Frøslev friends" I also met my future husband, Henning Pade, who later became the programme director of DR's drama-literary section.
- So you moved to Copenhagen?
- Yes, I came to Copenhagen after the war and was admitted to the conservatory with piano, and there I studied from 1946 to 1949. I was still raving about the sound universes I had heard about as a child. Those universes had not become smaller by all the adventurous things that had happened to me during the war, i.e. interrogations - gruelling interrogations - and how to get through it all anyway. I wanted to pass these sounds forward in some kind of shape; I wanted to compose. At the same time, as a pianist I felt that I did not get the results I had imagined.
When I had finished my piano degree, I contacted Vagn Holmboe who taught me private lessons. I also composed some works for ordinary musical instruments. But then I heard the mentioned radio programme about Pierre Schaeffer. His music made me think: "God, there it is. This music I have heard before - inside my head!" My husband's sister was married to a Frenchman and lived in Paris, and through her and not least her husband's connections, she quickly produced some of the music for me from the French national radio. Later, in 1952, I went to Paris and on the station I met Pierre Schaeffer. I established some kind of friendship with him and later I visited him privately in his - to be honest - very odd home, which was kept in an almost Wagnerian Victorian style, but which also included some enormous loudspeakers shaped as ears. I read his notations about musique concrete, and I kept thinking: this is marvellous! His thoughts about music now seriously opened my own ears.
The revelation came to me one summer evening a while later when I was at the amusement park "Bakken" in "Dyrehaven". Suddenly I realised that in the middle of the surrounding noise, I was actually listening to the scene of the market place from Stravinsky's "Petrushka", exposed to concrete music. I went home and came to an agreement with Danmarks Radio about the production of some sort of documentary about Bakken, where I would be making the sound track by recording the many sounds of the place, including the performers themselves, and then subsequently re-edit them electronically. During 1954-55, this resulted in "One day at Dyrehavsbakken", which was aired several times, in Denmark as well as Sweden. The reactions to the work were generally moderate. First and foremost, people were indignant that I allowed myself to call it music.
- In the ears of your contemporaries, did the concrete sounds of everyday life seem as noise rather than music, do you think?
- Most certainly, yes. But for me it was different. The concrete music could do what the fairy-tales did - make red strawberries grow out of the snow, make dwarfs giggle, or leaves swaying like silver. It really was like exploring. Åse Ziegler, who at that time made fairy-tales for children at the radio, was among those inspired by the film. I therefore started collecting sounds in preparation for making the sound track for a number of her programmes.
At one time, a problem arose that neither I nor those of the radio technicians who helped me were able to solve: what does it sound like when a mermaid sings? I was referred to the sound engineer Holger Lauridsen who also worked at the radio. He was in contact with the circle surrounding Werner Meyer-Eppler (4) and was very familiar with the study of electronic music, far more than I. He was known to be something of a sound wizard - he, among others, helped developing the stereo principle.
By using a sine generator and an oscillator, he soon created a sound that sounded almost as I had imagined. Here, again, I heard the sounds I had listened to as a child. Lauridsen and I therefore soon got together in our joint interest in sound, both the concrete and the electronic. He taught me a lot about the techniques for electronic music creation, and he placed his assistance at my disposal. Gradually, the interest in such sound experiments started to gain ground, and I made a.o. an experimental sound track out of Soya's radio drama, "Spøgelse søges" ("Looking for a ghost") from 1956. This was made possible by the director of the music department of the radio, Vagn Kappel, having allowed me to use the sound laboratories of the radio, when none of the others were using them. Thanks to the ingenuity of Lauridsen, we were able to construct a small electronic sound studio - it was no easy matter to procure instruments from abroad. We also formed a study circle of interested technicians, radio people and writers, where we discussed and listened to the music, and where we also invited people like Stockhausen and Ernst Krenek to give lectures about their music, while Herbert Eimert - manager of the WDR study in Cologne - gave us an introduction to the possibilities of the electronic music. I remember that Stockhausen was so polite as to tell us that our sound studio actually matched the facilities of the WDR studio - we were very proud of that.
- How did your Danish composer colleagues and your contemporaries in general regard what happened nat the radio in those years?
- Well, it does make you wonder that I was the only composer in the study circle. Almost everybody else regarded these experiments as sheer humbug that did not have anything to do with music - most certainly not! Those with the most sympathetic attitude could only just associate the concrete music to the radio play. The contemporaries, in general, thought that it had nothing to do with neither music nor art.
The concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer - and also the electronic music of Stockhausen - was looked upon in the same way, and these new tendencies were kept away from the conservatory, maybe because people were afraid of them. Jan Maegaard was actually the only one that I was in contact with in that connection. We were the only two people who could talk with each other about the new tendencies. He told me about the Schönberg circle and the serial principles for compositions, from which I learned a lot, and he was honestly interested in my work.
- In a writing from 1957, Knudåge Riisager has said that he thinks the audio tape's linking together a tuberculous man's coughs and the gasping of a woman in labour is amazing, but that it has not got anything to do with music. It is not exactly an inspiring impression you get here of the reaction of the contemporaries to the new musical tendencies, is it?
- There was a general dislike of all that was new: if it did not depict something, it should not be complimented. This happened all over Denmark, this perception which would later be named "rindalisme". Even someone like the late Knud W. Jensen from Louisiana - people thought of him: "Such a cheese merchant, who puts his nose into art. He does not know anything about that." On the musical scene, things were the same. I remember once when Stockhausen was so mad. He was supposed to stage the orchestral work "Gruppen" in Danmarks Radio and the musicians were not to keen on performing this. Then he became really mad. Later we were having lunch together, and then it came: "You know what? When the world comes to an end, there will be two countries that will survive longer. One of them is Holland, and they will not recognise that until 20 years later. The other country is Denmark, and they will see it 40 years later": He simply thought that there was something wrong with the mental capacity in Denmark - we were too reactionary.
- What kind of contact did you have to other electronic and concrete composers?
- A Danish colleague like Jørgen Plaetner I have had almost no contact with, even though he - like myself - created electronic music in the 1950es. However, at the world exhibition in 1958 in Brussels, I met Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna. Stockhausen was there to stage a performance of "Gruppen", and he used me as his guinea pig to sit in the concert hall and examine the sound balances between the loudspeakers that had been put up.
Later I met John Cage and also Bengt Hambræus, with whom I did an electronic concert at "Fiolteatret" in Copenhagen in 1961. I did not begin participating in the Darmstadt courses until 1962, but never earlier in my life did I feel a greater sense of community than between the people there. I felt very welcome in these circles and the fact that I was a female composer - which was obviously rather unusual at the time - was not perceived as a problem by anyone. In Denmark, on the other hand, I often felt a bit ridiculed as a female composer. Even my own husband was bothered by my creating music. One might say that I was doubly isolated in Danish composer circles, partly as a composer of electronic music, partly as a woman.
- Was it modesty that kept you from making your foreign colleagues acquainted with your music?
- It is true that my colleagues from abroad did not know my music that well. Neither did I work that hard to make it become known, as I had enough to do as a newly appointed music producer on the radio, and this had my attention just as much. Two people who were really interested in my music, and who tried to get it outside Denmark, were Stockhausen and Boulez. They asked for tape and material which they then used for educational purposes when they were travelling giving lectures on electronic music. The material was about the works "Syv circler" (Seven circles) - the first electronic work in Denmark - and "Glasperlespillet" (The glass bead game). In this way, Denmark did participate. Except from that, only few of my works were staged, even though a few times they were played on the radio, in Germany as well as France. 8-9 years ago, however, I was sent for, from abroad, as Holland wanted to have a tape copy of "Syv cirkler".
- What happened next?
- Well, the tragic thing happened that Holger Lauridsen died very suddenly, in late 1957. That made things considerably more difficult. Of course, the technicians were still there, but the competence and spirit of Lauridsen was missing. In 1960, I divorced Henning Pade, and as time went by, it gradually became rather difficult for me to take care of my job as a producer, be a single mom, and then also compose. At times, my works production came at a halt. However, that did not really matter, as I was wildly absorbed by my job and co-operation with my radio colleagues, namely Mogens Andersen, Ingolf Gabold and Sven Erik Werner. At the same time, it was probably too late for the electronic music. Other things occupied people's minds - except perhaps Schaeffer and Stockhausen, of course.
- Seeing that you had so many connections abroad - what made you stay in Denmark?
- Well, I had my children, and I could not leave them.
- But had it been today?
- Had it been today, I would have gone to France, to Pierre Schaeffer.
Composition description of "Symphonie magnétophonique" (1958)
Symphony for tape by Else Marie Pade.
"Symphonie magnétophonique" is a 19 minutes long composition in one movement for concrete music, performed for the first time in Danmarks Radio on April 4, 1959. The work describes a symphonic travel in modern civilisation, described solely by means of concrete sounds taken from everyday life and the surrounding reality in general. The sound material derives partly by sound recordings performed in the sound laboratory in DR, partly by tone engineer Holger Lauridsen's sound-recording archives (see interview). Almost every sound is electronically manipulated, sometimes very lightly by means of volume control, other times more thoroughly by means of change of tempo, playing backwards, cutting hard, cross modulation and phase shifts.
To the work belongs a realisation score, which has the concrete sounds arranged below one another as in a score. The sounds are all meticulously adapted to a fixed time and pulse. In most cases, only the rhythm of the concrete sounds are noted, since concrete sounds, obviously, hardly can be noted within the boundaries of traditional notation. As Else Marie Pade describes it in the preface to the realisation score, "Symphonie magnétophonique" is "[…] an attempt to symbolically subordinate that "symphony of sounds" of which all of us are surrounded everyday, in a musical course".
With the realisation score at hand, one notices that Symphonie magnétophonique falls into two categories. The first part describes the everyday life, arranged chronologically as: morning, forenoon, afternoon, evening, night. The second part describes a number of nightmarish war situations, seen from the point of view of the everyday man. Trills from larches and other kinds of bird songs open the work, and these sounds soon mingle with the whistling of a milkman, rattling of milk bottles and the sound of the bells of the Copenhagen town hall - it is early morning (p.1)
A little while later, a sequence follows in which modern man's daily morning rituals are rendered, with the sound of toothbrushing, cisterns and singing in the shower. After that, we hear the sounds of transport, i.e. S-trains, steam trains, bicycle bells and trams.
Now begins the working day of the big city, illustrated by sounds coming from sawmills and the rattle of machines and engines. Harbour life is depicted by means of an odd "skipper waltz", with yapping of dogs (on the stressed one-beat) and gulls screaming (on the off-beats), accompanied by a marine engine and ashes and waves (p11). The afternoon is a reflection of the sounds from the foregoing sequences, as the sounds of noon are here played backwards in new afternoon sequences. The evening is described by the sounds of the radio news, roasting, cooking, slurping, even belching, and babies crying and cradle songs. Also sounds from Tivoli are heard, with fragments of "Champagnegaloppen", calypso rhythms from contemporary dance music, children's voices, fireworks and drunken humming. Thus, finally one can hear the sound of the steps of men (unstable) and the steps of women (stable)!
After this, the work's focus is moved from the reality of everyday life into an entirely different but just as realistic reality - war, assaults and suppression, illustrated by the sound of a bomb falling, marching steps, women screaming and police sirens. A reality which Else Marie Pade has experienced herself during the occupation and the days in the Frøslev camp (see interview).
The work is ended with the gradual ceasing of the sounds of everyday life and thereby the reality. The bells of the town hall are dissolved into a natural tone scale of sine tones, contrasted by a steady heart rate, a light breathing, and a snoring. And the very same larch trill that opened the work can be heard in the closing of the work where it stands alone in the last measures. Not least in these sequences does Else Marie Pade rediscover that "sound vault" which she heard in her mind's ear as a child, and later in the music and poetry of Pierre Schaeffer.
Literature
Bruland, Inge: Men udgangspunktet er skønheden. Interview med komponisten Else Marie Pade, f. 1924. Kvinder i Musik 36-37/12 (1995), p. 8-17.
Danuser, Hermann: Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Carl Dahlhaus (ed.): Neue Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft (vol. 7). Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1984.
Granau, Martin: Holms Vision. Edited by Magna Blanke, Per Nørby and Martin Granau. Copenhagen: DR, 2000.
Kullberg, Erling: De stormfulde år i dansk musikliv - påvirkninger, holdninger og debat i det danske kunstmusikliv i 10-året 1955-1965. Otte ekkoer af musikforskning i Århus. Århus: Musikvidenskabeligt Institut, 1988, p. 81-117.
Maegaard, Jan: Else Marie Pade 70 år. Printed in "Kvinder i Musik 36-37/12" (1995), p. 6-7.
Marstal, Henrik & Henriette Moos: Musique concrète, techno og lyden af samtid. Dansk Musik Tidsskrift 6/74 (1999-2000), p. 200-208.
Marstal, Henrik & Henriette Moos: Filtreringer - elektronisk musik fra tonegeneratorer til samplere 1898-2001. Copenhagen: Høst & Søn, 2001.
Pade, Else Marie: Lydprofetier? Dansk Musiktidsskrift 1/32 (1957), p. 38-41.
Pade, Else Marie: Tonens rumfart tur-retur. Nordisk Musikkultur 4/7 (1958), p. 104-108.
Rasmussen, Karl Aage: Kan man høre tiden. Essays om musik og mennesker. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1998.
Schaeffer, Pierre: Traité des objets musicaux. Essai interdisciplines. Paris: Éditions du seuil, 1966.
Sørensen, Søren Møller: Elektron- og computermusik - en historisk skitse. Dansk Musik Tidsskrift 4/65 (1990-91), p. 117-119.
Sørensen, Søren Møller: Ny musik, men ikke modernisme. To unge komponister i de danske 1970ere: Karl Aage Rasmussen og Hans Abrahamsen. Dansk Årbog for Musikforskning 26 (1998), p. 35-57.
Notes
[1] An exception from this isolation was Jan Maegaard as it also appears from the interview.
[2] Also Hindemith, Stravinsky, Bartók and the French composers of the inter-war period were among the local household gods. See also Kullberg 1988, p. 83-84, and Sørensen 1998, p. 35-38.
[3] Though otherwise an authoritative source, Martin Granau's jubilee publication on Radiosymfoniorkestret wrongly refers the year as 1954 (Granau 2000, vol. 2, p. 65).
[4] The physicist and theorist Werner Meyer-Eppler took the initiative in establishing the electronic sound studio in Cologne, the so-called West Deutscher Rundfunk-studie.
Photos
1. Else Marie Pade in the sound laboratory, Danmarks Radio 1962. Inserted, top:
2, 3, 4. Page from the realisation score for "Symphonie magnétophonique".
Photography: Morten Marstal.
Complete catalogue
Sept pièces en couleurs. Suite for chamber orcestra, 1953.
Pjerrots forunderlige dans (marionette play for television). Flute and harp, 1953.
Koncert for trompet og orkester, 1954.
En dag på dyrehavsbakken (television movie with concrete sound), 1954-55.
Røde Bolde. Song and piano. Text: Grete Friis, 1955.
[Underscore for six fairy tales] (radio shows). Concrete and electronic music, 1955-56.
Vòlo spa hoc est. Choir: SSAA. Text: Den ældre Edda, 1956.
[Underscore for "The Little Mermaid"] (radio show). Concrete and electronic music, 1957-58.
Symphonie magnètophonique. Concrete music, 1957-58.
Syv cirkler. Electronic music, 1958.
Afsnit I, II og III. Solo violin and 11 electro-acoustic percussion instruments distributed among three loudspeakers, 1960.
Lys og Lyd. Electronic music. Text: Piet Hein, 1960.
Glasperlespil I-II. Electronic music, 1960.
Etude I. Electronic music, 1960.
Vikingerne (music for television movie). Electronic music, 1961.
Musik til Symphonie Heroica. Electronic music. Text: Johannes Weltzer, 1962.
Parametre. String band, 1962.
Et spil for cello. Cello and audio tape, 1962.
Faust. Electronic music, 1962.
Græsstrået (music for ballet). Dressed piano, violin and audio tape, 1964.
Historien om Skabelsen. Genfortalt for børn i tekst og kreativ musik. Toy instruments, 1969.
Immortella (ballet pantomime). Electronically prepared percussions, 1969-70.
Musik til fire "Radiodigte". Concrete and electronic music. Tekst: Orla Bundgaard Povlsen, 1970.
Far, Mor og Børn. Song and electro-acoustic prepared instruments, 1974.
XXI Aquarellen über das Meer. Nach den Gedicht "Das Meer" von G. S. H. geschrieben. Percussion, harp, three actors, tape and diapositive, 1968-71.
Maria (electronic essay). Electronically prepared voices and audio tapes, 1982-.
Efterklange for slagtøj, I, II og III. Percussion, 1984.
NB: None of the above works have been recorded on CD or LP.