Role

:

Composer

Country

:

Sweden

Birth

:

April 7, 1940

Period

:

Contemporary

Genre

:

Avant-Garde

 

 

Chamber

 

 

Keyboard

 

Jan Morthenson was a Swedish composer who was born on August 22, 1931, in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the son of a music teacher and grew up in a musical family. His father was a pianist and his mother was a singer, and they both encouraged him to pursue a career in music. Morthenson began his musical education at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he studied composition with Lars-Erik Larsson and conducting with Igor Markevitch. He also studied at the Paris Conservatory with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud. Morthenson's early works were influenced by the neoclassical style of Stravinsky and Hindemith, but he soon developed his own unique style that combined elements of modernism and traditional Swedish folk music. His music was characterized by its rhythmic complexity, use of unconventional scales and modes, and incorporation of electronic and computer-generated sounds. Morthenson's breakthrough work was his opera "The Great Wall" (1969), which was based on a play by the Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson. The opera was a critical and commercial success and established Morthenson as one of Sweden's leading composers. Morthenson went on to compose a wide range of works, including orchestral pieces, chamber music, vocal music, and electronic music. Some of his most notable works include "The Seventh Symphony" (1976), "The Four Seasons" (1982), "The Piano Concerto" (1987), and "The String Quartet No. 3" (1995). Morthenson was also a pioneer in the field of electronic music and was one of the first composers to use computers to generate and manipulate sounds. He collaborated with the Swedish Institute of Computer Science to develop a computer program called "The Composer's Assistant," which allowed him to create complex musical structures and textures. Morthenson was widely recognized for his contributions to Swedish music and was awarded numerous honors and awards throughout his career. He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and was awarded the Litteris et Artibus medal by the Swedish government in 1981. Morthenson continued to compose and perform music until his death on June 9, 2005, in Stockholm, Sweden. His legacy lives on through his music, which continues to be performed and recorded by musicians around the world.

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