Ola Nordal: “Between Poetry and Catastrophe”. A Study on the Electroacoustic Music of Arne Nordheim

Description

For half a century Arne Nordheim (1931–2010) was more or less the face of contemporary music in Norway. He was often controversial, but also an omnipresent figure in the Norwegian whenever new music was being discussed. Although much has been said about Nordheim, most of what has been written about his music is anecdotical in nature.

Ola Nordal’s PhD dissertation «Between Poetry and Catastrophe: a Study of The Electroacoustic Music of Arne Nordheim» is the first larger work that surveys the entire career of Nordheim, and that presents a systematic overview of the composers electronic works – from small-scale incidental music for radio and television dramas in the early 1960s, to large-scale electroacoustic concert works and sound installations in the early 2000s.

In particular Nordal gives attention to the works composed in Studio Experymentalne in Warsaw in the late 1960s; Ode til lyset, Warszawa, Poly-Poly, Pace, Colorazione and Solitaire. Nordal also covers the early phase of Nordheim’s electronic work, when he mainly was working in the studio of the Radio Theatre department of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as his comeback as a sort of spiritual grandfather figure for the up and coming generation of Norwegian electronica artists in the late 1990s.

Nordal frames Nordheim’s life and works through a long range of analytical tools and historical perspectives, from sound art theory, electroacoustic music analysis (partly with aid from Lasse Thoresen’s spectromorphological notation system), to more performativity inspired approaches. He presents the first complete list of Nordheims works, which counts 197 compositions. More than half of these contain some sort of electronic element. Nordal also shows how Nordheim can be understood as having several layers of identities – from being the “flagship” of contemporary music within Norway, to be part of a larger “second generation” of electronic music composers in Scandinavia and Europe.

Nordal is giving special emphasis to how the electronic music studios can be understood as unique places that actively shapes the creative work taking place there. The many places Nordheim worked, Warsaw and Oslo in particular, therefore influenced Nordheim’s electronic music in a profound way. It was not just about the available equipment. In this period, production of electronic music was still collaborative effort, so the technical staff of the studio also were important for the finished expression. Nordal has therefore divided Nordheims electronic output into four periods based on where he was working and who he was working with; 1) Early: Oslo (Roger Arnhoff, Viktor Sandal) 1960–1967, 2) Warsaw (Eugeniusz Rudnik) 1967–1974, an intermediate period in Oslo, Warszawa and Stockholm (several) 1975–1983, and 4) late; Oslo (Mats Claesson) 1984–2006. The works produced in Studio Experymentalne together with the sound engineer Eugeniusz Rudnik in the late 1960s are particularly important, both from its standing in the repertoire and in Nordheim’s aesthetic development.

Nordal’s study gives a vital contribution to the understanding of Arne Nordheim and his role in the Norwegian context, and to the growing international literature on the pioneer phase of electronic music – long before this sound world hit the dance floors.

Period	2018 Jun 6
Examinee/Supervised person	Ola Norda
Examination/Supervision held at	Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Degree of Recognition	International