Ivar Frounberg

Frounberg, who made his debut as a composer relatively late, was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. He studied in Denmark with Niels Viggo Bentzon and Ib Nørholm and abroad with Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman.

The latter two have been considerable sources of inspiration, Xanakis for his extremely complex and expressive works, Feldman for his ‘clang mobiles’, which, as a result of their lack of drive, draw attention to the finest structures in the basic musical material.

This inspiration is clear in the nominated work, Et punkts anatomi for 16 soloists and live electronics. In this piece Frounberg works to uncover complex nuances and details in an extremely limited expression register – hence the title of the work.

There is no actual text, and the choristers are used to make ‘clang’ sounds which are used to dissect the modest tone supply with variations in consonant and vowel colorations, in which the boundary between tonality and ‘clang’ colours is erased.

In this way the listener – in the words of the composer – ‘may discover an infinite amount of anatomical details in the relationship between sound, tone, intervals and harmonics’. Or perhaps expressed in another way: ‘to see the world in a grain of sand’.

The human voices form part of an interactive game with computer generated feedback as well as a couple of acoumenees (sound recordings). The result is a subtle ‘clang’ study from a pioneer in not just Danish but Scandinavian electronic music.