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Vagn Holmboe: Quartet Composer at Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
Extract
Vagn Homboe, born in Horsens on the Jutland peninsula in 1909, is the doyen of Danish composers. Although he celebrates his eightieth birthday on 20 December, he remains formidably productive: his new Twelfth Symphony was premièred by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra in Cardiff on 21 October. A prolific composer in many genres, his reputation rests securely on the twin pillars of his symphonies and his even more numerous string quartets.
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References
1 For example: ‘Of course, there are people for whom the analytical process is beautiful in itself… Naturally, analysis can be a legitimate intellectual gratification. But the mistake which can happen, and often does, is to confuse this gratification with musical experience, which is almost the same as confusing a puddle with the sea’. Holmboe, , Mellemspil (Copenhagen, 1961) p. 16 Google Scholar.
2 Numbering of the unpublished quartets by lower case letter is taken from Rapoport, Paul, Vagn Holmboe: a Catalogue of his Music, Discography, Bibliography, Essays, (Second Edition, Copenhagen, 1979)Google Scholar.
3 12–note material is anticipated in Quartet No. 3, and also plays a significant role in Nos.6 and 10.
4 Holmboe, , ‘Tre symfonier’, in Modem Nordisk Musik, ed. Bengtsson, Ingmar (Stockholm, 1957), pp.154–66Google Scholar.
5 Rapoport, Paul, Opus Est: Six Composers from Northern Europe (London, 1978), p. 54 Google Scholar.
6 ‘Trc symfonier’ gives us some precedent for doing this.
7 The first of them (Royal Library, mu.7411.1470) is dated ‘26/8.66’ at the end, and contains annotations which are written up in the second (mu.7411.1471); this is merely dated ‘1966’.
8 Early sketches are contained in mu.7411.1469. This sketch is on an unnumbered fragment of manuscript paper in mu.7411.1469, and is dated ‘13/12.65’.
9 I take the cello note at the end of the third bar of the sketch to rcadgi.
10 Fol.9v, dated ‘14/13.65’. There is apparently a sketch in to between those reproduced at Ex.1 and Ex.2, but it is mostly illegible (fol.8V, dated ‘14/12.65’).
11 Fol.4, dated ‘13–15/12’ [65].
12 12 Fol.jv, dated ‘13–17/12’ [65].
13 Work on the first movement can be traced in manuscript material as follows. The sketches in mu.7411.1469 culminate in a sketch of b. 1–50. This sketch is mostly as the published score. However, b.21–24 were originally missing from it; Holmboe then added the direction ‘Rep. 1–4 ma forte’ at this point. The next stage is a full sketch of the movement located in mu.7411.1468. In this, Holmboe wrote out b.1–4 after b.20, following the above instruction in the previous sketch; this passage was then changed to the slightly transformed version of theme I that appears in the published score. This full sketch contains two different endings of the movement.
14 ‘On Form and Metamorphosis’, The Modern Composer and His World, ed. Beckwith, and Kasscmets, (Toronto, 1961), p. 138 Google Scholar.