Discovering Else Marie Pade — grandmother of Danish electronic music
While exploring Danish electronic music scene I stumbled upon a person I just had to write about, because of all the respect I have for personalities like herself. Her name is Else Marie Pade — a Danish composer, true pioneer of electronic music and artist in every aspect of the word. I was driven by her challenging life-story and unique perception of the world formed of, what she used to call, “underappreciated” sounds. It’s ironic, that underappreciated as a word also fits to the describe the works of Else Marie, who died on 18 January 2016 at the age of 91 in her nursing home, where a piano and a gigantic tape recorder are still waiting for one more touch of the genius.
Else Marie Pade was the first person in Denmark to make music using electronics. A woman who created her own alternate paths, fearlessly crafting her own game by necessity. Not only did Else Marie Pade foray into the, at the time, particularly masculine field of contemporary composition, she ventured into the uncharted territory of experimental electronic music, where through a persistent solitary quest, her sonic universe came to expression.
She was a unique pioneer, one of the earliest in Denmark, and as such, for a long time very alone in the work she did. There was no attention from other composers, the audience, etc. She was too ‘out there’.
— Mats Almegård. Producer of Swedish National Radio
As a radio producer, she began composing with tape and oscillators in the 1950s and was barely acknowledged at the time, Anne Hilde Neset noted in 2013 interview with an artist for The Wire. Her work could be forbiddingly austere, but Neset’s article paints a picture of a humble, soft-spoken artist, unusually attentive to the world around her. In part, that’s because Pade was often bedridden as a child. It was her convalescence, in fact, that introduced her to sound’s unlimited imaginative potential — laying the foundations for works.
Early works of an artist include 1958’s “A day at Bakken”, “Seven Circles” and “Symphonie Magnetophonique”, a 19-minute composition made of everyday sounds — traffic, office noises, children playing — meant to represent a 24-hour snapshot of Copenhagen’s daily rhythms. Try to relax, close you eyes and immerse into multiple urban sounds and murmurs, which are intricately woven into a work that can be described as a minutely organised waltz of urban cacophony with seagulls, dog barks and pacing footsteps setting the beat.
What you have just heared is not the original version of “Symphonie Magnetophonique” from the 60's. The track was revived and is a part of “Svævninger”— gorgeous electronic collaboration between Jacob Kirkegaard and Else Marie Pade made in 2013. Jacob Kirkegaard is considered among the most important Danish sound artists of his generation. Kirkegaard’s works focus on scientific and aesthetic aspects of sonic perception, by exploring acoustic spaces and phenomena that under normal circumstances are not detected by the naked ear.
No wonder he have tried to co-create with genius woman while she was still alive. Despite an age difference of 51 years, Else Marie Pade and Jacob Kirkegaard speak a similar musical language and are prominent listeners and communicators of sounds that we tend to overhear. “Svævninger” investigates the variations that one can hear when sound waves collide. Both artists have previously worked on this phenomenon; Jacob Kirkegaard in his work “Labyrinthitis” (2007) and Else Marie Pade in her work “Faust” (1962).
Sofie Tønsberg‘s film was shot during the 2012 Wundergrund Festival in Copenhagen and documents the collaboration between two artists during the creation of the earlier mentioned composition “Svævninger”. The film gives insight into the thoughts and discussions that took place between Else Marie Pade and Jacob Kirkegaard in creative process.
Lickily In 2014, Important Records issued Electronic Works 1958–1995, a collection of the composer’s major pieces, including “Seven Circles”, a serialist piece regarded as Denmark’s first purely electronic composition. Inspired by a visit to Brussels’ world’s fair in 1958, where she both hears Edgard Varèse’s Poème Electronique and encounters a multimedia planetarium, “Seven Circles” represents the movements of the stars in an elegant array of pulses and drones; it sounds both reassuringly intuitive and deeply inscrutable, and, more than half a century after it was made, it’s still hard to believe that it has not been beamed back to us from centuries in the future.
With the emergence of computer generated music, the advancement of technology in the last 20 years and the birth of the flourishing Danish sound art and electronic music scene, Pade’s early efforts and works have been rediscovered by the younger generations of electronica, composers, sound artists, musicians, DJ’s and audiences. Enjoy the excerpt mix of long live electronic music mastermind — Else Marie Pade.
Want to know more about the artist? Check the full article published on Pitchfork and her full interview for Nordicplaylist.com