Composers
Magnus Lindberg
© Richard Haughton
Born: 1958
Brief Biography: Magnus Lindberg studied at the Sibelius Academy with Einojuhani Rautavaara and Paavo Heininen, and co-founded, with colleagues including Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho the ‘Ears Open’ Society, dedicated to the exploration of the European avant-garde. Formal organizational techniques such as serialism and musique concrète were important features of his early works. In the 1990s he became more concerned with harmonic structure, and a broad range of styles including minimalism, free jazz and rock became evident in his work. Throughout the 1990s he became increasingly drawn towards large-scale forms, describing the orchestra as his favourite ‘instrument’.
For a complete biography, click here.
Key Works:- Action-Situation-Signification
(1982; ensemble, electronics) - Kraft
(1985; various soloists, orchestra) - UR
(1986; ensemble, electronics) - Joy
(1990; large ensemble) - Aura (In memoriam Witold Lutoslawski) (1994; orchestra)
- Related Rocks (1997; two pianos, two percussion, electronics)
| Career Highlights:- 1977 co-founder of Ears Open! society
- 1980 co-founder (with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Anssi Karttunen and others) of toimii Ensemble
- 1981 received Diploma from Sibelius Academy and moved to Paris to study privately with Gérard Grisey and Vinko Globokar
- 1988 Nordic Council Music Prize for Kraft
- 2001-2 ’Related Rocks’: major Lindberg festival in London, Paris and Brussels
- 2003 awarded Wihuri International Sibelius Prize
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Full Biography:
After studying at the Sibelius Academy in his native Finland, Lindberg studied privately with Gérard Grisey and Vinko Globokar in Paris and attended courses given by Franco Donatoni (Siena) and Brian Ferneyhough (Darmstadt).
If Magnus Lindberg had an Opus 1, it would be Quintetto dell'Estate (1979), which shows a depiction of drama through gesture that is still highly relevant to his work today. A further breakthrough is marked by Action-Situation-Signification (1982), the first work in which he turned towards the technique of musique concrète. This work is also important because it ultimately led to the founding (with Esa-Pekka Salonen ) of Toimii - an ensemble dedicated to experimentation in composition - which became a laboratory for developing many of Lindberg's subsequent ideas.
Kraft (1983-85), in essence a concerto for the members of Toimii and orchestra, sees the distillation of these experiments and together with Ur (1986) shows Lindberg exploring further the processing of conventional sound with electronic devices.
In the 1990s, pieces such as Marea (1990), the Piano Concerto (1990-94), Corrente (1992), Corrente II (1992) and Coyote Blues (1993) have been less concerned with the use of electronics (although the composer still uses computers as a compositional aid) and show Lindberg putting a stronger emphasis on the harmonic structure of his music. June 1994 saw the triumphant premiere in Tokyo of the major new orchestral work Aura - in memoriam Witold Lutoslawski , a commission from the Suntory International Program for Music Composition, and in June 1995 his Arena was the test piece for the first International Sibelius Conductor's Competition in Helsinki. In 1995 he was the featured composer at the Aldeburgh Festival and in 1996 he was Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre's Meltdown Festival. In 1997 he was featured at the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels and the Strasbourg Musica Festival where his two largest works Kraft and Aura received their French Premieres.
Recent works include Engine (1996), a commission from the London Sinfonietta, Arena II (1996) for sinfonietta, and Related Rocks (1997), an IRCAM commission for electronics, 2 pianos and percussion.
Among the many prizes his music has won are the Prix Italia (1986), the UNESCO Rostrum (1986), the Nordic Music Prize (1988) and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for large-scale composition (1992).
Magnus Lindberg's music is available on the Finlandia, Ondine and Adès labels.
External Websites
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