EMP 9

‘The pains, joys, hopes, defiance, and evils of pulsating life, the restless end’

By Jonas Olesen

In 1968, Else Marie Pade attended the so-called summer courses in the German town of Darmstadt for the second time, where she participated in a percussion workshop with the percussionist Christoph Caskel. Returning home with fresh inspiration from the course, she conceived the idea of creating a pure percussion work based on the poem ‘Das Meer’ written by her friend Georg Sønderlund Hansen (1908–92). The relatively abstract poem deals with the sea, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for ‘the pains, joys, hopes, defiance, and evils of pulsating life, the restless end.’ (From Inge Bruland’s notes in the booklet for Else Marie Pade, Gert Sørensen: Aquarellen über das Meer; Illustrations, Dacapo Records CD 8.226544, 2009.)

Sønderlund Hansen also showed Pade a series of his abstract watercolours, which similarly explored the theme of the sea. These watercolours became Pade’s direct musical inspiration for the work. She had the idea of attempting to ‘sonically photograph’ (Pade, Else Marie: Aquarellen über das Meer I–XXI (Nach dem Gedicht “Das Meer” von G.S.H.), undated handwritten description of the thoughts behind the work, Edition·S Archives). She described how she asked herself: ‘Can the ear ‘see’ a picture from left to right using stereophonic panning while it is shown as a slide, or will the eye, as it usually does, first perceive the picture as a whole and only then focus on details that particularly capture the viewer’s attention?’

Pade decided to treat the watercolours as a kind of graphic score to be interpreted from left to right. She described the process of creating musical translations of the colours and shapes in the watercolours. Since there were 21 watercolours in the series, she structured the composition into 21 sections, each lasting one minute. To this, she added an overture, intermezzi/text, and a finale, each lasting about a quarter of a minute, bringing the total duration to 30 minutes.

She then outlined on index cards the contours of the various graphical elements in the watercolours, such as cloud formations and waves. She translated the ‘proportions of the colours’ into durations, with each colour assigned to a percussion instrument. The process was highly subjective, with Pade’s own interpretations of the watercolours shaping the translations.

One of the sketches for Pade’s Aquarellen über das Meer I–XXI

Pade worked on Aquarellen über das Meer I-XXI between 1968 and 1971, but the work ‘went straight into the desk drawer’ (Bak, Andrea: Else Marie Pade – En biografi, Gyldendal, 2009) and was not performed until 2009. It was recorded the year prior on the initiative of the percussionist Gert Sørensen. At the concert, the individual watercolours were projected onto a screen, allowing the audience to follow their progression alongside the music.

The work employs an extensive array of percussion instruments, including timpani, bass drum, tom-tom, snare drum, tambourine, tam-tam, suspended cymbals, crotales, triangle, flexatone, maracas, glockenspiel, and zither. Additionally, it includes piano, harp, and a narrator who reads the poem. Electronic elements are minimal, comprising only a recording of white noise used to create wave sounds, along with subtle stereo panning and artificial reverb.

Pade did not participate in the recording but was delighted with the result. She remarked: ‘When Gert played it for me, I was so thrilled. I couldn’t say anything other than ‘oh’ and ‘wow.’ He had done it perfectly. Every little detail was there, and he added a reverb effect as if you were sitting inside a sphere while listening. I was very impressed.’ (Bak, 2009). This recording was made by Gert Sørensen, who successively recorded each percussion instrument in his studio. Helen Davis Mikkelborg performed on harp. 

The harp part includes melodic hints, but the overall work consists of interwoven soundscapes, creating a highly complex sonic texture. The piece begins with powerful wave-like sounds created using white noise, and a sense of undulating motion recurs throughout the individual sections. Each section creates an impression of ‘charging’ with rapid rhythmic figures that produce a tense energy, followed by ‘discharging’ into more serene tones. 

The discharges are also marked by the narrator reciting a stanza of the poem with a calm delivery. The rhythmic figures are often repetitive and very rapid, such as when mallets are played directly on the piano strings. Occasionally, a faint pulse can be discerned, but the complexity of the soundscape and the many overlapping voices contribute to an overarching sense of abstraction, turbulence, and restlessness.

Notes

No information has been found on why Georg Sønderlund Hansen’s poem was written in German or whether it might have been translated from Danish. Pade’s original score is also in German, suggesting she may have envisioned its performance in Germany. Premiered at Møstings Hus, Copenhagen, on 11 January 2009, at a concert organised by Dacapo Records and the Women in Music Association. Previously released on Else Marie Pade, Gert Sørensen: Aquarellen über das Meer; Illustrations, Dacapo Records CD 8.226544, 2009.
 

Towards the end of the 1960s, Else Marie Pade began to gravitate more and more towards religion on a personal level, and in 1969, she conceptualised a distinctly Christian/Catholic work with the Virgin Mary as its overarching theme. Pade envisioned creating a work comprising various ‘timbres’, understood as separate sections, each symbolizing different aspects of the Virgin Mary’s life.

Meanwhile, in 1970, she received a commission from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) for a musical work, which was to be a collaboration between DR and Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm. Pade aimed to create a sound material that could be incorporated into the intended work about the Virgin Mary. In DR’s studios, she initially recorded acoustic instruments, including prepared piano, vibraphone, triangle, trombone, maracas, crotales, and ‘glass mobiles’ played by musicians Suzanne Ibstrup and Niels Neergaard. Her plan was then to ‘manipulate the speed’ of these recordings in EMS’ studios and utilize EMS’ advanced Stora studio to produce ‘twelve electronic chords, each consisting of twelve frequencies’ to mark the beginning and end of each timbre.

However, upon arriving at EMS, she encountered less willingness from the technicians than she was accustomed to at DR, and thus, a significant portion of her time at EMS was spent learning the technical equipment on her own. She later recalled feeling ‘helpless among all the machines. Making plenty of compromises, making poor decisions at the last minute, and creating something that, by my own standards, was mediocre.’ 

Part of the explanation for Pade finding the work mediocre lies in the fact that her concept of the work as a narrative with voices and the like conflicted with the commission’s conditions, which allegedly called for a ‘purely’ instrumental work. Klangfarver fra EMS (Timbres from EMS) (1970–71) can thus be regarded as a ‘half’ work, where Pade originally intended the sound material to be part of the narrative work about the Virgin Mary she had envisioned. Nevertheless, the result from EMS was broadcast by DR in 1973 under the title Klangfarver fra EMS.

The work received predominantly negative reviews, with one newspaper writing, ‘Else Marie Pade’s Klangfarver are a commissioned work carried out in the electronic studio in Stockholm for DR, which is not fully capable in the electronic field and may consider if it needs to be. Electronic music is on the decline. Its future placement will likely be of an illustrative, mood-creating nature, and that’s how Else Marie Pade’s Klangfarver were.’

A contributing factor to the negative reception might have been that Pade insisted that the work – despite its title not indicating its content – still be experienced as illustrating the life of the Virgin Mary. Before the work was broadcast, the announcer read out the titles of the various sections: 1) To fear (meaning reverence for God and his messengers). 2) To love (meaning to love her son, the firstborn). 3) To wonder (meaning to wonder at a miracle) ...

By maintaining the work’s religious significance – without the narrative elements she had initially envisioned – Pade ensured that this significance was only conveyed to the listeners in the form of the announcer’s description. The work itself unfolds purely abstractly and without direct auditory connotations to the Christian theme.

Klangfarver fra EMS starts relatively dramatically, and the first couple of minutes unfold in a dense sound picture, dominated by sounds from the prepared piano, which is lowered in pitch, occasionally overdriven, and panned in sliding movements between the speakers. In the next section, the preceding sound material is permuted, now heard at higher speeds with reverberation and mixed with abstract ‘squeaking’ sounds. A following section is more minimalistic in expression and consists of tinkling glass sounds at very low volume. Another section uses tones that sound as if played on wine glasses with heavy artificial reverberation added. Overall, the entire work is characterised by bell-like sounds, produced by radically lowering several recordings of the acoustic instruments in pitch. However, it is only occasionally that these become so abstract that they cannot be recognised as coming from the acoustic instruments, and it is striking that besides the electronic chords marking the individual sections, only electronic material in the form of filtered white noise is used.