Ny musik, men ikke modernisme

To unge komponister i de danske 1970ere: Karl Aage Rasmussen og Hans Abrahamsen

Abstract

Contemporary music, but not modernism. Two young composers in the Danish 1970s: Karl Aage Rasmussen and Hans Abrahamsen

The article is about two representatives of the generation of Danish composers that began to make its mark in the 1970s: Karl Aage Rasmussen (b. 1947) and Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952). Each in his own way, these two composers worked in the seventies with music with historical references: “quotation music”, “music about music” or music with more diffuse historical connotations, and both participated in the decade’s typical critique of the international musical modernism of the preceding decades.

The article first provides a brief introduction to the historical background for the special aesthetic problem horizon for contemporary Danish music in the 1970s, then presents the two composers, and finally presents and comments on a selection of their works from this decade.