Oh damn, RIP. I actually listened to and posted some of his symphonies the other month here. Sad.
Per Nørgård Obituary: 'The contemporary music world has lost an artist of colossal imagination and influence'
gramophone.co.uk/classical music news/article/per-norgard-obituary-the-contemporary-music-world-has-lost-an-artist-of-colossal-imagination-and-influence
With the death of Per Nørgård at the age of 92 following a long illness, Nordic music has lost a patriarchal figure and the wider contemporary music world has lost an artist of colossal imagination and influence.
Nørgård leaves behind more than 100 hours of music created over seven decades, ranging from symphonies and sinfonietta works to solo and chamber music, film music, theatre music and cross-genre music. His teaching at the Aarhus Conservatory in Denmark helped shape the minds of a generation of composers, among them Hans Abrahamsen and Bent Sørensen. Thomas Adès, Wolfgang Rihm, Poul Ruders, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sven-David Sandström and Britta Byström are among those who have cited him as an influence.
Nørgård performed his own songs from his childhood in the Copenhagen suburbs, with his family as an audience. He was later taught privately by Vagn Holmboe before studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Music from 1952-55 with Holmboe, Finn Høffding and Hermann D Koppel, after which he took lessons from Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Once described by Gramophone’s Richard Whitehouse as the ‘greatest living symphonist,’ Nørgård’s early belief in music’s most structurally integral form was consolidated in his early twenties, when he initiated a fruitful correspondence with Jean Sibelius. Nørgård regarded Sibelius’s symphonies as being ‘in touch with the timeless forces of existence, with nature in the broadest sense.’ He set about taking that idea forward at a time when the symphony was out of fashion and European modernism was stuck in a rut.
and it continues