"I felt that the world was like one big vault with sounds inside."

July 30, 2007 3:59 PM

Else Marie Pade (b. 1924) is a phenomenon in the history of Danish music. As a child she was often ill and bedridden. She would listen to the sounds around her... on the stairs, from the yard and the room next to hers. This is where her audio universe began. During the Second World War, she was arrested by the Gestapo and placed in solitary confinement. Rather than despair, she began composing music on the bare prison walls, where she scratched the notes with the fasteners on her garters. After the war and her discovery of the concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer and the French avant-garde, she realized that the sounds resembled those she had heard in childhood, and that this was the music she really wanted to compose. Read a long interview with Else Marie Pade here and listen to her collected works here. (Last link in Danish. Left column is production year, middle column is title. Click the bit rates on the right to listen to each work.)
posted by sveskemus (8 comments total)

The interview has a long and a bit boring preface describing the history of musique concrète in Denmark which it is totally okay to skip. Just scroll down to where it says "We met the now 76-year old composer in her home in Charlottenlund for a talk about her destiny as a composer, the joys and sorrows of her career plus her international acquaintances."
posted by sveskemus at 3:59 PM on July 30, 2007

This story reminds me a little of Messaien, who wrote his Quartet for the End of Time from within a Nazi prisoner of war camp - the music is filled with the birdsongs he could hear around him.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:21 PM on July 30, 2007

...she began composing music on the bare prison walls, where she scratched the notes with the fasteners on her garters. After the war and her discovery of the concrete music...

There's a fine joke buried in there.

How can I get direct links to the music files?
posted by pracowity at 11:51 PM on July 30, 2007

How can I get direct links to the music files?

You can't, unfortunately, as far as I can tell. It seems to be streaming or nothing.
posted by sveskemus at 2:24 AM on July 31, 2007

You got that right. Tsk. I could untangle all the javascript and WMP [Reference] links if I tried real hard, but sheesh.

This is a wonderful find, thanks for posting it.

This thread needs more love, but I don't know what to say other than "awesome".
posted by sidereal at 2:37 PM on July 31, 2007

I might be wrong, but isn't this the gal who Kraftwerk digs? Imagine having Kraftwerk as your fans.
posted by dabitch at 2:51 AM on August 1, 2007

heh - and Radiohead are apparently Messaien fans...
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:06 AM on August 1, 2007

Imagine having Kraftwerk as your fans.

I'm walking around the grocery store, punching prices into my calculator as usual to keep track of the running total, when a guy grabs it and declares he's the operator of my pocket calculator. Then another odd guy says, no, he's the operator of my pocket calculator. Soon there are four of them fighting to be the operator of my pocket calculator and I have lost all track of what I was doing, so I abandon the cart and my calculator and get the hell out of there. Cripes, these guys won't leave me alone.

How was that?
posted by pracowity at 5:30 AM on August 2, 2007