¹ Paul Griffiths, ‘Hans Abrahamsen’, <http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/long-bio/Hans-Abrahamsen> (accessed 13 December 2017).

² These are the terms used by Jonathan W. Bernard in a landmark article on the music of György Ligeti, charting his response to what he saw as the contradictions inherent in his generation’s concern with total serialism. Bernard, ‘Inaudible Structures, Audible Music: Ligeti’s Problem, and his Solution’, Music Analysis, 6 (1987), 207–36.

³ Abrahamsen discusses the relationship between material and form in relation to his earlier music in conversation with Erling Kullberg. Kullberg, ‘Konstruktion, intuition og betydning i Hans Abrahamsens musik’ (‘Construction, Intuition and Meaning in Hans Abrahamsen’s Music’), Dansk musik tidsskrift, 60 (1986), 258–67.

⁴ Discussions of Ny Enkelhed can be found in Nielsen, Poul, ‘Omkring den ny enkelhed’(‘Around the New Simplicity’), Dansk musik tidsskrift, 40 (1966), 138–42Google Scholar; Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Pelle, ‘Nyenkelhet ännu en gång’ (‘New Simplicity Once Again’), Nutida musik (Contemporary Music), 22/3 (1978), 31–6Google Scholar; Kullberg, Erling, ‘Det andet oprør: Reaktionen mod modernismen’ (‘The Second Rebellion: Reactions to Modernism’), Caecilia, 1 (1991), 57–96 Google Scholar; Sørensen, Søren Møller, ‘Ny musik, men ikke modernisme: To unge komponister i de danske 1970ere – Karl Aage Rasmussen og Hans Abrahamsen’ (‘Contemporary Music, but Not Modernism: Two Young Composers in the Danish 1970s – Karl Aage Rasmussen and Hans Abrahamsen’), Dansk årbog for musikforskning, 26 (1998), 35–57 Google Scholar; Brinker, Jens, Contemporary Danish Music 1950–2000, trans. Manley, James (Copenhagen: Danish Music Information Centre, 2000)Google Scholar; Christensen, Jean, ‘New Music of Denmark’, New Music of the Nordic Countries, ed. White, John D. (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2002), 1–120 Google Scholar; and Ernste, Kevin, ‘Hans Abrahamsen’s Winternacht: Reflections on an Etching by Escher, M. C.’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 2006)Google Scholar. For broader examinations of issues surrounding New Simplicity (mostly from a German perspective), see Hentschel, Frank, ‘Wie neu war die “Neue Einfachheit”?’, Acta musicologica, 78 (2006), 111–31Google Scholar, and Mitrović, Radoš, ‘Nova jednostavnost kao oblik kritike postmodernizma’ (‘New Simplicity as a Form of Criticism of Postmodernism’), Muzika: Časopis za muzičku kulturu, 19 (2015), 8–19;Google Scholar and for a more contemporaneous view, see Zur Neuen Einfachheit in der Musik, ed. Otto Kolleritsch (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1981).

⁵ Kullberg, ‘Det andet oprør’, 75–85.

⁶ Ibid., 88–95.

⁷ Frei, Marco and Abrahamsen, Hans, ‘“Es darf in der Musik keinen Totalitarismus geben”’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 177/4 (2016), 8–11 (p. 8).Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., 10.

⁹ For discussion, see, for example, Frei and Abrahamsen, ‘“Es darf in der Musik keinen Totalitarismus geben”’, 10–11.

¹⁰ Kate Molleson, ‘Interview: Hans Abrahamsen / Kate Molleson’, 14 January 2015, <http://katemolleson.com/interview-hans-abrahamsen/> (accessed 13 December 2017).

¹¹ For a number of Ny Enkelhed composers, an important dimension was a much greater foregrounding of the way their music was made: the title of Christiansen’s 1964 work Perceptive Constructions makes this new-found emphasis apparent. (I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer of an earlier version of this article for this observation.)

¹² For discussion of Schnee, see Griffiths, Paul, Modern Music and After, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 422–4,Google Scholar and Powell, Richard, ‘Articulating Time: Listening to Musical Forms in the Twenty-First Century’ (Ph.D. dissertation: University of York, 2016), 122–7, 140–55Google Scholar. For Wald, see Chandler, Christopher, ‘Recontextualization and Variation: Associative Organization in Hans Abrahamsen’s Walden and Wald’ (Ph.D. dissertation: University of Rochester, 2017)Google Scholar. Schnee and the Double Concerto are briefly discussed in Ertz, Matthew, ‘Recent Music of Hans Abrahamsen’, Notes, 70 (2013–14), 190–3.Google Scholar

¹³ Ernste, ‘Hans Abrahamsen’s Winternacht’, 29–36.

¹⁴ Hans Abrahamsen, ‘Schnee (2008)’, <http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/1/34990> (accessed 14 December 2017).

¹⁵ Hans Abrahamsen, ‘Schnee’, <http://www.winterandwinter.com/index.php?id=1607> (accessed 14 December 2017).

¹⁶ William Robin, ‘Hans Abrahamsen: Fame and Snow Falling on a Composer’, New York Times, 3 September 2016, <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/arts/music/hans-abrahamsen-fame-and-snow-falling-on-a-composer.html> (accessed 14 December 2017). See also Abrahamsen’s comments in Katherine Cooper, ‘Hans Abrahamsen: Let me tell you’, Presto Classical, 17 February 2016, <https://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/classical/articles/1439--hans-abrahamsen-let-me-tell-you> (accessed 14 December 2017).

¹⁷ There are interesting echoes here of Ligeti’s Études for piano: the ‘Schnee melodies’ are reminiscent of the accented lines found in Désordre, while the use of stacked harmonies and resulting ‘non-diatonic diatonicism’ in this movement resembles Fém (among other works). The relationship between Abrahamsen’s music and that of his one-time teacher has not yet been the subject of detailed study; for Abrahamsen’s own comments, see his ‘Object og illusion, 1: Hans Abrahamsen om Ligeti’ (‘Object and Illusion, 1: Hans Abrahamsen on Ligeti’), Dansk musik tidsskrift, 63 (1988–9), 82–4. For discussion of the Ligeti Études, see, for instance, Steinitz, Richard, György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination (London: Faber, 2003), 277–314.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Such an approach has similarities with the processes of change ringing, where a starting linear structure is subjected to gradual transformation through the application of a series of switches of order. The technique that Abrahamsen uses here is a departure from the swapping of adjacent places found within common change-ringing patterns, but the underlying idea of generating pitch material in this way seems important within Abrahamsen’s recent music. (I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer of an earlier version of this article for emphasizing this connection.) There are other permutational art forms which can also be brought into this creative orbit, an example being the sestina and its modern-day revival by writers such as Raymond Queneau; for an introduction, see Bellos, David, ‘Mathematics, Poetry, Fiction: The Adventure of the Oulipo’, BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, 25 (2010), 104–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ Chandler, ‘Recontextualization and Variation’, 93.

²⁰ There is a connection with Winternacht, which in the second movement uses an arpeggio figuration explicitly borrowed from the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata to evoke one of Escher’s ‘Three Worlds’; see Ernste, ‘Hans Abrahamsen’s Winternacht’, 29–36.

²¹ Abrahamsen, ‘Schnee’, <http://www.winterandwinter.com/index.php?id=1607> (accessed 14 December 2017).

²² The works discussed here make less explicit reference to music by other composers than can be found among Abrahamsen’s earlier output, and as a result what follows is confined to a consideration of self-referral. Of course, any such internal–external boundary remains porous, and Abrahamsen often plays with invocations of broader musical tropes, but a proper examination of this issue lies far outside the scope of the present discussion. See, for example, Wikshåland, Ståle, ‘Tradisjonsløshet som siste skrik?’ (‘Freedom from Tradition as Final Cry?’), Studia musicologica norvegica, 14 (1988), 74–88.Google Scholar

²³ The relationship between this music and the opening of Schnee means that these movements are – at least in terms of construction – already ‘double’.

²⁴ Abrahamsen describes Efterårslied as a ‘quodlibet’; Hans Abrahamsen, ‘Efterårslied (1992) (Herbstlied)’, <http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/1/21848> (accessed 14 December 2017).

²⁵ Hans Abrahamsen, ‘Wald (2009)’, <http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/1/43185> (accessed 14 December 2017).

²⁶ Chandler discusses both the variation form of Wald and a significant part of the compositional detail in his examination of relationships between this work and Walden, and employs Dora Hanninen’s theory of ‘associative organization’ in order to examine the disposition of material and the ways in which it is manipulated, principally in relation to the outer sections of the piece (Chandler, ‘Recontextualization and Variation’, 44–93). What follows considers the music in less formal terms than Chandler’s, with the primary focus on how compositional techniques are variously combined to produce music of great allusive complexity.

²⁷ Abrahamsen, ‘Wald (2009)’.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ As Chandler has shown, the process here is one of gradual phase-shifting: the horn begins its call every 20 crotchets, whereas the flute, clarinet and bassoon use repeating periods of 16⅔, 16 and 15 crotchets respectively. Chandler, ‘Recontextualization and Variation’, 28–9.

³⁰ Ibid., 73–4, 76.

³¹ Chandler has explored in detail many of the variation processes involved; the current discussion focuses on those aspects that contribute most clearly to the perception of musical form, and particularly the manipulation of scale.

³² In the absence of repeated bars to define the ‘grid’, double bar-lines in the score have been used as markers.

³³ See, for example, Ernste’s discussion of the first movement of Winternacht (‘Hans Abrahamsen’s Winternacht’, 10–28). The same music is also considered in Kleiberg, Ståle, ‘Hans Abrahamsens musikk, poetisk billedkraft i musikalsk form’ (‘Hans Abrahamsen’s Music: Poetic Imagery in Musical Form’), Studia musicologica norvegica, 14 (1988), 89–114.Google Scholar

³⁴ Chandler, in contrast, reads the material first presented as part (iii) of the theme as representative of flocks of birds (‘Recontextualization and Variation’, 45, 82).

³⁵ See Christensen, ‘New Music of Denmark’, 85, and Ernste, ‘Hans Abrahamsen’s Winternacht’, 11.

³⁶ Chandler, ‘Recontextualization and Variation’, 90. Chandler has also shown the way in which these final two sections of the music continue and recontextualize transformations set in motion in the theme and first two variations.

³⁷ Frei and Abrahamsen, ‘“Es darf in der Musik keinen Totalitarismus geben”’, 11 (my translation).

³⁸ Ibid. (my translation).

³⁹ Thomas, Gavin, ‘Something Amiss with the Fairies’, Musical Times, 135/1815 (1994), 267–72 (p. 270)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elsewhere, Abrahamsen has suggested that his works are ‘pictures of music’; see, for example, Björn Gottstein, ‘Hans Abrahamsen – Geraeuschen’, 2008, <www.geraeuschen.de/12.html> (accessed 27 October 2017; now only available through the Internet Archive, <https://web.archive.org/web/20191227173807/http://www.geraeuschen.de:80/12.html>); Kullberg, ‘Konstruktion, intuition og betydning’; and Wikshåland, ‘Tradisjonsløshet som siste skrik?’

⁴⁰ Thomas, ‘Something Amiss with the Fairies’, 271.