Else Marie Pade, from Resistance to Recording The Life and Work of an Electronic Music Pioneer

The first English-language and internationally available book-length study of the pioneering Danish composer Else Marie Pade, her major works and life story. Credited as the first Danish composer to use electronics to make music, Else Marie Pade (1924-2016) is acknowledged as a pioneer in her field, one of the first generation of electronic music composers. However, her cutting-edge and influential work was under-recognized during her career. Pade is now considered one of the many "forgotten" 20th-century women artists who are in the 21st century finally receiving due recognition. Starting at the beginning, this study covers the composer's childhood, which was sickly and often spent in convalescence. As a young woman, Pade joined the resistance during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. She was eventually arrested and imprisoned at Frøslevlejren. It was after the war that Pade trained as pianist before turning to composition. Structured in the composer's preferred practice of dodecaphony (i.e. twelve-tone technique) and traditional tonal music (based on the melodic scales consisting of seven tones each), this work focuses on a number of central compositions, including Symphonie magnétophonique (1957-1958) which describes a day in the life of an ordinary Dane, as well as the predominantly instrumental electronic pieces Syv cirkler (1958), Et glasperlespil I-II (1960) and Faust (1962), interspersed by interludes and thematic readings of Pade’s life and work.