Pehr Henrik Nordgren

Pehr Henrik Nordgren, born in Saltvik on 19 January 1944, is one of the most representative Finnish composers of the second half of the twentieth century. His training combined musicology, at the University of Helsinki, where he graduated in 1967, with private composition studies under Kokkonen between 1965 and 1969. Before establishing his career, he worked as a research assistant at the same university from 1965 to 1970.

In 1970 he moved to Tokyo to study at the Tokyo University of the Arts with Yoshio Hasegawa, a period that lasted until 1973. Since then his activity has been closely associated with Kaustinen, where he wrote much of his principal music for the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra.

Nordgren does not adhere to a single language. Although he turns sporadically to twelve-tone technique, his style is markedly pluralist. In his early works, such as Agnus Dei (1970) and The Turning Point (1972), he claimed to use a technique of melodic-polyphonic clusters close to that of Ligeti; in later works such as the Cello Concerto No. 1, TRANSE-CHORAL and the Symphony No. 2, he returned to a texture formed by numerous independent lines. Alongside these appear allusions to pure triads and elements of popular music. His art of combining styles, which he describes as kaleidoscopic, reaches its most notable peak in the First Symphony.

The Japanese influence is perceptible in Kymmenen ballaadia japanilaisiin kauhutarinoihin and in the works for traditional Japanese instruments, although Nordgren does not borrow Asian melodies, as he does not usually appropriate timbres and constructions at the same time. In the Piano Concerto, in which he spoke of the deus ex machina effect of pure triads, both the kantele and oriental pentatonicism are imitated. Among his principal works are also the cantata Beavi, áhçázan, on Sami themes, the opera Den svarta munken and the television opera Alex.

His later music is characterised by an increasingly clear and polyphonic texture, and in the 1980s folk music returned in weighty chorales that form a dense fabric. Nordgren shows little interest in avant-garde techniques, and the body of his work conveys an intense and intimate impression that, above all in the late string quartets, becomes elegiac and melancholic.