Søren Sørensen

Søren Sørensen (Copenhagen, 20 September 1920) is one of the most influential Danish musicologists of the second half of the twentieth century. He is chiefly associated with research into seventeenth-century music and, in particular, with the figure of Dieterich Buxtehude, although his work also covered the history of Danish church music, the output of Carl Nielsen and the cultural relations between Denmark and northern Germany.

His training was twofold. He studied organ with Finn Viderø at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he obtained his diploma in 1943, and musicology with Abrahamsen and Larsen at the University of Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1945 and earned his doctorate in 1958 with a dissertation on Buxtehude's cantatas. In that same year, 1943, he co-founded the Collegium Musicum, a chamber orchestra, together with the conductor Lavard Friisholm, and he performed in it as organist and harpsichordist until it was disbanded in 1976. Between 1947 and 1958 he held the organ post at Holmens Kirke in Copenhagen, succeeding Jeppesen, and from 1958 to 1990 he was professor of musicology at the University of Aarhus. Additionally, between 1977 and 1988, he taught courses on the history of religious music at the Pastoral Seminary in that same city.

His institutional career was extensive. He presided over the Danish Society of Organists and Choir Directors (1953-1959), sat on the IMS council between 1964 and 1972, and served as rector of the University of Aarhus from 1967 to 1971. He represented the Scandinavian countries in international university bodies and on the Council of Europe's committee for higher education and research. He chaired the programme committee of the 11th International Congress of the IMS, held in Copenhagen in 1972, and the Danish Research Council for the Humanities between 1974 and 1977. He also chaired the board of the Jyske Opera in Aarhus on two occasions, 1973-1986 and 1990-1992. Between 1961 and 1976 he was co-editor, with Nils Schiørring, of the Dansk årbog for musikforskning.

His written output includes studies such as Kirkens liturgi, his dissertation on Buxtehude's cantatas, Renaissancebegrebet i musikhistorien and Das Buxtehudebild im Wandel der Zeit, as well as numerous articles and editions of Buxtehude's works. In 1972 he received the Buxtehude Prize from the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, in recognition of his work on the composer. He was a visiting professor at Kiel in 1973, received the Bartók Medal of the Hungarian State in 1982, and joined the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1977 and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1989. On his retirement, the tribute volume Festskrift Søren Sørensen was dedicated to him in 1990.