Else Marie Pade - Face It (2002 compi of works rec. 1958-1970)

Danish electronics pioneer Else Marie Pade (1924-2016) featured early on in this blog with a great compilation of her work; here's another one.  Just three tracks on this collection, starting with Symphonie Magnétophonique, a 1958 musique concrete tape piece representing a typical day in 50s Copenhagen, from dawn to dusk.  Mixed in to this everday slice of life are subtle memories of Europe before the postwar peace, in sirens, screams and marching feet.

More of that later, but first the 43-minute centrepiece of the collection, a radioplay version of The Little Mermaid (1957/8).  It's narrated in Danish, but even for non-speakers there's a lot to admire in the pioneering backing track that Pade created for it.  Sampling distant sounds of music and concrete sounds to evoke the world above the sea, and processing sine waves and pure noise to represent the undersea world, Pade's soundtrack must've been pure magic to listen to when originally broadcast.  Reaching back into her childhood, when she envisioned fantastical sound-worlds from outside her room whilst ill, Pade was eminently qualified to conjure up a soundtrack like this.

She also had first-hand experience of the horrors of war to create the ominous memorial Face It (1970) that closes the album.  An incessant martial rhythm carries fragments of garbled speech, which gradually reveal their source and are processed further into distorted grotesques.  The narrated vocal loop, in Danish, translates as "We must face it, Hitler is not dead" - the final line, "...he lives on in Nixon" was censored by the record label.

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pw: sgtg

Else Marie Pade - Et Glasperlespil (2001 compi of works 1958-1964)

Else Marie Pade was a Danish electronic/concrete composer whose music didn't become readily available until this compilation appeared in 2001.  Like Konrad Boehmer from last week, after working with Boulez, Stockhausen et al, she struck out on her own to produce the first Danish piece of electronic music Syv Cirkler (Seven Circles) (1958) and several other unique works.

Central to this disc is her half-hour suite based on Goethe's Faust, in which complementary frequencies float and pulse around to symbolise the relationships between the characters.  This eerie soundscape from 1962 reaches its apex of creepout with a sinister echoing voice reciting a Dies Irae text, representing the damnation part of the narrative.  The final work featured here, Græsstrået (The grass blade) (1964) is also particularly notable for being based around percussion, prepared piano, violin and concrete sounds in place of pure electronics.  I find this one the most engrossing, probably given its distinct variety from the tracks preceding it.

Oh, and before composing any of this, Pade spent World War II participating in the Danish Resistance, working on a clandestine newspaper, and eventually being imprisoned in the Frøslevlejren interment camp where she scratched compositions into the walls of her cell.  Now that's a full and fascinating life; she passed away aged 91 at the beginning of this year.

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