Jørgen Jersild

Jersild was a Danish composer and music educator. He was a pupil of

Poul Schierbeck and Albert Roussel.[1] Jersild worked from 1953 to 1975
as a professor of ear training by The Royal Danish Academy of Music in
Copenhagen.

Jersild learned how to play the piano at a young age and, when he was
twelve, he arranged for the school orchestra and wrote some small
compositions. He became a student of Rudolph Simonsen and later Poul
Schierbeck, who taught him theory and composition, and Alexander
Stoffregen, who gave him lessons on the piano. After a short stay in Paris
in 1936 where he was taught for three months by Albert Roussel, he
returned home and studied musicology at the University of Copenhagen.
In 1940 he majored in musicology, but in 1939 he was employed as a
program secretary with the DR, a national radio station in Denmark. In
1943 he became a teacher at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in
Copenhagen, during which his music was reviewed by the Berlingske
Tidende. From 1953 to 1975, he was professor and taught ear training,
instrumentation and composition. During those years he published a
number of theoretical and practical musical works.

By 1930 he was engaged in the folkemusikskole movement, which

encouraged the teaching of music and schools and the preservation of
folk music. Together with Finn Savery, Finn Høffding and Jørgen
Bentzon, he worked to spread musical knowledge and skills to children
and adults, both in primary and secondary schools of music. In the years
1949–1953, he was chairman of the Danish Music Education Association.
His output as a composer was not large, but included a large number of
very well built choruses including 3 Madrigali (1957), Trois piéces en
concert for clavier (1945), wind quintet Playing in the woods (1947) and
the musical adventure play Alice in Wonderland (1951), based on the
book by Lewis Carroll. From 1967 to 1977, he wrote four works which
featured the harp. They were inspired by Benjamin Britten and were
written for the harp player Osian Ellis. In addition, he wrote music for
theater, radio, theater, film and even the winning song of the Dansk
Melodi Grand Prix in 1965, For din skyld (For Your Sake), with text of
Poul Henningsen and sung by Birgit Brüel in the Eurovision.

His music has been regarded as "French" or at least French-inspired -

which can be translated as cultured and elegant. It is written in a clear
and elegant modal style rooted in Neoclassicism.

From interview in 1999: When asked, Jersild acknowledged that he was

French-influenced he replies: "It may be true - all my starting points
were French. It can be observed in the rate structure. If you hear Trois
piéces en concert(1945), it is not hard to hear that it is inspired by
Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin. But it is still a bit more harmonious
than Ravel. But I do not think it continued to be French. I think it's much
more Danish now, but it may well be I am wrong. '

When asked about his position on Arnold Schoenberg and atonal music,
Jersild stated: " ... I think it's kind of putting things upside down to begin
with theory and then make music. The music must beam of itself. And so
it is perhaps sometimes a later generation given to work out technical,
theoretical ideas. I find atonal music hard to follow, because I think that
the results do not suggest that it is a good approach. "
Upon receiving the, Nielsen Memorial Scholarship in 1999, Karl Aage
Rasmussen, another composer, gave a speech that included following:
"Jorgen Jersild's life's work is not comprehensive, and it is perhaps
because his music is on the hunt for the particular simplicity and ease
with no quick shortcuts to."

Brought up by poor yet musically talented parents on the island of

Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age. He initially
played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of
Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his
Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year,
Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the Royal Danish
Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen, during which he played
in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres. In
1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Danish Academy and
continued to work there until his death.

Although his symphonies, concertos and choral music are now

internationally acclaimed, Nielsen's career and personal life were
marked by many difficulties, often reflected in his music. The works he
composed between 1897 and 1904 are sometimes ascribed to his
"psychological" period, resulting mainly from a turbulent marriage with
the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen. Nielsen is especially noted for his six
symphonies, his Wind Quintet and his concertos for violin, flute and
clarinet. In Denmark, his opera Maskarade and many of his songs have
become an integral part of the national heritage. His early music was
inspired by composers such as Brahms and Grieg, but he soon developed
his own style, first experimenting with progressive tonality and later
diverging even more radically from the standards of composition still
common at the time. Nielsen's sixth and final symphony, Sinfonia
semplice, was written in 1924–25. He died from a heart attack six years
later, and is buried in Vestre Cemetery, Copenhagen.

Nielsen maintained the reputation of a musical outsider during his

lifetime, both in his own country and internationally. It was only later
that his works firmly entered the international repertoire, accelerating in
popularity from the 1960s through Leonard Bernstein and others. In
Denmark, Nielsen's reputation was sealed in 2006 when four of his works
were listed by the Danish Ministry of Culture amongst the greatest
pieces of Danish classical music. For many years, he appeared on the
Danish hundred-kroner banknote. The Carl Nielsen Museum in Odense
documents his life and that of his wife. Between 1994 and 2009 the Royal
Danish Library, sponsored by the Danish government, completed the
Carl Nielsen Edition, freely available online, containing background
information and sheet music for all of Nielsen's works, many of which
had not been previously published.