The Teacher Who Was Not To Be

The Teacher Who Was Not To Be
Opera by Marcus Paus
Librettist	Olav Anton Thommessen
Language	Norwegian
Premiere	12 October 2013 Atrium of the University of Oslo during the Oslo Opera Festival

The Teacher Who Was Not To Be (Norwegian: Læreren som ikke ble) is an opera monologue by Marcus Paus and with a libretto by Olav Anton Thommessen from 2013. It premiered at the concert "Paus & Paus" (with works by Marcus Paus and Ole Paus) in the Atrium of the University of Oslo in connection with the Oslo Opera Festival on 12 October 2013, with renowned opera singer Knut Stiklestad in the role of the eponymous "Teacher."

The monologue is based on a letter written by Olav Anton Thommessen to Marcus Paus in 2006, shortly after Paus had been admitted to the Norwegian Society of Composers. Thommessen, born in 1946, is known as an atonal modernist composer and a representative of the generation of composers who became active in the 1970s, whereas Paus, born in 1979, is a noted representative of a reorientation toward tradition, tonality and melody, who once described himself as a "cultural conservative non-modernist."

The monologue is emblematic of the generation gap among older Norwegian atonal modernist composers and the younger generation of composers, who are more open to other, including traditional, musical styles. Thommessen had previously been Paus' teacher at the Norwegian Academy of Music. In his letter Thommessen chastised Paus for his tonal music. A long monologue on why Paus has misunderstood everything about music ends with the words "I do not want any more verbal contact with you." At the time the opera monologue premiered, the "Teacher" in the monologue remained anonymous. The monologue played an important role in an extensive debate on musical aesthetics in the music journal Ballade in 2015, during which the formerly anonymous "Teacher" was revealed by Paus to be Olav Anton Thommessen.

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