Gunnar Berg (composer)

Gunnar Berg (11 January 1909 – 25 August 1989) was a Swiss-born Danish composer. A leading exponent of serialism in Denmark, he is considered to have written the first Danish serial piece, his Cosmogonie for two pianos, in 1952.

Berg was born to Danish and Swedish parents in Switzerland. He studied with Herman David Koppel from 1938 to 1943, and moved to Paris in 1948, where he became associated with Honegger and Messiaen. In 1952 he married the pianist Béatrice Duffour, who would later record much of his piano music. In the same year he became the first Dane to attend the summer courses at Darmstadt.

Arriving in Paris in 1948 he became part of the international modernist movement in post-War Europe by joining the circle around Olivier Messiaen. Here, Berg had inspiring encounters with key figures such as John Cage, Pierre Boulez and . Serial organization began to make its mark already in the newcomer’s Pièce for trumpet, violin and piano from 1949, and henceforth Berg uncompromisingly yet in his very own fashion would remain faithful to the complex expressive mode of musical modernism, from now on always composing within the theoretical and aesthetic framework of serialism.

Gunnar Berg was born in Switzerland on 11 January 1909. His childhood was marked by great changes and disease, and he was late to musical studies.

He attended the Salzburg Festivals in 1932 and 1935, and his early scores from the mid-30s puts him closer to Central European aesthetics than a Danish or Nordic.

In 1936 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, followed by piano lectures with Herman D. Koppel and Elisabeth Jürgens. During the German Occupation Gunnar Berg was active in the rescue of the Danish Jews to Sweden and the Danish Resistance, and after the Liberation he engaged himself in the music pedagogical projects in the refugee camps in Denmark. He gave concerts and presented himself as a composer by a pair of concerts in Copenhagen, but won no recognition for his music. In 1948 he went to Paris to study with Arthur Honegger and Olivier Messiaen.

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