Jørgen Jersild

Jørgen Jersild (17 September 1913 – 6 February 2004) was a Danish composer and music educator. He was a pupil of Poul Schierbeck and Albert Roussel. 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.

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