Category talk:Mondrup, Christian

I was born in 1947 in Copenhagen but live since my early childhood in Aarhus where I studied musicology at the university and subsequently worked as a highschool music teacher. Upon additional university courses in computer science I was working as a database developer from 1989 until I retired 2014. Since then I've devoted much of my time to musical activities: I'm instructing a recorder consort founded several decades ago. We are definitely not world stars but we have fun, and I prepare modern editions of hitherto unpublished, mostly Danish music. Among my editions are a collection of sonatas for flute and basso continuo by a 18th century composer from my home town, Morten Ræhs and 5 flute concertos by Johann Adolph Scheibe working in Denmark in the mid 18th century. An ongoing project is a complete edition of the preserved works by the Danish early 1800 composer, Georg Gerson

I have been composing - although not very much - since my youth using various techniques and styles of composition. I have used kinds of serial technique in a small quartet for recorders, Kleines Quartett (published by Bärenreiter Verlag, Kassel), in another quartet for woodwinds (published in IMSLP as 3 or 5 of 10 for 4) and in a suite for choir and instruments with texts from Christian Morgenstern's Galgenlieder (published by Wilhelm Hansen, Copenhagen). Serially composed is also Ça ira?, a four part choir piece with lyrics by Erich Fried to the memory of Werner Icking.

In other vocal compositions published in IMSLP I have - inspired by the danish composer of symphonies and a huge number of danish songs, Carl Nielsen - been trying to expand a traditional functional harmony. That applies to my Solstice Songs for choir, soloist and piano and to a collection of songs, Songs on Texts by Jeppe Aakjær with lyrics written in a Danish peasant dialect from the island Salling by the Danish early 20'th century poet Jeppe Aakjær. Important themes of many of his poems are, like the present ones, the daily life as well as the cultural and political emancipation of the Danish rural proletariat in the beginning of our century. Many of these songs can be found - many of them composed by Carl Nielsen - in the Højskolesangbog, songbook for the folk high school. They are still among the favorite songs when Danes meet and sing from the Højskolesangbog. My Aakjær songs are to be seen in this tradition.