Bio - composition

… Fresh music, contemporary but not excessively “intellectual” and not at all hermetic, indeed sincere and communicative, often captivating, which show strong roots with the great Western “classical” tradition; a happy combination of lightness and playfulness with passion and solemnity.

Accordions Worldwide April 2018
29 March 2018 – Alessandro Mugnoz

Classical composer, poet and visual artist born in Copenhagen, Denmark 1971.

In my music, I try to encircle small musical moments and atmospheres, which can timeless progress and unfold. The collocation and collision of a “pure” and clear music with a disintegrated and multilayered music is one of the main characteristic of my music. In the heart, the music often emanate a harmonic and melodic reminiscence of past experiences in glints or longer periods which combined with a floating sensation (accelerando, decelerando etc.) creates a music with the organic form as one of its main foundations.

Martin Lohse

In recent years, Martin Lohse’s music has evolved to a more pure expression, involving very simple patterns of successive major thirds. He has called the technique Mobile, and it was developed around 2009 by combining polystylistic elements with a simple repeating sequence of chords, sometimes creating a simple nearly transcendental music and at other times creating a cacophonous collection of minimalistic, romantic and baroque music on top of each other, all in different tempos but with no or very few dissonances.

Performances

Lohse has written works for choir, orchestra, various chamber music ensembles and soloist with and without electronics. He has written more than 100 works, often performed both nationally and internationally, which reach such diverse venues as Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia with performances of his orchestral works in Germany, Switzerland and Estonia and his works for accordion in Carnegie Hall, New York in 2011 and 2018.

The Lohse Ensemble was established in 2018 on the initiative of David Magnussen who has been an ambassador for Lohse’s music for many years. The ensemble is dedicated to Lohse’s music and has played concerts at Bornholm’s Music Festival. etc.

In the last years Martin Lohse has written several works dedicated to the internationally renowned accordionists, Geir Draugsvoll, Bjarke Mogensen and Hanzhi Wang and his accordion works are played on a regular basis in international accordion communities and festivals. He has composed a symphony and a concerto for recorder and baroque ensemble (Arte dei Suonatori) as well as chamber music in different combinations, including piano trio, guitar duo and trio. In the summer of 2021, he had a major project, Echoes of cliffs for accordion and electronics, with seven concerts on the island of Bornholm, including Vang Granitbrud and Christiansø. The project was repeated at The Royal Danish Academy of Music, where it was later recorded with a release in Dolby Atmos, spring 2022.

In his visual art he is deeply inspired by the abstract art community COBRA which existed in Denmark from 1948-51 and by the American expressive art of Jackson Pollock etc. At the moment he use a scraping technique developed by Gerhard Richter, making paintings where the viewer can look through several layers of paint, and thereby creating the illusion of several events in time existing together at the same time.

Education and teaching

He holds an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Composition and a Master in Music Theory at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he studied with Niels Rosing-Schow and Hans Abrahamsen.

Lohse holds courses and workshops and gives masterclasses both national and international in composition/music theory. He teach at the Master of Film Scoring at The Danish National Academy of Music and holds courses at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory as well as teaching professional film music composers and musicians from the rhythmical tradition in composition and music theory.

At the Royal Danish Academy of Music, he is teaching music theory as main- and secondary subject for both instrumentalists, organists, conductors and composers. He is teaching in analysis/communication and in harmonization, counterpoint, arrangement and instrumentation in styles from renaissance to modern times, including the personal style of Palestrina, Hassler, Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Barnekov, Mahler, Schönberg, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Gudmundsen-Holmgren, Nørgård, Pärt among others.

Recent activity

At the moment Lohse is composing a large orchestra piece as well as chamber- and solo works commissioned by ensembles and solo musicians, including a new ensemble, ‘Lohse Quartet’ established in 2018 and dedicated to his music.

In music theory, he has recently written a book: Arrangement of melody with chords published in Danish and English and republished two books: Bach Counterpoint – two-part inventions I and II also in both Danish and English.

Releases

CD’s

Featured

Other

Books in Music Theory

  • Arrangement: of melody with chords
    The Royal Danish Academy of Music 2021, ISBN: 978-87-87131-11-7
  • Arrangement: melodi med becifring
    Det Kgl. Danske Musikkonservatorium 2021, ISBN: 978-87-87131-10-0
  • Bach Counterpoint – Two-part invention I and II, second edition 2021
    The Royal Danish Academy of Music, ISBN: 978-87-87131-14-8 and 978-87-87131-15-5
  • Bach kontrapunkt – tostemmig invention I and II, second edition 2021
    Det Kgl. Danske Musikkonservatorium, ISBN: 978-87-87131-12-4 and 978-87-87131-13-1
  • Bach Counterpoint – Two-part invention I and II, first edition 2018
    The Royal Danish Academy of Music, ISBN: 978-87-87131-06-3 and 978-87-87131-07-0
  • Bach kontrapunkt – tostemmig invention I og II, first edition 2016
    Det Kgl. Danske Musikkonservatorium, ISBN: 978-87-87131-02-5 and 978-87-87131-03-2

Awards

Lohse has received several awards including a three-year working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation in 2003 and the Hakon Børresen Award in 2012 as well as commissioned works funding and one-year working grantMartin Lohse