Lars Gunnar Bodin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lars Gunnar Bodin (July 15, 1935, Stockholm) is a Swedish pioneer in the field of electronic music during the 1960s, especially in the Scandinavian scene.

[edit] Education and early career

He studied classical music and traditional compositions under Lennart Wenström. Bodin joined the art group Fylkingen in 1962. With growing notoriety, Bodin made a point to increase the interest in artistic electronic music in his home country of Sweden. In 1967, Bodin and his friend Bengt-Emil Johnson directed the Stockholm festivals of text-sound composition. In 1969, Bodin was appointed the chairman of Fylkingen, a position he held until 1972. He visited the USA as a Composer in Residence at Mills College, California, in 1972. In 1979 Bodin was made Director of the Electronic Music Studio (EMS) in Stockholm, and he was a prime mover in its transfer from Kungsgatan 8 to new, purpose-designed facilities in the Munich Brewery on Söder Mälarstrand.

[edit] Works

Lars Gunnar Bodin’s most famous works, the Clouds LP and En Face are considered by many of his critics to be the most beautiful music ever composed. In Bodin’s work he has devoted himself to many different fields of contemporary music: instrumental theatre, text-sound composition, multi-media works and interaction between instrumentalists and tape recordings.

Several of his compositions have aroused international attention. The encounter between language and music has inspired him with several works, and his compositions frequently include phonetic elements. Concern for detail is one aspect of his working methods which is frequently mentioned with respect by his colleagues. This concentration on the micro level does not impede him from building up large-scale, block-like, multi-layer processes.