Fartein Valen

Norwegian composer and teacher. He enrolled in the University of Christiania (Oslo) to study language and literature but soon switched to music, studying theory with Catharinus Elling at the conservatory. After graduating as an organist ( 1909 ), he studied further with Bruch , among others, in Berlin. In 1924 he composed a Piano Trio which established an individual form of atonality independent of Schoenberg's , whose Serenade appeared in the same year. Valen's approach was derived from Bach , from whose music he evolved a polyphonic technique of dissonant counterpoint. Initially, Valen's works were on a small scale: songs (some with orchestra), chamber music, choral pieces, and nine orchestral poems; the first of his five symphonies (the last is unfinished) appeared in 1939 . His Violin Concerto ( 1940 ), like Berg's , incorporates a Bach chorale in its finale; it is short, but powerfully moving in its elegiac concentration.