Marcus Paus


Marcus Nicolay Paus is a Norwegian composer and one of the most performed contemporary Scandinavian composers. He is noted as a representative of a reorientation toward tradition, tonality and melody, and his works have been lauded by critics in Norway and abroad.
His work includes chamber music, choral works, solo works, concerts, orchestral works, operas and symphonies, as well as works for theatre, film and television. Although often tonal and melodically driven, Paus' music employs a wide range of both traditional and modernist techniques, and several of Paus' works have been influenced by folk music and non-Western classical music. Marcus Paus has set to music poets and writers such as Dorothy Parker, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Siegfried Sassoon, Richard Wilbur, William Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and Anne Frank, and Norwegians André Bjerke, Jens Bjørneboe, Arne Garborg, Knut Hamsun, Johan Falkberget, Harald Sverdrup and Ole Paus. His works for children include the children's opera The Witches, based on Roald Dahl. Paus has been described as "one of the most celebrated classical composers of Norway."

Background

He is a son of one of Norway's best known singer-songwriters Ole Paus and the former pop star Anne-Karine Strøm; his father is a troubadour in the Scandinavian ballad tradition known for his biting social commentary. He is a member of the Norwegian Paus family that first appeared as members of the elite of 16th century Oslo and that governed the vast and remote region of Upper Telemark for centuries as part of an "aristocracy of officials" consisting of regional judges and clerics in the state Church of Norway; the family's ancestor Sir Peter Paus became the provost of Upper Telemark in 1633 and is known through a loving poem in Latin written by his son in his memory. Marcus Paus' grandfather, General Ole Paus, was born in Vienna to the Norwegian Consul-General Thorleif Paus and a Viennese mother of Jewish descent whose family had converted to Catholicism, and later became one of the founders of the Norwegian Intelligence Service and the highest-ranking Norwegian NATO official. His branch of the Paus family were the closest relatives of playwright Henrik Ibsen and were noted as millionaire steel industrialists in Oslo since the late 19th century, and his great-grandfather also bought Kvesarum Castle in Sweden; his great-great-grandfather, the steel industrialist Ole Paus, was Henrik Ibsen's first cousin and Villa Paus was built for him. Marcus Paus has been described as born in the purple into the artistic scene; both his parents were prominent cultural figures and their wedding in 1979 as well as his own birth were front page news in Norway, and he was described as a celebrity child already as a newborn.
Paus attended Oslo Waldorf School. As a high school student he also took two summer courses at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood in the mid 1990s. During his teenage years from the early 1990s he was active as a progressive rock guitarist, and he was recognised in The Guinness Book of Records as the world's fastest guitarist in the mid 1990s. Paus left the progressive rock scene around 1997 and was later described as "the last guitar hero."
He studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music from 1998 to 2002; at the age of 18, he became one of its youngest students ever to be accepted at its composer programme. After graduating, he left for New York City, where he studied classical composition at the Manhattan School of Music from 2003 to 2005. In New York he was a student of Richard Danielpour and spent a semester working as his assistant. In 2010, he was artistic director of the Oslo Opera Festival.
He has lived in Oslo, New York City, London and Berlin; he now lives in Asker near Oslo. In 2019 he married the composer and singer Tirill Mohn, a former member of the art rock band White Willow and a descendant of the artists Christian Krohg and Oda Krohg; he and his wife are distantly related as both are descendants of Norway's first attorney-general Bredo Henrik von Munthe af Morgenstierne Sr.

Musical style

Paus is a noted representative of a reorientation toward tradition, tonality and melody. Although often tonal and melodically driven, Paus' music employs a wide range of both traditional and modernist techniques, including aleatoricism and serial procedures. Paus' harmonic writing is typically complex, combining non-traditional structures such as clusters and symmetrical harmonic shapes with triadic harmony. Several of Paus' works have been influenced by folk music and non-Western classical music, among them Lasuliansko Horo for violin and piano, the flute concertino A Portrait of Zhou , and Fanitull from Two Lyrical Pieces for string orchestra. As a teenager, Marcus Paus was active as a progressive rock guitarist, and this experience is at times reflected in some of Paus’ most energetic music, like the Scherzo II from his Cello Sonata and the 3rd movement, Mosh, from his Three Movements for Solo Cello. Paus is also influenced by film music, and has cited John Williams as an important influence.
As a young composer in 2007, he described himself as a "cultural conservative non-modernist" in his musical style. In a 2013 interview, his views were more nuanced and he said that he is not opposed to modernism and that modernism has included important innovations and contributions, but that he supports diversity in musical styles and influences, and a "greater acceptance of a tradition-inspired musical style." In a 2017 interview he said he felt ostracized by older atonal modernist composers in the late 1990s, but that "thankfully, the climate is quite different now, and more generous and open-minded." Paus is a member of the Riksmål Society and in a 2002 interview he linked his views on music to his views on language.

Work and collaborations

Known for his virtuosic and idiomatic writing, Paus has collaborated with some of Norway's finest soloists, including violinists Henning Kraggerud and Arve Tellefsen, saxophonist Rolf-Erik Nystrøm and singer Tora Augestad.
Marcus Paus is also known for his collaborations with other artists, most prominently Swedish painter Christopher Rådlund, as well as singer/songwriter and poet Ole Paus. Other collaborators have included film director Sara Johnsen, dancer, choreographer and FRIKAR founder Hallgrim Hansegård, and actress Minken Fosheim.
Paus has set to music a number of poets and writers, among them Dorothy Parker, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Siegfried Sassoon, Richard Wilbur, William Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and Anne Frank, and Norwegians André Bjerke, Jens Bjørneboe, Arne Garborg, Knut Hamsun, Johan Falkberget, Harald Sverdrup and Ole Paus.
All of Paus’ four string quartets to date are themed after painters.
Paus' The Beauty That Still Remains, based on original text by Anne Frank, was commissioned by the Government of Norway for the official Norwegian commemoration of the end of the Second World War in 2015, and was described as "a masterpiece" by music critic Ola Nordal.
Professor of musicology Ralph P. Locke wrote that Paus' Hate Songs, based on poetry by Dorothy Parker, "proved to be one of the most engaging works" in recent years; "the cycle expresses Parker's favorite theme: how awful human beings are, especially the male of the species." Locke highlighted Augestad's recording of Hate Songs as one of the "best opera and vocal music" works in that year.

Selected works

;Orchestral works
;Choral works
;Chamber works
;Solo works
;Operas and stage works
;Film scores