Vagn Holmboe

Vagn Gylding Holmboe (Danish pronunciation: [ʋɑʊ̯n ˈhʌlmb̥oːˀ], 20 December 1909 in Horsens, Jutland – 1 September 1996 in Ramløse) was a Danish composer and teacher who wrote largely in a neo-classical style (Rapoport 2001).

Life

Vagn Holmboe was born into a merchant family of dedicated amateur musicians. Both parents were playing the piano. His father earned his living as a maker of colours and lacquers at Horsens. The Danish journalist Knud Holmboe was his elder brother.

From the age of 14, Vagn Holmboe took violin lessons. At the age of 16, he began formal music training at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in 1926 on the recommendation of Carl Nielsen. He studied under Knud Jeppesen (theory) and Finn Høffding (composition).

After finishing his studies in 1929 he moved to Berlin where, for a short period, Ernst Toch became his teacher (Rapoport 2001). During his time in the German capital he met the Romanian-born pianist and visual artist Meta May Graf (1910-2003) from Sibiu/Hermannstadt. She had studied at the Musikhochschule Berlin since 1929 having had Paul Hindemith as one of her teachers. The couple married in 1933 and left Berlin for Romania where they visited obscure and remote villages and studied Transylvanian folk-song. Subsequently they moved to Denmark settling in the Danish capital Copenhagen in 1934. While his wife Meta gave up her musical career to pursue her passions in the visual arts, photography in particular, Vagn gave music lessons privately and composition began to possess him in this period. Many of these early compositions have never been performed. Similar to the research already done in Romania, he pursued his studies of folk-song with much field-work throughout Denmark including the Faroes and Greenland. Many overtly folk-linked compositions including the Inuit Songs are a result of these activities.