Bjarne Brustad

Bjarne Brustad (March 4, 1895 - May 20, 1978) was a Norwegian violinist, composer and teacher.

He studied composition and violin at Musikkonservatoriet (the Music Conservatory) in Oslo from 1907 to 1912, and also in Berlin, where his teachers included Emil Telmanyi, and Carl Flesch. He made his debut as a violinist in Oslo in 1914, and for many years he played the violin and viola with the Philharmonic Society Orchestra in the Norwegian capital; from 1928 to 1943 he was solo-viola player with this orchestra. From 1937 to 1961, Brustad was employed as a teacher of composition at Musikkonservatoriet.

Brustad was always alert to trends and happenings in the musical world at large, and he was one of the first Norwegians to embrace impressionism. In the 1930s he was to some extent taken up with Norwegian folklore and neoclassicism. Eventyrsuite of 1932 is his most famous work from this period. Around 1950 he radicalised his tone language, stopping short, however, of becoming an atonalist. Since the mid-1960s he tended to forsake such experimentation, and his last compositions are all endowed with simple musicality; they are, he said, "music for ordinary people."

References

Biography (English)