BENTZON, NIELS VIGGO  BIOGRAPHY

Niels Viggo Bentzon was a whirlwind in post-war Danish music, constantly creating and exploring every musical genre, and with an output that over the years simply grew and grew. Bentzon has passed his opus number 650.

Of this gigantic number of works, 22 are symphonies. As a self-taught composer Bentzon broke with the dominant, mild Danish Modernism of the day and plunged into far more uninhibited music. With great expressive power, he blasted his way to a renewal of Danish Modernism.

At an early stage he was influenced by Hindemith, and later also by Schönberg, but it was with an organic "metamorphosis technique" that he made his great impact around 1950. In the 1960s Bentzon also threw himself into trail-blazing experiments with jazz, pop and happenings (with a great innate talent for humour).

Since then his music has been strongly characterized by improvisation and eclecticism. It must be said in fact that very few people have a good general idea of Niels Viggo Bentzon's huge artistic output. For obvious reasons, an oeuvre as large as Bentzon's will be somewhat patchy, but even this aspect of Bentzon's art looks like a deliberate provocation.

Bentzon was also an active music debater, an original pianist, has published poems and novels, and worked in the visual arts.