Name Poul Olsen | Role Composer | |
Died July 2, 1982, Copenhagen, Denmark Books Music and Musical Instruments in the World of Islam | ||
Poul Rovsing Olsen (1922 – 1982) – Without A Title Op.72 ( Krisztián Palágyi - Accordion )
Poul Rovsing Olsen (November 4, 1922 – July 2, 1982) was a Danish composer and ethnomusicologist. He specialised in the traditional music of Greenland and in Arab music. His opera Belisa is based on The Love of Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden.
Contents
Poul rovsing olsen without a title op 72 for accordion
Compositions
Operas:
Ethno-musicology
His major contributions to ethno-musicology included his pioneering work in the music of the Persian Gulf area, especially Bahrain. Also his concern with "authors' rights", being a jurist himself, besides the fact that he also was a pianist and a composer. He considered traditional music as a heritage connected though to the persons who performed it therefor always stated the names of performers as he understood that most music of the Middle East was performed with a certain freedom by the performers, and that a good amount of it was created by the performer in what is usually called improvisation, knowing very well that these improvisations were "moments of impromptus compositions" that gave added-value to the original, traditional work. Olsen (or P.R.O. as his name's initials came to symbolize his name) introduced the names of famous performers from Arab States of the Persian Gulf, such as Salem el'Allan, Ahmad Bou Tabanja, Al-'Amiri among others, and Lebanese singer Dunya Yunis, whose tape singing Abu Zeluf was published on the Tangent 2LP set 'The Human Voice in the World of Islam' which Olsen published with another musicologist Jean Jenkins. Yunis was sampled in Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Olsen's invitation of Arab-Luth (`Oud) player Munir Bashir to a music festival in Denmark in the early 1970s, brought this instrumentalist together with Indian performe where they played duos in a hybrid style. This exquisite and new style brought Bashir into fame all over the Arab world and in many European countries.