Jan W. Morthenson

Jan Wilhelm Morthenson (7 April 1940 – 22 October 2024) was a prominent Swedish composer, critic, and writer primarily known for his criticism of music in Sweden and his compositional styles of non-figurative music, music that aimed to avoid any relationship to past compositional techniques, and meta-music, which alluded to historical music genres in order to criticize them. Morthenson's success as a composer and intellect in Sweden is reflected by the influential positions he has held throughout his career. He was on the board for the Electronic Music Studio from 1973 to 1975, he acted as chairman of the Swedish section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ICSM) from 1974 to 1975, he was vice-chairman of the ISCM council from 1975 to 1978, and he was also the chairman for Fylkingen, a Swedish chamber music society that focuses primarily on new music, from 1975 to 1976.

Training Morthenson was born in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden in 1940 and began studying music in Stockholm in 1956 with Runar Mangs, a prominent Swedish music critic. Mangs left a lasting impression on young Morthenson, who would later refer to him in an obituary as one of the most important contemporary music critics in Sweden. Four years after Morthenson began working with Mangs, he went on to study privately with Ingvar Lindholm in 1960, The significance of Wechselspeil I was perpetuated by Morthenson's status as a young member of Fylkingen, which he joined in the same year. Following his time with Lindholm, Morthenson attended Uppsala University to study aesthetics He also studied with Heinz-Klaus Metzger, who would write a long preface to Morthenson's only book Non-figurative Musik in 1966.

Career 1960s: Early style and philosophy Morthenson made a name for himself as a prominent young composer and intellectual in the 1960s. He became highly active in the Swedish musical community, composing orchestral, vocal, chamber, and tape pieces, and in 1967 he composed the first Swedish computer-assisted work Neutron Star (1967) in collaboration with Göran Sundqvist. Morthenson developed a close relationship Welin and consequentially wrote numerous pieces for organ, which Welin played around the world, including:

1970s: Meta-music In the 1970s, following his non-figurative music period, Morthenson continued to criticize music from another perspective, developing a new style of composition for which he coined the term meta-music. Like his non-figurative music, meta-music stemmed from Morthenson's pessimistic view of musical development, but rather than avoiding any allusion to historical reference in his new style, Morthenson began to use past genres in order to criticize them.