This exposition documents the ongoing process of finding the compositions of Morten Eide Pedersen (1958-2014). You will have the opportunity to listen to his pieces, and find an overview of the available scores, sketches, sound files or sound treatments necessary to perform these pieces. The exposition is bilingual, as a lot of information is in norwegian.
The primary goal is make it possible to hear his works, give an overview over what materials are available, and make it possible for musicians to perform this music in the future. I will leave it to others to provide further biographical background and interpretations of the music.
Morten Eide Pedersen did not publish compositions in his lifetime. What is available to us is physical and digital scores, sound files and sessions with various software. Signe Bakke has scanned the physical scores, Trond Lossius went through his home computers. Recently1, the IT-department at the University of Bergen, under legal supervision, has made available to us files relevant to the research into his music, found at his hard drives and computers at the Grieg Academy. Through this, some further compositions have been found.
There are some challenges documenting these works. MEP used three different notation softwares; Finale, Igor and Sibelius. Finale and Sibelius still exists today, but Igor does not exist for new computers, neither have I access to any any classic Macs from the early 2000's with Igor installed. I have never thrown away an old Mac, but I would need a working Igor installation file. If you still have this software running and are reading this, please get in touch. We have a number of files which could be completed compositions or sketches.
Signe Bakke is currently doing research on Morten Eide Pedersens piano works, I will soon be able link titles of piano works to her research. Thus, I have focussed on presenting the pieces which are primarily available in digital form, that is, electro acoustic works.
Another list of works has been completed by Signe Bakke and Trond Lossius, and I have used this additional list to complete the front page of this presentation. Computer files do not always have the final titles of the works, these were in some cases only printed in the concerts programmes. Having been part of collaborations with MEP myself, I was able to link some files to titles in the list of works.2 There are however still titles where we are unsure, you will find these under missing works. It could be very possible that we have them, but are not fully aware of which files are sketches, sound testings or completed works. Several years ago, a computer also got stolen from MEP.
This website starts with a list of works, with available recordings. You will find a separate page for each composition, showing the status of our research into the pieces, and open questions. If you collaborated with MEP on some of these pieces, you may have valuable insight to add. Please do not hesitate to contact me3 or Signe Bakke.
The rights of the compositions of Morten Eide Pedersen are now managed by the Avgarde Foundation.
Ruben Sverre Gjertsen