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Rune Glerup (b. 1981) is a danish composer. He started composing already as a child, and has since then studied with a number of composers in Denmark and abroad, among others, Walter Zimmermann in Berlin, and Niels Rosing-Schow, Bent Sørensen and Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjærg in composition and electroacoustics in the soloistclass at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, which he finished with a debut/portrait-concert in 2010 with the London Sinfonietta. Further studies at IRCAM 2010-12. He has participated in masterclasses with Phillippe Leroux, Phillippe Manoury, Hans Peter Kyburz, Dennis Smalley, Ivan Fedele, Rolf Wallin and Adriana Hölszky.

His work has been rewarded with a number of stipends, among others the prestigious stipend for young musicians from the Léonie Sonning Music Foundation, and yearly working grants from the Danish Arts Foundation, who also rewarded him with a two-year working grant for young composers already when he was only nineteen years old, and again five years later with the talent-development grant.

His music has been performed by ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Alternance, Ensemble Tm+, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, Uusinta Ensemble, Curious Chamberplayers, Esbjerg Ensemble, Contemporánea and Trio Gáman, and at festivals as Printemps des Arts in Monte-Carlo, Nordic Musc Days, Young Nordic Music and Pulsar.

In addition to his composition studies, he studied conducting with the french conductor, Pierre-André Valade in Paris, and in 2009 he became conductor of Ensemble Contemporána, a danish ensemble specialized in performing with electronics. From 2012 he is Artistic Director of Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and Athelas New Music Festival.

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The philosopher, Brian Benjamin Hansen, about Rune Glerup:

Rune Glerup is a composer of musical objects. Objects, palpable objects, which exist as nothing other than themselves, as music, but which are at the same time exploring the essence of music. Glerup's compositions are neither hard nor easy to comprehend, they simply are. They are sketched, discussed, written, played, played again, heard, thought. The most fundamental idea behind the work of Rune Glerup is that music is to be understood as music, which exactly is neither hard nor easy. Music is not a language and cannot be translated into other languages; it has to be thought in its own right, on its own premises. Glerup's musical thinking is thus among the strongest in his generation. The thinking consists in working through and mapping out some of the deadlocks in the modernistic line of thought; deadlocks which for some might seem outright unproductive, for others oddly appealing in their returning obtrusiveness.

For Glerup timbre isn't just timbre. Sound is also timbre, two timbres is a timbre, which leads Glerup to the musical objects; a kind of extensive timbres. The way the musical objects are organized is given in an understanding of their level of energy. Glerup is at a first glance not a composer of time, which means that energy or dynamics is also understood in spatial terms; objects can easily reappear or rather appear in several places at the same time. You could understand the universe of Glerup as a ruptured or fragmented universe but then you will miss the very ambitious coordinative thinking going on. Glerup is thinking musical objects as both timbre and energy at the same time, grouping them together in larger multidimensional musical constellations. The universe of Glerup is thus carving out musical space.

Glerup's universes are always concentrates. It is strange intense universes. His music is condensed and detailed, at times almost sophisticated. But this doesn't prevent him from ruthlessly following the philosophical idea that has been with him since the beginning; namely thinking "the event" or "the new". And this is the reason of the seamlessly timeless universes; the timelessness is designed exactly to set the time of the listener in motion. Glerup is interested in "the phenomenology of the event"; constellations apt for opening up the new, opening up radical experiences or even the experience of truth. Glerup's music is thus predominantly optimistic, not satirical or vulgar, but straight out affirmative. Glerup writes with a firm hand, but with an open mind. A firm hand not afraid to throw dices. A very important tool for him is the method of examination: The careful but yet unpredictable examination including the composer and his developing ideas in the musical process, sometimes even to point where the composer himself is conducting the music.

The music of Rune Glerup is thoroughly thought out, almost certainly unpredictable and carefully radical. Glerup has in his fidelity to the problems and challenges of the modernistic line of thought done the impossible; he has created nothing less than a modern metaphysics of music.

Brian Benjamin Hansen, 2009

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