Event Date:
Event Date Details:
Event Location:
- Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall (UCSB)
Event Price:
Admission is free.
Event Contact:
UC Santa Barbara Department of Music
(805) 893-3230
ahill@music.ucsb.edu

Else Marie Pade (1924–2016) was a Danish composer. In her youth, Pade was active in the anti-fascist resistance. She began by distributing illegal newspapers in 1943. In 1944 she received training in the use of weapons and explosives. She joined an all-female explosives group aimed at identifying the telephone cables in Aarhus with resistance organiser Hedda Lundh. Their goal was to blow up the telephone network when the Allied invasion came, so the Nazis would be left incommunicado.
In 1944 she was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo and condemned to the Frøslev prison. Through a prison window she saw a shooting star and heard music from within. She began composing. The prisoners held song evenings to keep their spirits up. After the war she was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Later she participated in the famous Darmstadt Summer Courses with Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1954 she became the first Danish composer of electronic music.