Else Marie Pade (1924) is not only Denmark’s first concrete and electronic music composer to produce an album, but her herstory extends to the resistance during the Second World War in which she was active. In 1944 Else received training in the use of weapons and explosives. She joined an all-female explosives group.
"On 13 September 1944, Else Marie Pade was arrested by the Gestapo. Out of a prison window she saw a star flash and heard music coming from inside herself. Next morning she scratched tune into the cell wall with a buckle from her girdle. It was the song "You and I and the Stars" . She was sent to Frøslevlejren, where she began composing, and decided to train in music. In Frøslevlejren the prisoners held song evenings to keep their spirits up. The songs included Pade's songs and other songs arranged by Karin Brieg. These works were released on CD on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation: Songs in the Darkness: Music Frøslevlejren 1944–45." *Wikipedia
From as early as the 1950s, she, in close co-operation with technicians and assistants on Radio Denmark, produced a substantial amount of concrete and electronic music, partly in the shape of independent works for radio broadcasts, partly in the shape of accompaniments to various radio dramas. In 1952 Pade discovered the means by which she could bring into being her universe of sound. The impulse came from a broadcast on Radio Denmark about Pierre Schaeffer, the originator of the new movement within the French field of electronic music: musique concrète. After visiting Schaeffer in 1952, Pade began to study the concrete aesthetics of music and the technique behind it. In the latter half of the 1950s, Pade, together with Lauridsen, organised an interimistic electronic sound studio at Radio Denmark, where one could work with both concrete and synthetically produced sound material - a synthesis which was also a prominent issue in the new Italian sound studio, Studio de Fonologia Musicale, where people like Luciano Berio, Henri Posseur and John Cage were working. From 1957 until the middle of 1960s, Pade experienced a productive period in which she created a long series of electronic works and thereby made a name for herself, both in Denmark and to a certain extent in international electronic circles.
