Olav Anton Thommessen

Olav Anton Thommessen (born 16 May 1946) is a Norwegian contemporary composer who has been one of the foremost modernist composers in Norway since the 1970s. His main compositions include Et glassperlespill and Gjennom Prisme. He was a professor of composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music until retiring in 2014, and has also been an influential figure in music education and music organisations in Norway. Thommessen has played a significant role in aesthetic discourse in Norway and is known for his modernist and atonal stance. In later life he has become known for engaging in a critical public dialogue with his former student Marcus Paus about the future of art music, that has resulted in the opera monologue The Teacher Who Was Not To Be with a libretto by Thommessen; a 2015 debate between the two was described as “the biggest public debate about art music” in Norway since the 1970s. Background He is a son of the diplomat Knut Thommessen (né Knut Saenger), a grandson of the German gynecologist Hans Saenger and a great-grandson of the gynecologist Max Saenger (also spelled Sänger). He trained in the United States, earning degrees from Westminster Choir College and Indiana Univer