Ivar Frounberg originally graduated as an organist and did not start his career as a serious composer until late in life. He studied composition with Niels Viggo Bentzon and Ib Nørholm at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen and with Morton Feldman in Buffalo, USA. His studies in composition in 1979 at Siena, Italy, with Iannis Xenakis resulted in a fundamental change in Ivar Frounberg's view of music, and they made him withdraw most of his works dating before 1980. His oeuvre comprises all genres: solo works, chamber music, works for choirs and orchestras, electroacoustic music and orchestral music with or without soloist, and his works have been performed numerous times both in Denmark and abroad.
Ivar Frounberg was one of the first Danish composers who had a keen interest in the potential of computers and their ability to treat musical material “live”. It is a crucial part of his compositional creed to regard the computer as a tool and not an aim in itself. At the present time Ivar Frounberg is professor of composition at the Music College in Oslo, Norway, and he used to be a lecturer in composition, electro-acoustic music and the computer usage at Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Between 1999 and 2001 he was a member of the committee for classical music appointed by the Danish Arts Foundation.
