Born in 1953. Played the recorder for a couple of years from around 1961, but soon switched to violin and later added cello and piano. Got cello lessons from around 1965 to around 1970 and piano lessons for about a year around 1970. Composed from around 1963 to the mid 1970, then stopped. I destroyed most works from this period around 1980 (about 1 shelf meter of note sheets), but I kept the first and the last booklets and binders, so I was able to reuse some themes and passages/movements from the first period in later works.
Played again (mostly cello) from around 1983 to the mid 90s because I had met some amateur musicians. Began composing again for these people (including music for an open air theatre play). Bought my piano during this period, but never became good enough to play it in public. Became member of an amateur orchestra in the early 90s, and members of this orchestra played a few work of my works during the summer interludes - but never during the season. But when the summer pauses also became earmarked for dead composers I quit the orchestra. Then I played chamber music with some of the members for some years, but realized around 1995 or 1996 that they never ever were going to play my works, and then I quit all involvement with active musicians in disgust and also abruptly stopped playing and composing - though this time without destroying my works.
My activity at IMSLP started out when I wanted to fill the holes in the handwritten theme archive for my personal music collection (which I partly had made using scores from the libraries, partly just by listening) and discovered this splendid free source on the internet. I then realized that I also could upload my own old compositions - though I initially didn't expect to get the whole lot published since many of them would have to be revised - and in some cases rewritten - first.
It didn't go as planned. I first uploaded those that had been tried in practice and didn't need retouching, then those that only needed minor changes, but after that I began to rewrite those that needed it - mostly later works which never had been revised since they were written. And finally I ended up writing basically new works based on fragments from the works they superseded, supplemented by new elements. At this point I have uploaded all my works, either in their original versions, slightly revised or more or less completely rewritten, and time will tell whether I have the willpower to stop composing now that this stage has been reached. After all there is no reason to believe that any of my existing works ever will be played in the future, so throwing even more new works into the cesspool must be characterized as fairly idiotic.
(EDIT 2023. since I wrote the lines above 3 works have been 'discovered' by users of this site)
Iversen
