Born in Stockholm on 8th April 1950. He studied at the State Academy of Music in Malmö and with Mogens Winkel Holm and Per Nørgård in Copenhagen. Guitar studies with Per Olof Johnson followed. At the State Academy of Music he was taught by Ingvar Lidholm 1970-1974. He took his B.A. in musicology and philosophy in 1977. He studied electro-acoustic music and computerised music at Instituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht, Netherlands, and took his Ph.D. in theoretical philosophy, Stockholm 1983.
Like so many others of his generation, Lars Hallnäs has been actively involved with popular music. He was a bass player with various rock and dance bands, but Bach opened the way to serious music, John Coltrane to the avant-garde. In Stockhausen’s Zeitmasse he found “something of the exciting quality one did not under stand but was Hell-bent on trying to comprehend“. A composer since the age of 18, he has now accumulated a wide-ranging, eminently intellectual output. “I once believed that music was language, but I’ve moved on from that - I don’t believe in the communication model which uses theory of information.... or all these sick psychological theories.“ He is interested in the problems with which modern technology confronts the artist: “Technology has to be conquered by a thinking which does not agree with the thinking that created technology.“ He detests romantic demagogy and finds the current compartmentalisation of music misleading. Accordingly, he likes to explore new parts. He is an eager advocate of l’art pour l’art.
Den lyckliga vetenskapen (1973) is a purely electro-acoustic piece. In other works he has used unprocessed, concrete sounds from streets, the tube and lifts, and in Eftersom du hade bett mig komma, the very distinct cuts in the tape are part of the method of composition. Not infrequently his works form commentaries on the music around us. In När dagens ljus.... he varies the cliches of tradition trumpet fanfares, harp glissandi, phrasing — and no effort is made to bridge the gap between tradition and present. In On a faded violet (Shelley), he creates a brittle world of sound with allusions to Adam de la Halle, Landino cadenze and Dowland. The horn piece Und nur dein Auge... was written for Esa-Pekka Salonen - and only the inward eye is capable of perceiving the idea behind the composition. One has to know in order to get anything out of the music. This work (like En Trakl-sång) was composed partly with the help of a dice. The note lengths were determined in this random fashion, while pitch was worked out by modulo-arithmetic — the composer is in full control of the form. The horn part verges very closely on the unplayable. SJ