Knut Wiggen

Norwegian composer and electronic music pioneer Knut Wiggen was born at Buvika near Trondheim on 13 June 1927 and studied composition with Karl-Birger Blomdahl. He came into contact with musique concrète and electronic music in the early 1950s and was inspired by the work of Bruno Moderna, Luigi Nono, Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Yannis Xenakis.

From 1959 until 1969 he was chairman of Fylkingen in Sweden, and started searching for ways to make new connections between art, music and technology. From 1964 until 1975 he planned and led EMS - Elektronmusikstudion i Stockholm, where he created the composition program MusicBox, the world's first object-oriented simulation language of hybrid type, which allowed composers to work spatially. He composed five works using MusicBox.

He was very influential on Swedish experimental music in the 1950s and 60s, and received several honours and awards later in his career. NOTAM in Oslo opened Studio Wiggen in his honour, in 2003, and he was the honorary guest at the 2009 Bergen International Festival.

Knut Wiggen died on 10 September 2016, aged eighty-nine.