Jens Bjerre Jacobsen

Who was Jens Bjerre Jacobsen?

Jens Bjerre Jacobsen was a Danish composer and organist.

Jacobsen was born in Aarhus but grew up in Salling, where his father was a Grundtvigian Community pastor in Rødding-Krejbjerg. Jacobsen learned to play the piano at an early age from the organist and composer Laurids Lauridsen. At 15, he got admission into the Royal Danish Academy of Music. The time spent at the Academy gave his earliest songs and choral work a strong element of Thomas Laub and Carl Nielsen. However, Jacobsen himself never acknowledged this, and claimed that his career as a composer only began after he moved to Paris.

Jacobsen became an organist in Paris. Alfred Cortot, the famous pianist and conductor, taught him composition and honed his piano skills. Cortot was a big influence on Jacobsen. Under the former's tutelage, Jacobsen made immense progress as a composer, a development that is specially noticeable in his music from the 1930s onwards.