20th-century Norwegian male musicians

Harald Lie (21 November 1902 – 23 May 1942) was a Norwegian composer. He died young of tuberculosis and is mainly remembered for one composition, Skindvengbrev ("A Bat's Letter"), an orchestral song after his own wind quintet.The poem Skinnvengbrev ("A Bat's Letter") is by Aslaug Vaa and was also later set by Geirr Tveitt; it begins "Eg trudde eingong du hadde gøymt deg, at både du og Gud ha gløymt meg,.." (English: "Once I thought you had gone hiding, that I was forgotten by you and By God, and I was the least of created things"). Kirsten Flagstad recorded Lie's orchestral song, together with a less well known song by Lie, Nykelen ("The Key"), with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Øivin Fjeldstad.

Erling Asbjørn Kjellsby (7 July 1901 - 20 February 1976) was a Norwegian organist and composer.

Rolf Lislevand (30 December 1961 in Oslo, Norway), is a Norwegian performer of Early music specialising on lute, vihuela, baroque guitar and theorbo.

Per Husby (born 2 April 1949 in Oslo) is a Norwegian jazz pianist, composer, teacher, civil engineer, and orchestra leader.

Espen Beranek Holm (born 23 March 1960) is a Norwegian pop artist and comedian.

Stephan Henrik Barratt-Due (19 February 1919 – 18 November 1985) was a Norwegian violinist and music teacher and son of violinist Henrik Adam Due (1891–1966) and Mary Barratt Due (b. Barratt, 1888–1969). He married Else Barratt-Due (b. Holst, 1925–2006), and together they had five children, among them pianist Cecilie Barratt-Due (1950–) and violinist Stephan Barratt-Due Jr. (1956–), who is married to violinist Soon-Mi Chung.

Olav Anton Thommessen (born 16 May 1946) is a Norwegian contemporary composer who has been one of the foremost modernist composers in Norway since the 1970s. His main compositions include Et glassperlespill and Gjennom Prisme. He was a professor of composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music until retiring in 2014, and has also been an influential figure in music education and music organisations in Norway. Thommessen has played a significant role in aesthetic discourse in Norway and is known for his modernist and atonal stance. In later life he has become known for engaging in a critical public dialogue with his former student Marcus Paus about the future of art music, that has resulted in the opera monologue The Teacher Who Was Not To Be with a libretto by Thommessen; a 2015 debate between the two was described as "the biggest public debate about art music" in Norway since the 1970s.

Kristian Hauger (24 October 1905 – 18 October 1977) was a Norwegian pianist, orchestra leader and composer of popular music from the late 1920s to mid 1950s.Kristian Asbjørn Hauger was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. His father, Hans August Hauger (1867–1928) was a businessman who operated the Norwegian Christmas Card Company (Norsk Julekortudsalg). He studied musical theory with composer Gustav Fredrik Lange (1861–1939) during 1921–22. From 1921 to 1925, he was a student of piano composer Nils Larsen (1888–1937).
He formed the Kristian Hauger Jazz Orchestra in 1929 and became known to a wider audience with the Kristian Hauger Radio Dance Orchestra, which became a widely used studio orchestra in the 1930s. With his orchestra he also recorded a large number of his own compositions. He was musical director of the jazz stage at Bristol from 1928 to 1930, at Le Chat Noir from 1930 to 1936 and at Centralteatret on Akersgata in Oslo from 1936 to 1959.
He composed about one thousand melodies throughout his career. His first composition was the prize-winning Charleston i Grukkedalen, which became a great success. Among his songs are Blåklokker (1929, lyrics Herbert Herding), En Oslodag (1933, text Per Kvist), En herre med bart (1942, text Finn Bø) and Når kastanjene blomstrer i Bygdø Allé (1950, text Gunnar Kaspersen).

Finn Einar Mortensen (January 6, 1922 – May 23, 1983) was a Norwegian
composer, critic and educator.Mortensen was born in Oslo. His parents were publisher Ernst Gustav Mortensen (1887–1966) and Anna Marie Damnæs (1886–1960). Mortensen grew up in a publishing environment and it was at first expected that he would go into his father's publishing firm, Ernst G. Mortensens Forlag A/S. He studied harmony with Thorleif Eken (1900–1955), composition with Klaus Egge and with Niels Viggo Bentzon at The Royal Danish Academy, as well as the piano and double bass at the Oslo Conservatory of Music. He also participated in the Darmstadt summer school and in the classes conducted by Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Studio für Elektronische Musik in Cologne.The first public presentation of one of Mortensen's compositions was the Trio for Strings, Op. 3, which was played at the Young Nordic Music Festival in Oslo in 1950. In April 1954 he had his debut as a composer, along with Øistein Sommerfeldt. He was the leader of the group Ny Musikk, a Norwegian advocacy group for contemporary music, between 1961 and 1964, and between 1966 and 1967. From 1963-73, he was a music critic in Dagbladet, and he was also for many years correspondent for the major German magazine Melos. When the Norwegian Concert Institute was established in 1968, he became the institution's first director. From 1970 onward, he taught at the Oslo Conservatory of Music, becoming Norway's first professor of composition in 1973.
Rolf Wallin, Jon Mostad, Lasse Thoresen, Terje Bjørklund and Synne Skouen are among his students.
Until about 1953, Mortensen's music was mostly influenced by neoclassicism and expressionism. It later assimilated twelve-tone and aleatoric influences, creating what Mortensen termed a "neo-serial" style. From a point of departure in neo-classicism he became deeply involved with serial techniques. In Norway, Mortensen's works are still regularly performed by leading orchestras. In the rest of the world, however, he is less well-known.

Knut Nystedt (3 September 1915 – 8 December 2014) was a Norwegian orchestral and choral composer.