Sounding North: Music in Scandinavia, 1865-1931

Daniel Grimley

The Idea of Folk Interest in folk culture from

late 18thC Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

Johann Gottfried von Herder Music and Language Folk as imagined community Folklorism as academic

pursuit Brentano: Des Knaben

Wunderhorn (1805-8) Grimm Fairytales (1812) Cultural vs political

nationalism

Inventing the Norwegian Folk 1740 Johan Mattheson, Das

unterirrdische Klippenkoncert in Norwegen (fiddle tune and halling)

1780 Jean Baptiste de la Borde, 21 Norwegian Melodies, Essai sur la musique ancien et moderne, published in Paris

(1814 Norway ceded by Denmark to Sweden)

1812-4 Rasmus Nyerup and Knud Lyhne Rahbek (eds), Udvalgte danske viser fra middelårene, Copenhagen

1840 Jørgen Moe, Samling af sange, folkeviser og stev i norske Almuedialekter

1845-8 Jørgen Moe and Peter Asbjørnsen, Norske Folkeeventyr

Waldemar Thrane: Fjeldeventyret

Composed 1824 Singspiel (Syngespel) ‘Aagots Fjeldsang’ Imitated sound of

Norwegian lurs, mountain herding calls

Pentatonic scales, echo effects

Influence of Swiss Romanticism

Lindeman, Bull, and Norwegian Folk Music Ole Bull (1810-1880)

Celebrity violinist and politician Supporter of folk song Sæterjentens Søndag

Ludvig Mathias Lindeman (1812-1887) Organist, composer, folklorist Norske Fjeldmelodier

harmonisk bearbeider for pianoforte, 1841

Ældre og Nyere Norske fjeldmelodier, 1853-63

Grieg, 25 norske Folkeviser og Danser, 1870-1 Lindeman: ‘Springlaat fra Gol’ Grieg: ‘Springdans’, Op. 25/1

Grieg: 19 Norske Folkeviser, op. 66 Walking tour of Jotunheim, 1891 Gjendine Slaalien (1882-1983), ‘Gjendines Baadnlaat’ Frants Beyer, walking tours, July-September 1896 Grieg to Julius Röntgen, 22 August 1896:

Life is just as strange as folksongs; one doesn’t know whether they were conceived in major or minor … I spent the afternoon in my room where I harmonised the many folk melodies which Frants had sent me. It was truly festive … some of them are incredibly beautiful. In any case, I have set some hair-raising chord combinations on paper. But by way of excuse, let me say that they weren’t created at the piano but in my head. When one has Vöring Falls nearby, one feels more daring than down in the valley.

‘Kulokk’, Op. 66/1

Beyer transcription Lyrics for opening

bars (‘Rosko, kom nu!’)

‘Lalling’ middle section

‘roligt’ final bars Herding call/lure Registral/spatial

threshold ‘Naturklang’

‘I Ola-Dalom, I Ola Kjönn’, op. 66/14 Note by Frants Beyer [undated, BOB]:

In Ola Valley, in Ola-Lake, from Gudrund Skattebo, Skattebo farm, East Slidre, notated by Frants Beyer. High up in East Slidre, in a little valley with preciptous mountain sides in the Jotunheim, lies a lake known as ‘Ola Lake’. Here there lies a mountain farm, the Ola Farm. A woman called Eli lived there one summer with her son. One day the boy drowned in Ola Lake, without anyone knowing what had become of him. They searched everywhere for him, without success. So they believed that he had been taken into the mountain, bewitched [‘bergteken’]. They brought the church bells up to the Ola Farm, and began to ring and ring, ring and ring—ring and ring. Finally the church bells sang:‘In Ola Valley, in Ola Lake/There Eli lost her boy/They searched in the

valley, they searched in the lake,/But Eli never found her boy.’

Grieg: Slåtter, op. 72 Hardanger fiddle

Sympathetic strings Double-stopping Rhythmic complexity Dance forms: halling; gangar; springdans; bruremarsj

Knut Dahle (1834-1921) Transcribed by Johan Halvorsen, 1901 Grieg:

This music,--which is handed down to us from an age when the culture of the Norwegian peasant was isolated in its solitary mountain valleys from the outer world, to which fact it owes its whole originality,--bears the stamp of an imagination as daring in its flight as it is peculiar.

My object in arranging the music for piano was to raise these works of the people to an artistic level, by giving them what I might call a style of musical concord, or bringing them under a system of harmony.

Edvard Grieg: Re-Inventing the Slåtter ‘Jon Vestafes Springdans’, op. 72/2

Strophic Structure Cumulative effect Rhythmic displacement Registral Expansion

‘Knut Lurasens Halling II’, op. 72/11 Strophic structure Arch-form Rhythmic ambiguity

Grieg and the Slåtter Controversy

Kjell Kjerland, Bergens Tidende, 19 June 2002 For many years, the festival musicians were

shipped over to Troldhaugen where the Slåtter were performed by a pianist of high standing. At the same concert there was also a spelemann who played the slått in his own way. So the pianist presented art music and the spelemann the ‘primitive’ point of departure. For my part, I believe that even Grieg himself recognised that in fact the opposite was the case. A slått for Hardanger fiddle can never be reproduced decently on the piano. It is the slått on the Hardanger fiddle, played by a decent performer, that represents perfection here, and occasionally the ‘inspired’.

Folk Afterlives: Gjendine Slaalien and Arne Bjørndal