Norwegian Classical Favourites, Volume 2
Halvorsen • Sæverud • Valen • Tveitt
In the 1920s a radical group of composers began to be
influential in the Norwegian Composers Association. There was a proposal to
give the young Harald Sæverud a travelling scholarship but the committee saw to
it that the grant went instead to an older and more conservative composer, Per
Reidarson. The attendant dispute gave rise to such strong feelings that a fight
broke out at a concert in the university aula between Reidarson and a
journalist. Reidarson, who was later to become a member of Quisling’s Nasjonal
Samling, gave the following opinion of his fellow student Fartein Valen: “tones
that, having no goal or target, lie in ambush and move up and down like
jellyfish in cloudy water (…) nasty, embarrassing, ridiculous”. There were
several other fights with modernism in later Norwegian musical life. Norwegian
art of the sort that was inspired by the Norse sagas and elemental forces has
been in bad odour ever since the last war. This has served to politicize and
sharpen the conflict between modernists and traditionalists.
The radical Sæverud was a symbol of the strong originality
of Norwegian orchestral music after Grieg. Later Sæverud was to become well
respected among Norwegians in general. “My music is wildly melancholic”, he
claimed. This, he explained, was because he had been born on what was formerly
a place of execution and a graveyard. Sæverud, the individualist from
Vestlandet, had a musical style of his own right from the start. “My music has
grown out of the Norwegian soil and the landscape – not from Norwegian
folk-music.” When the theatre director Hans Jacob Nilsen wanted to create a
“deromanticised” production of Peer Gynt at Det Norske Teateret shortly after
the war he turned to Harald Sæverud for new music. Sæverud’s initial reaction
was: “Do not mention such an idea, they will cut my head off”. This production
of Peer Gynt, which used the New Norwegian language, was received with rude
whistling and much debate. The drama about the unprincipled but ambitious Peer
Gynt was provided with music that was full of irony and coarse moments. Hans
Jacob Nilsen was also keen to penetrate the notion of Norwegian patriotism
after the war. Sæverud’s Dovreslått (Melody from Dovre) is a caricature of
Norwegian folk-music. “Everyone in Norway ought to have a travel scholarship,
for it is in foreign countries that you find culture”, the playwright Ibsen
remarked. Where Grieg created a morning mood, Sæverud placed the boisterous
Blandet selskap (Mixed company). The arms dealer and profiteer Peer Gynt
consorts with four bandits from the United States, France, Germany and Sweden.
Various types of national anthems are thrown together in a large pastiche bowl.
Peer Gynt has the final word with a heroic little verse from Norway’s national
song, “Ja, vi elsker” (How we love this country) before the sirens put an end
to the discussion. Fa’ens femsteg (The devil’s five-hop) is richly diabolical,
outlined by drums of various sorts. In Norwegian tradition it was claimed that
the Devil was wont to attend dances and not to stop dancing until his partner
had died of exhaustion. In the meeting between Christianity and Norwegian
popular beliefs music might express satanic powers as well as the strength to
conquer Bøygen. Salme mot Bøygen uses both contemplative quiet and violent force
to conquer evil and we can here feel that Sæverud has been inspired by the
poetry and serious intentions of Ibsen.
During the German occupation, Sæverud saw his work as a
composer as “a struggle on a knife-edge with the occupying power”. His anger made
him highly productive. Sæverud visited Oslo in 1943. He wanted to avoid meeting
German soldiers on the train back to Bergen so he took a bus to Sognefjord. In
Lærdal he saw the German barracks on the hillside. This kindled in him the
theme of Kjempevise-slåtten, which is a ardent protest against the occupiers.
The piece is subtitled “Til Heimefrontens store og små kjempere” (To the large
and small fighters of the resistance) and was originally intended for the
piano. In the orchestral version there is a slow introduction in which one can
hear the BBC’s call sign (the Morse-code V for Victory) played on the timpani.
In the latest printed score Sæverud emphasized that the piece should have both
weight and forward movement but without an audible accelerando. The strength of
this piece made Sæverud truly popular among his fellow Norwegians.
Another of the radical composers, Fartein Valen, has also
produced a piece that has become enormously popular: Kirkegården ved havet (The
churchyard by the sea). Numerous conductors visiting Norway have performed the
piece: Stokowski, Markevitch, Blomstedt, Salonen and others. The words
“churchyard” and “sea” suggest extra-musical associations and have undoubtedly
contributed to interest in the piece. A swelling sea-motif starting in the
cellos and basses forms a background to several very distinct motifs and
themes. The piece demands great concentration and a real will to communicate on
the part of the players if the performance is to be successful. Valen’s atonal
polyphonic style has points of contact with feelings about nature and
mysticism. He himself lived in the countryside of Vestlandet where he
cultivated roses and wrote music.
He wrote a programme note for the first performance of the
work:
The inspiration for Kirkegården ved havet came while I was
on Mallorca and was reading a translation of Paul Valéry’s famous poem in the
newspaper El Sol for the 8th of May 1933. ‘Le cimitière is Paul Valéry’s
masterpiece’, claimed the foreword to the translation, ‘and it is one of the
greatest poems ever written, both in our own time and throughout the ages. It
is a philosophical meditation on the cemetery at Cette.’ This caused me to
think of another graveyard at home in Norway, old and no longer in use, where
the victims of a cholera epidemic were laid to rest, right by the sea in the
west, not far from Valestrand. The music does not follow the poem
programmatically, but it seeks to give expression to the reflections that come
to mind as one stands face to face with death.
After the first performance, critic Hans Jørgen Hurum wrote
ecstatically in Norsk Handels- og sjøfartstidende:
“Le Cimitière Marin” is a picture of eternity that receives
a visionary perspective through the composer’s free and linear composition.
above us is the vault of heaven and beyond us stretches the sea as far as the
eye can reach. Between these two fixtures man conducts his struggle and is
forced back on his own yearning; we gaze up to heaven and the sea breaks upon
the sand and the graveyard.
It was not composers like Valen and Sæverud, however, who
dominated the period after Grieg’s death. Johan Halvorsen was a central figure
in Norwegian orchestral life. He wrote music for more than thirty plays at this
time. Some of this music he later collected into suites for concert use, for
example “Norske Eventyrsbilleder” (Scenes from Norwegian Fairy Tales). This
music was originally conceived for a children’s comedy by Adam Hiorth “Peik og
stortroldet” (Wink and the great troll). A story about King Valemon forms the
background to Prinsessen ridende på bjørnen (The Princess riding on the bear).
Theodor Kittelsen’s painting of the subject has made it popular in Norway. The
burlesque Trollenes inntog i berget det blå (Entry of the trolls into the blue
mountain) leads directly into Dans av småtroll (Dance of the little trolls).
Halvorsen often introduced exotic elements into his theatrical music and he
claimed that Arabic and Norwegian music were related. The central section of
Dans av småtroll, influenced by the Spanish habanera, supports Geirr Tveitt’s
similar theory that there were direct and ancient links between Spanish and
Norwegian folk-music. Halvorsen’s colourful instrumentation makes this suite
one of the finest Norwegian pieces of troll music.
The romantic nationalists approached folk-music with a
German technique of orchestration and were not always at home in the sounds and
ideas of the deep roots of this music. Geirr Tveitt turned to the ancient
sources – both musical and ideological – and he was inspired by a French style
of orchestration. Tveitt shared the view with Grieg that French music was the
solution for Norwegian music and he was better able to borrow from the French
than Grieg had been. There were some intimations of impressionism in Norway in
the 1920s but these composers did not receive much support for their ideas
(e.g. Alf Hurum, Pauline Hall, Arvid Kleven). Tveitt’s highly personal and
fascinating orchestral style grew out of his realistic approach to nature and
his mysticism. He has been called a nationalist, but, in his own way, Tveitt
was also a radical. His expression of nature was more direct and unrefined than
it was impressionistic. Vestlandet can be very grey and stormy and he wanted
his scores to give expression to this. Thus there is a barbarism in his music.
There is an unemotional mysticism and wonder in his Vélkomne med æra (From
Hundrad Hardingtonar) which is one of his most popular pieces. This song has
links with the Tveitt family farm and was sung as a welcome to the guests at
the traditional gatherings of good neighbours. It is at once ceremonious and
broadminded. His mysticism was based on a close and realistic understanding of
nature. In Haring-øl (Hardanger ale) and Langeleiklåt (‘Langeleik’ tune) every
imaginable sound is included: the fermentation bubbling of the ale, the sound
of glasses breaking against the walls and ceiling, or the sound of a plectrum
plucking the ‘langeleik’. He frequently wrote in a manner that purposely made
difficulties for the player of an instrument in order to achieve a special
effect as the musician struggled to perform the notes. Haring-øl is No. 60 of
the Hardingtonar that Tveitt orchestrated. According to Tveitt’s notes on the
score this must have been a powerful ale that tasted very good. Tveitt could
not refrain from portraying the brewing and the drinking. The percussionists in
this recording have bundled together numerous sticks in order to play on as
many of the xylophone’s bars as possible to meet the requirements of the final
measures of Tveitt’s score. At the same time, the orchestral pianist throws his
or her body alternately at the black or white keys. Tveitt produced several
versions of Haring-øl for both piano and orchestra. In the piano version he was
wont to improvise the conclusion. The ascent towards an ecstatic conclusion is
something that we recognize from certain traditions of folk-music where the
fiddler seems unstoppable. This is certainly Tveitt’s model, even if Haring-øl
can be also be seen as a Norwegian version of Ravel’s Boléro with its ostinato
and its long crescendo.
Another composer who sought to penetrate deep into
folk-music was Eivind Groven. He was also a musicologist and a folk musician,
playing the Hardanger fiddle and the willow flute. The advanced rhythms and the
melodic cadences were part of his blood, and he found it rather problematic
taking folk melodies out of their context and orchestrating them. Groven
claimed that he had long resisted using such melodies and that it was with a
heavy heart that he harmonized folk-tunes. The love poem Om kvelden (At
evening) by Arnulf Øverland was set in 1937 to a folk-tune from Hornindal.
Eivind Groven had received the melody from his friend and colleague Alfred
Maurstad. Groven has harmonized the song with the help of parallel triads as
well as adding his own prelude and interlude. The introductory bars on the
flute are related to the call sign used by the Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation since 1937. The same motif also appears in the principal theme of
his first symphony from the same year. He produced the orchestration a few
years later for the Radio Orchestra.
Groven composed his festive overture Hjalar-ljod for the
opening of the new town hall in Oslo in conjunction with the city’s 900th
anniversary in 1950. It was first performed in a competition together with
pieces by Ludvig Irgens-Jensen and Karl Andersen. ‘Hjaling’ is a vocal
technique used in the forest or on the mountainsides especially by dairy-maids
looking after the cows or goats on the summer pasture. A tune from Tinn forms
the basis of the rhythm of the overture while the melody is based on a herding
call from Gudbrandsdalen. These two contrasting elements lend a particular
force to the overture.
With his piece Ut mot havet (Out towards the sea) Edvard
Fliflet Bræin represents a side of the Norwegian identity that hardly found a
home in romantic nationalism when the farmer from the interior of Austland was
the prototype of all things Norwegian. Norway has a strong, frequently
outward-looking coastal culture. Originally the piece was a song to a text by
Henrik Straumsheim that was part of a cantata proposal for a competition in
connection with the town of Ålesund’s jubilee. In 1948 Øyvind Bergh asked the
composer for an orchestral song that would express the longing that coastal
folk feel to be at sea and their longing to come home to the girl who is
waiting for them. Stylistically this popular work is not particularly
representative of Fliflet Bræin. He studied in Paris with Jean Rivier and
established his reputation as a composer with the advanced and forceful Concert
Overture, Op. 2. Burlesque humour and sudden flashes are typical of his style,
but in his important opera, Anne Pedersdotter, based on witch trials, we find a
deeper and more serious musical language that is typical of him.
Gunnar Gjerstrøm originally wrote Sagn (Legend) for the
piano as one of a series of piano pieces for domestic use. This is a work which
used to be performed very regularly, especially on the radio, but that has been
ignored in recent times. The elegiac style has parallels in such Scandinavian
composers as Sibelius and Atterberg. Gjerstrøm studied in Vienna with Richard
Strauss. He wrote primarily for the piano including two piano concertos.
Øistein Sommerfeldt had deep roots in the Norwegian
tradition. Norwegian folk-music was important to him, especially religious
songs. Øistein Sommerfeldt studied composition with Fartein Valen for a brief
period but it was primarily Nadia Boulanger’s tuition in Paris that was influential
in his development. Sommerfeldt quoted Boulanger’s opinion that “Grieg was
national, European and humanist”. The same can be said of Øistein Sommerfeldt.
His first orchestral work, Liten ouverture (Little overture) is full of force
and energy but in a musicianly style. Friends describe Sommerfeldt as “homo
ludens”, a person given to playing. He was influenced by many styles but he
most usually wrote a sort of Norwegian neo-classicism with a particularly
strong melodic element. Asked what art really is he replied: “A continuation of
organic life”.
Ludvig Irgens-Jensen’s Bols vise (Bol’s song) was originally
written as a song for a play by Hans E. Kinck called “Driftekaren” (The animal
dealer). It recurs throughout the play and is played at the final curtain. This
is a song about Bol’s unhappy love for the Peer Gynt-like Vrål. Irgens-Jensen
has grasped certain poetic elements such as the young man listening to the song
and the black bird ascending. The orchestral version of Bol’s song is taken
from the suite Partita sinfonica. The animal dealer is one of the few works by
Irgens-Jensen with a folk-like nationalistic colouring. The final four bars
alone show that this is a powerful and original composer with a vision both as
regards instrumentation and harmony. Irgens-Jensen is both original and bound
by tradition. In an unobtrusive manner Irgens-Jensen succeeded in finding a
powerful musical language at a time of conflict between folklorism and
modernity. He was himself, yet not merely himself.
Bjarte Engeset