Haugtussa Sang-Cyclus, Op.67 (1895-8)

Det Syng

Veslemøy

Blåbaer-Li

Møte

Elsk

Killingdans

Vond dag

Ved Gjaetle-Bekken

It was inspiration at first sight. Arne Garborg’s Haugtussa, a collection of 71 poems in the Norwegian landsmål dialect, was published in May 1895 and within a month Grieg had written the first twelve songs of what was apparently to be an extended cycle. However, although the poems readily suggested their musical settings - “It was only a question of writing them down,” the composer said - the work did not go as smoothly as he had anticipated. He sketched a few more songs but when the cycle was eventually published, three years later, he had reduced it to just eight numbers. The problem, one suspects, was that Grieg had become uncomfortable with the supernatural perceptions of the Haugtussa, the “mountain girl” at the centre of Garborg’s collection. Certainly, only the first two songs in the cycle have anything to do with that aspect of her personality. The others reflect a peasant girl’s thoughts on the landscape, on life in the mountains, on love and loss.

Det Syng is addressed to the Haugtussa by a troll who would have her live with him in the Blue Mountain. Beginning with an allusion to the delicate piano figuration later associated with the silver spinning wheel, it is a dangerous combination of minor-key authority and, as the tempo slows a little on the fifth line of each stanza, seductive major-key melody with a harp-like accompaniment. Veselmøy, a tender portrait of the girl set with appropriate folk-song simplicity, refers to her ability to see into “another world” but that is the last we hear of it. In Blåbaer-Li she’s all playful innocence, as the little piano interludes so charmingly suggest, delighting in the abundance of bilberries on the mountain side until - with a subtle change of tempo and vocal colour but not of harmony - her thoughts turn from her cattle to the “nice boy” from Skare-Brote.

Her meeting with the boy in Møte has an innocence about it too, but only for as long as the brief snatches of Hardanger fiddle music in the piano introduction and interludes. The rising and falling chromatic harmonies under the vocal line imply a sensuality which is vividly confirmed at the passionately expressive climax of each stanza. The four-note piano introduction to Elsk motivates not only the girl’s fond reflections on love in the outer sections but also the lively springdans variations in the middle. In the delightful Killingdans she is back with her animals, joining without a care in the gambolling of the kids on the hillside. Care does oppress her, however, in Vond dag where - following another four-note melodic hint from the piano, this one recalling the initial entry of the voice in the first song in the cycle - she laments her lost love in sombre minor harmonies. Consolation comes from nature by way of the rippling motion and lucid textures of the brook. Spontaneously flexible in rhythm and harmony, Ved Gjaetle-Bekken flows in sympathy with her emotions, lingering to echo her innermost thoughts and finally trickling into the forgetfulness she longs for.