Six Songs

Våren Op 33 No2 (1880)

Fra Monte Pincio Op.39 No.1 (1870)

En svane Op 25 No 2 (1876)

Hörer jeg Sangen klinge Op.39 No6

Solveigs Vuggevise Op 23 No.26 (1875)

Med en vandlilje Op.25 No.4

When Grieg discovered landsmål Norwegian - as distinct from the more literary bokmål of earlier favourites of his like Ibsen and Bjørnson - he discovered a new sound or, in his own words, "a world of unborn music." It is a sound we know particulaly well, though in different colours, from the transcriptions of Våren and (the next song in the same Vinje set) Den saerde in the Two Elegiac Melodies for strings Op.34. Contemplating Rome through Bjørnson’s eyes in Fra Monte Pincio put Grieg in a quite different frame of mind, inspiring not only a sense of ancient grandeur but also three little dance episodes with two skittish variations in the popular Italian style. The most inspired of the Ibsen settings, En svane floating on a pool of calm but doom-laden minor harmonies, is also the most beautiful of swan songs.

Reverting to his student enthusiasm for Heine, Grieg chose to end the set of Romancer Op.39, which begins with Fra Monte Pincio, with a briefly stormy setting of Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen, which sounds just as effective in Nordahl Rolfsen’s Norwegian as in Heine’s German. Peace is restored as, at the end of Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt returns to the ever patient Solveig to be embraced by her tender and daringly simple cradle song. The least she deserved was the water-lily presented so impetuously and so melodiously by the lover in Ibsen’s Med en va

Solveigs sang Op 23 No 18 (1875)

Zur Rosenzeit Op 48 No 5 (1889)

Lauf der Welt Op 48 No 3 (1889)

Julesne Op 49 No 5 (1889)

Der skreg en fugl Op 60 No4 (1893-4)

Våren Op 33 No2 (1880)

Grieg scarcely ever used folk tunes as material for his songs. The familiar exception to the rule is Solveigs Sang from the incidental music to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt where an authentic Norwegian melody, with sadly dancing vocalise interludes, offers such a poignant image of Solveig’s patient devotion. Although Grieg was irritated when he was wrongly accused of drawing on folksong, it was a natural mistake for his critics to make: after his discovery of Ludvig Mathias Lindeman’s collection of Aeldre og nyere norske fjeldmelodier (Older and Newer Norwegian Mountain Melodies) in 1868, Grieg had so thoroughly absorbed the idiom that it was difficult to distinguish between his own melodies and the traditional models.

His first songs were settings of German poetry, in the German original and in the German manner, written during or just after his student years at the Leipzig Conservatoire in the early 1860s. But once he had begun to develop his distinctive style through settings of words by Scandinavian poets - beginning with Hans Christan Andersen in Danish in the Hjertets Melodier in 1864 and then going on to Andreas Munch, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and, decisively, Henrik Ibsen in Norwegian - he rarely set German verse again. The major exception this time is the Sechs Lieder Op.48 written in 1889 for the Swedish soprano Ellen Gulbranson who had a taste for the German repertoire and was to become a prominent performer in Wagnerian roles. More self-conscious than most of Grieg’s songs, the Sechs Lieder avoid the strophic form natural to the Norwegian settings and display some uncommonly sophisticated harmonies, though at no loss to Grieg’s characteristically romantic melodic inspiration. The wide intervals of the expressive melody shared by voice and piano in octaves in the first and last stanzas of the Goethe setting, Zur Rosenzeit, are most effectively offset by the cramped vocal line and the torturned modulations in the middle of the song. Uhland’s cheerful Lauf der Welt is given a more folk-like treatment but in a German, perhaps even Schubertian, rather than

Norwegian manner.

After the early Hjertets Melodier, Grieg turned to Danish poets at irregular intervals - to Andersen again in the Romancer og sange in 1869, then to Holger Drachmann in Reiseminder fra fjeld og fjord in 1886 and Seks Digte in 1887 and finally to Otto Benzon in two sets of Fem Digte in 1900. Julesne, a Drachmann setting from the Seks Digte, resembles Zur Rosenzeit in its contrast between expressive melody shared by voice and piano and tha more agitated, in this case intensely dramatic, episodes that intervene. If that seems an unhappy reflection in nature, the brief but forlon Der skreg en fugl, to words by the young Norwegian poet Vilhelm Krag, is desolation itself. With its parallel seventh harmonies and it sparse piano introduction and postlude, based on the cry of a gull noted by the composer at Stavanger, it is as daring in its bleak textures as any song of its time. The simple lyricism of Våren, one of twelve strophic songs inspired by poems in the Norwegian landsmål dialect by Aasmond Olavsson Vinje, is comforting in this context. It is interesting, however, that when Grieg arranged Våren for strings as one of Two Elegiac Melodies (together with Den saerde from the same set of Vinje songs) he called it not just “Spring” but “The Last Spring.”

Solveigs sang Op 23 No 18 (1875)

Zur Rosenzeit Op 48 No 5 (1889)

Lauf der Welt Op 48 No 3 (1889)

Julesne Op 49 No 5 (1889)

Der skreg en fugl Op 60 No4 (1893-4)

Våren Op 33 No2 (1880)

Julesne: le contraste entre la pureté sereine du blanc manteau et les pensées assombries du poète sur le caractère éphémère du bonheur et de la vie favorise l’alternance d’harmonies claires avec d’abruptes dissonnances. De structure ABCB’C’A la mélodie ouvre et ferms son song A par la perversion progressive du matériau: des octaves vides aux accords pleins, le chromatisme s’empare de l’harmonie jusqu’aux plus piquants frottements. Les volets B, sur la lancée, achèvent le processus destructurant par omniprésence de septièmes diminuées, changements de rythme (du 2/2 au 6/8) et agitation extrême des syncopes. Seuls les volets C, tel un souffle léger, apaisent un instant l’émoi.

Der skreg en fugl - cry of the gull (notebook - “screaming gulls heard in Hardanger”

harmonisation by parallel sevenths

Zur Rosenzeit - avoidance of stophic setting: the fourth stanza has the same music as the first but it also has the same words; the two middle stanzas are harmonically enterprising, particularly the third with its chromatic descent back to B flat minor, while the voice - which covers wide intervals in the outer stanzas inflects mainly in semitones.

Våren used (with No.3 Den saerde) in Two Elegiac Melodies for strings, Op.34 1881. Strophic “The last spring”

Grieg scarcely ever used folk tunes as material for his songs. The familiar exception to the rule is Solveigs Sang from the incidental music to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt where an authentic Norwegian melody, with sadly dancing vocalise interludes, offers such a poignant image of Solveig’s patient devotion. Although Grieg was irritated when he was wrongly accused of drawing on folksong, it was a natural mistake for his critics to make: after his discovery of Ludvig Mathias Lindeman’s collection of Aeldre og nyere norske fjeldmelodier (Older and Newer Norwegian Mountain Melodies) in 1868, Grieg had so thoroughly absorbed the idiom that it was difficult to distinguish between his own melodies and the traditional models.

His first songs were settings of German poetry, in the German original and in the German manner, written during or just after his student years at the Leipzig Conservatoire in the early 1860s. But once he had begun to develop his distinctive style through settings of words by Scandinavian poets - beginning with Hans Christan Andersen in Danish in the Hjertets Melodier 1864 and then going on to Andreas Munch, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and, decisively, Henrik Ibsen in Norwegian - he rarely set German verse again. The major exception this time is the Sechs Lieder Op.48 written in 1889 for the Swedish soprano Ellen Gulbranson who had a taste for the German repertoire and was to become a prominent performer in Wagnerian roles. More self-conscious than most of Grieg’s songs, the Sechs Lieder avoid the strophic form natural to the Norwegian settings and display some uncommonly sophisticated harmonies, though at no loss to Grieg’s characteristically romantic melodic inspiration. The wide intervals of the expressive melody shared by voice and piano in octaves in the first and last stanzas of the Goethe setting, Zur Rosenzeit, are most effectively offset by the cramped vocal line and the torturned modulations in the middle of the song. Uhland’s cheerful Lauf der Welt is given a more folk-like treatment but in a German, perhaps even Schubertian, rather than Norwegian manner.

After the early Hjertets Melodier, Grieg turned to Danish poets at irregular intervals - to Andersen again in the Romancer og sange in 1869, then to Holger Drachmann in Reiseminder fra fjeld og fjord in 1886 and Seks Digte in 1887 and finally to Otto Benzon in two sets of Fem Digte in 1900. Julesne, a Drachmann setting from the Seks Digte, resembles Zur Rosenzeit in its contrast between expressive melody shared by voice and piano and tha more agitated, in this case intensely dramatic, episodes that intervene. If that seems an unhappy reflection in nature, the brief but forlon Der skreg en fugl, to words by the young Norwegian poet Vilhelm Krag, is desolation itself. With its parallel seventh harmonies and it sparse piano introduction and postlude, based on the cry of a gull noted by the composer at Stavanger, it is as daring in its bleak textures as any song of its time. The simple lyricism of Våren, one of twelve strophic songs inspired by poems in the Norwegian landsmål dialect by Aasmond Olavsson Vinje, is comforting in this context. It is interesting, however, that when Grieg arranged Våren for strings as one of Two Elegiac Melodies (together with Den saerde from the same set of Vinje songs) he called it not just “Spring” but “The Last Spring.”