4 Songs

Fågelns visa Op.5 No.2 (1872)

Efter en Sommerfugl Op.52 No.4 (1900)

Mot Kveld Op.42 No.7 (1899)

Ouvertuure Op.41, No.1 (1897)

Agathe Backer Grøndahl, who died in Oslo a hundred years ago this month, was to Norway roughly what Cécile Chaminade was to France. Although she was born ten years before Chaminade, their lives overlapped for fifty years and both were internationaly admired not only as composers but also as pianists. While Chaminade was more ambitious, in that she wrote several large-scale works of the kind Backer Grøndahl apparently avoided after her student days in Germany, they were both prolific specialists in short piano pieces and song. If neither made a mark on musical history it is partly because they were both too conventional in technique to change it and partly because there were overshadowed by towering figures of the same generation, like Grieg in Norway and Fauré in France.

There are, of course, major differences between Backer Grøndahl, who remains a popular favourite in Norway, and Chaminade, who long ago lost favour in France. One of them is the style of their piano writing: while Chaminade’s is essentially French, Backer Grøndahl’s derives not least from her studies with Liszt and Bülow in the early 1870s. Song is obviously not the place for keyboard virtuosity – one would need to look to her concert studies for that – but it is clear from an early example like Fågelns visa (to Swedish words by Topelius) where her allegiance lies. The rustling thirds sustained in the piano part throughout, the unison melodic lines of voice and right hand, the left-hand counterpoints in octaves are all characteristic features.

The gift for attractive melody so well exemplified by Fågelns visa is evident too in the charming little Efter en Sommerfugl, even though as a song for children – from Mor synger (Mother Sings) to riksmål Norwegian words by Andread Jynge – it is comparatively simple in line and texture. In Mot kveld, from an earlier set of children’s songs to words by Jynge, Barnets vårdag (The Child’s Spring Day), Backer Grøndahl finds a delightful compromise between art and simplicity, The right hand flutters a delicate ostinato while the left doubles the voice at the same pitch, rarely venturing below middle C except in arpeggios between the lines.

Ouvertyr to words by Vilhelm Krag (again in the riksmål or Danish Norwegian current at the time) is a bolder concept. The four big piano chords swinging like bells echo again and again in this more declamatory than lyrical song of anti-troll defiance.