Concert programme — Grieg, Rangström & Sibelius — Concert Programmes

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Six Poems by Ibsen Op 25, (1876)

Spillemaend

En svane

Stam-bogsrim

Med en vandlilie

Borte!

En fuglevise

Ture Rangström (1884–1947)

3 songs to words by Bo Bergman

Bön till natten (1924)

Pan (1924)

Flickan under nymånen (1924)

Jean Sibelius (1865-1857)

Five Songs Op. 37 (1900–02)

Den första kyssen

Lasse liten

Soluppgång

Var det en dröm?

Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte

Edvard Grieg

Haugtussa song cycle Op.67 (1895-8)

Det syng

Veslemøy

Blåbaer-li

Møte

Elsk

Killingdans

Vond dag

Ved gjaetle-bekken

Although Ibsen was not as fundamental to Grieg’s development as, say, Rückert to Mahler’s or Mörike to Wolf’s, he was a significant factor in the composer’s growing inclination towards Norwegian poetry as an inspiration for his songs and Norwegian folk song as a source of his musical language in the later 1860s and the 1870s. The incidental music to Peer Gynt is the prime example of that but, as well the vocal numbers in Peer Gynt, there are eight songs with piano to words by Ibsen, the best of them in the Op.25 set.

Spillemaend had much personal significance for the composer: that is clear from the fact that he incorporated its opening melody as a motto theme in his String Quartet in G minor Op.27 a year or two later. In the Quartet the “terror” so dramatically expressed in the middle section of the song is thoroughly exorcised. In the song it return to plunge the harmonies into an emphatic (fff) C minor just before the end. At this time, in the “dark and oppressive” winter of 1876, he identified not only with the anguish of Ibsens’ Spillemaend but also with the elegiac mood of En svane which, in spite the melodic beauty of the outer sections and the return to F major after the harmonically disorientating middle section, is no less regretful. The drooping vocal line and the F minor harmonies of Stam-bogsrim prolong the mood of disappointment.

But, as Grieg wrote to his poet friend and collaborator Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in May 1876, “the lovely spring days” awakened him from a “long, long period of lethargy.” The impulsive Med en vandlilie was presumably written in anticipation of such a release – but not, as the change of harmony in the third and fourth stanzas indicates, without misgivings. In fact the stark scoring of Borte! confirms that the misgivings were justified. Even En fuglevise has its unhappy moment of parting although regret is swept away by the impetuous advance of spring accelerating in the last three stanzas from the basis Andante to a Presto climax in the last line.

Ture Rangström had an extraordinarily varied career – not only as a composer but also as a conductor, singing teacher, critic and poet. His creative work was similarly varied but, in spite of his distinction as a composer of operas and symphonies, he is valued above all for his more than 250 songs, many of which are reckoned to be among the best of their kind in the Swedish repertoire. As a firm believer in Julius Hey’s theory of song as emerging from the spoken language, he based many of his songs on what he called “speech through melody.” The first of these three Bergman settings, the exquisitely restrained Bön till natten, is a characteristic example. By the very nature of its subject, Pan is necessarily more decorative from the moment when the god begins to play in the second stanza. Even this is transcended as “summer-blood” passion rises in the last two lines. As the delightful Flickan under nymånen demonstrates, Rangström also had a liberated, brilliantly witty sense of humour, a quality which is rarely so captivatingly reflected in Scandinavian song.

Sibelius’s first language, like that of many Finns of his generation, was Swedish. Although he started learning Finnish when he went to school at the age of eight and although the rhythms of the Kalevala echo unmistakably through much of his instrumental music, as a song composer he was far happier with Swedish poetry than with Finnish. Indeed, he wrote only five songs in Finnish and not far short of ninety in Swedish – many of them settings of poems by a Swede-Finn of an earlier generation, Johan Ludvig Runeberg. It is clear from the opening of the Runeberg setting Den första kyssen that the natural inflections of Swedish verse translated easily into musical terms for Sibelius. For the maiden’s question to the evening star, however, he needs to extend the scope of the vocal line – which, with a dramatic change of key to the relative major, he does in a surge of lyrical melody. He then turns his attention to the star which, after a magical change of key, makes its reply with a similar contrast between narrative and expressive melody, though they are both harmonised in the major this time. The return to the minor is held in reserve for the grim last line.

In Lasse liten to words by another Swede-Finn, Zachris Topelius, the shape of the vocal line is influenced by lullaby tradition – except, that is, in the third stanza and a part of the fifth where the uneasiness implied in the dark, curiously chromatic rumblings of the piano part rises to the surface. Tor Hedberg’s Soluppgång requires a more epic than lyric approach. Between the scene-setting first stanza and its brief recall at the end there is a vividly realised contrast between the bellicose attitude of the knight and the calming influence on him of the “snow-white hand.” Not surprisingly, bearing in mind its horn calls and its impressionist colouring, Soluppgång is even more effective in the composer’s orchestral version. One of the most popular of all Sibelius’s songs is a setting of words by the third Swede-Finn poet represented in the Op.37 set, J.J. Wecksell, whose Var det en dröm? inspired an irresistibly passionate vocal line which, after brief but effective changes in harmony and piano figuration in the third stanza, returns with still more potent effect in the last. Perhaps even more popular is another Runeberg setting, Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte. Though quite different in setting and atmosphere, it is similar to Den första kyssen in that it provokes much the same enharmonic modulations, which are not only dramatically compelling in themselves but also effective in lending some sort of tonal unity to the set.

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.