In comments to the classical music hit list
(which nobody’s picked up yet as a blog meme, as of this writing; come
on, people!), my friend Robert (whose patience with me is apparently
unbounded, for many reasons) takes me slightly to task for not listing
anything by Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt, whom Robert discovered a
year or two ago and then pushed on me, for which I have been enormously
grateful. I could plead the “space excuse”, saying that I just didn’t
have room for it all, which is true; and also that the list was meant
to capture works that I think casual listeners of classical music are
likely to have heard, which doesn’t as yet seem true of Tveitt, a guy
who’s only really been on the radar screen in the last couple of years
since his work suddenly started turning up on recordings.
Tveitt was a Norwegian composer, and a strongly nationalistic one,
basing nearly all of his output (so far as I know) heavily on Norwegian
folk song and melody and composing for Norwegian ethnic instruments
such as the Hardanger fiddle. (Incidentally, persons who have seen the Lord of the Rings
films have heard the Hardanger fiddle in action, and likely not
realized it. The solo stringed instrument that often sounds the motif
for Rohan in The Two Towers and The Return of the King is a Hardanger fiddle.) His most accessible works, I have found, are the amazing suites of the Hundred Hardanger Tunes, which are simply orchestral arrangements of Norwegian folk tunes. Tveitt strikes me as a Norwegian version of Percy Grainger, albeit a more serious one whose playful side is more restrained.
Tveitt’s work is at once moody, playful, serene, tempestuous, familiar,
and challenging. Tveitt is also a tragic figure in music history,
because of a fire in his home in 1970 that destroyed most of his output
(of 300 works, 90 survived). Exploring Tveitt’s unique sound world can
be done fairly cheaply, as there are several discs of his music on the
budget Naxos label; if those are to the listener’s liking, I also
recommend the full-price CDs of Tveitt’s music on the BIS label —
especially the amazing concertos for Hardanger fiddle.
For a taste of Tveitt, here are two selections from the Hundred Hardanger Tunes Suite No. 2, songs no. 24 (“Do you hear the song in the waterfall’s roar?”) and no. 25
(“Lame Lars, his fairy fiddle tune”). They’re very short — together
they run under three minutes — but they’re very evocative and they
contrast nicely. (I’ll be taking them down after a week or two, so
listen now!)
One of the things that never ceases to amaze me about classical music
is the staggering amount of riches one can find if one just goes past
the obvious choices. Instead of listening to The Planets
or Beethoven’s Seventh again, why not reach for something you’ve not
only never heard, but never heard of? (Although, in truth I must admit
that this sentiment probably isn’t unique to just classical music.)
UPDATE (7-15-04): I have now removed the two MP3’s, so those links are now broken.