“We are of north-Teutonic stock, and as such we have much of the Germanic people’s propensity toward melancholy and brooding. However, we do not share their desire to express themselves broadly and verbosely. To the contrary. We have always loved brevity and succinctness, the clear and concise mode of expression—just as you can find it in our sagas, and as any traveler could observe even today in our social intercourse. These qualities are also what we aim for in our artistic endeavors.” -Edvard Grieg

As one of the more unique and exoticized regions of Europe, Scandinavia teeters ever so gently on the brink of obscurity and centrality in the European tapestry. The Scandinavian countries have shifted from being seen as primitive hunter-gatherers to the rest of Europe in the Iron age, to the driving force of European history during the Viking age, back into agrarian irrelevance during the middle ages, until they again became key players in the wars that shaped Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as offering a cultural wellspring of folk literature devoured by the wave of Germanic national romanticism in the 19th century into present day. Artistically, Scandinavians were late comers to the trends in Europe, not excepting music. The countries remained largely poor to varying degrees until the end of the renaissance when Sweden and Denmark became more involved with international politics and began collecting the spoils of war, yet their only reliable interaction with European music trends was through the church in the form of sacred choral music, or the scant court musicians scattered few and far between saved for the listening pleasure of a fragile aristocracy. It wasn’t until the 18th century when the national musics of the countries truly began to develop, with Edvard Grieg’s assertion of the national idea of the “Scandinavian Rhapsody” beginning to take shape as the northern composers’ preferred mode of expression. A rhapsody, according to Grove Music, is “an instrumental piece in one movement, often based on popular, national, or folk melodies [...] Rhapsodies may be passionate, nostalgic, or improvisatory.” With this definition, it is important to note that a rhapsody, as with any other generic title, need not be explicitly titled “rhapsody” to be labeled as such. An example of this disparity within this program includes Alfvéns’s En Skargardssagen or Grieg’s Norwegian Dances, where neither are titled as a rhapsody, though both fit the accepted definition of a rhapsody.

Norway

Our collection of Scandinavian Rhapsodies starts with a voyage to Norway, the apparent breadbasket of Scandinavian identity: Viking explorers, sagas, fjords, smoked fish, mountain valley farms; all of these find their homes in Norway, and thus many imagine Norway when they conjure up tropes of Scandinavian life. Norway arguably has the most struggled history of the Scandinavian countries: historically, they were largely poor excepting lucrative raiders and traders during the Viking age, preceding mad king Olav Tryggvason’s uprooting of their ancestral religion in the 10th century through slaughter and betrayal. Then, suffering especially hard from the Black Plague, the country fell weakly into the arms of Denmark and remained under their rule for 400 years, before being traded as a pawn to Sweden for another 100 years until 1905 when they finally achieved independence. This independence was tirelessly fought for on the artistic front by many musicians, poets, writers, and composers, the most vocal and staunch of the musicians being Edvard Grieg.

Old Norwegian Romance with Variations, Op. 51, Edvard Grieg- This single movement orchestration of dances collected by Ludvig Mathias Lindemann, a scholar funded by the government to collect and transcribe dance tunes from rural communities (a century before Bartók). This collection proved crucial to the national independence movement in Norway, as many composers including Grieg arranged these folk tunes in various ways to bring them into the international concert tradition. This dance movement consists of diatonic melodies of Halling dances, a duple meter dance form from Norway’s mountain regions, set to Grieg’s signature chromatic harmonic structures. Grieg’s Op. 35 gives us a glimpse into the folk life of rural Norway and the melodies that drove the people’s social gatherings. This piece exemplifies many of the ways in which Grieg asserted Norwegian cultural strength through the European concert tradition. Norwegian Rhapsody no.

4, Op. 22, Johan Svendsen- Johan Svendsen is a much lessinternationally known contemporary of Edvard Grieg, though the two were friends throughout the start of their careers. Contrary to Grieg’s reputation as a master of harmony and small forms, Svendsen’s reputation was upheld by his mastery of orchestration in the larger forms. It is still debated today how invested Svendsen was in the discourse of musical nationalism, but his interest can not be denied when one considers that he, as a Norwegian composer living in Denmark, took it upon himself to orchestrate folk melodies from Sweden, Norway, and even Iceland and title them explicitly by their national roots. These Norwegian rhapsodies are separate beasts altogether, as the orchestrations of melodies stay true to the original tunes form and simplicity as opposed to Grieg’s largely transmutational methods of arranging and composing. These Norwegian rhapsodies take on a whole different approach in that Svendsen takes the original melody and applies his orchestral mastery to them to create compelling orchestral works fit for global concert halls. In them we see the local rhythmic color and charm of Norwegian folk life nestled gently into the mountain valleys.

Sweden

Our voyage now brings us to the more (relatively) temperate and lake-dotted landscape of Sweden. Sweden has shown to be a much more cosmopolitan nation compared to Norway due to their success in international politics throughout the renaissance and their pivotal role in the 30 Years War. As a result, Swedish national assertion lagged behind that of even Denmark as recovery from the endless wars Sweden participated in shifted focus away from the arts considerably. When it came however, it arrived with the grace of a north sea storm, and several Swedish nationalist composers proved forces to be reckoned with and artists destined for the international concert stage and fame long after their deaths in true Viking fashion.

En Skargardssagen, Hugo Alfvén: Alfvén has garnered a deserved reputation for being somewhat of a Swedish Strauss, in his sentimental programmatic music evoking images of a quaint Swedish countryside and shoreline. En Skargardssagen is no exception, as the title translates to “The Legend of the Skerries”, and the skerries are in fact paramount to the typical Swedish panorama, as the country’s capital, Stockholm, is even built upon an archipelago scattered with these rocky outcroppings. Calling this piece a legend of those skerries simultaneously brings up Scandinavian creation myths such as the “Tricking of Gylfi” in which Sweden was created around the great lake region, and of course of the many tales of Viking warriors traveling from the skerries to distant lands. If nothing else, this beautiful aural painting (Alfvén was also a talented watercolorist) brings the listener from their cushioned theater chairs to Sweden’s wind-scarred Baltic coast, primarily in the way he paints a starlit sky with the glistening orchestration of the strings over the brooding melody several octaves below in the lower strings.

En Varmlandsrapsodi, Kurt Atterberg: Kurt Atterberg earned his reputation as Sweden’s most masterful orchestrator, known for reflecting the outspoken Swedish spirit but in a very spiritual and profound manner of lyricism. His piece “Varmlandsrapsodi” evokes the side of Sweden which Alfvén’s piece does not: the rolling pine-covered farmland of the western side of the country, where folk dances under a midnight sun in June warm even the coldest of hearts, which Atterberg quotes quite well in his harmonies and themes.

Denmark

Denmark has a peculiar place in Scandinavia and Europe: it is on the periphery of Scandinavia, and Scandinavia is on the periphery of Europe, so this nation teeters precariously between Nordic and Central European, and this conflict of identity is reflected in its music. It is of course ethnically, culturally, and geographically Scandinavian, but sitting on the other side of the Baltic from its Scandinavia kin has led it down a much more cosmopolitan and modern path than Sweden or Norway. Denmark’s most premier composer, Niels Gade, could have easily passed as a German composer and would even scoff at his students such as Grieg who brought him pieces that sounded “too Norwegian”. Alas, Denmark has always been central to Scandinavian history and culture even if the nation took to a more cosmopolitan rather than national aesthetic, which its fitting for the country’s place in the Scandinavian Rhapsodie.

Overture “An Imaginary Trip to the Faeroe Islands”, Carl Nielsen: Carl Nielsen always tried to break from the Germanic strain of musical culture running strong through Denmark, and while he defined his own unique sound in the 20th century, he often looked to his own native material for inspiration. “An Imaginary Trip to the Faeroe Islands” is an exemplary piece to reflect Danish aesthetics, as the islands themselves are a sovereign state under Danish rule, as Denmark had the most imperial tendencies of all their Nordic neighbors. Just a few hundred miles north of Scotland, nestled between Norway and Iceland, these rocky, goat covered islands are quintessential to the spirit of Scandinavia. A devout and isolated agrarian society in these islands is perfectly shown through the adventurous overture in the hymnal theme Nielsen uses, and the whimsical themes of a wind-strewn island dot the musical landscape. (Grimley, 2006; White & Christensen, 2002; Yoell, 1974)

En Saga-Drøm, Carl Nielsen: Here, Nielsen looks to the legends of his native Denmark rather than the soil. It seems as if no nationalist Scandinavian composer is complete without at least one reference to these ancient stories. The sagas are ubiquitous throughout our art today (with figures such as Loki and Thor still topping box offices and Vikings found in seemingly every corner of media), and were essential to Scandinavian composers searching for a national identity. En SagaDrøm evokes the legend of the Dream of Gunnar found in the timeless Njals Saga. In this dream, Gunnar is given prophetic visions of his fate which are grim to say the least (as most Viking fates were) as you can hear depicted in the brass darkly mingling with strings in the conclusion. Here, we see just why Nielsen made a name for himself in Denmark: he was not a typical Danish composer, for he looked to his own native roots rather than the teachings of the Austro-German mainstream as so many of his predecessors were.

A cursory search for mainstream symphonic pieces by Scandinavian composers may turn up dry, with only a few composers showing the desire for such forms (notably Svendsen, Gade, and Sibelius), while the bounty of single movement or episodic program pieces from each country will leave the listener overwhelmed with options. It may have simply been a way to push back against the Austro-German mainstream influence as a means of defining the nation by its others, or maybe it was something deeper than that. Scandinavia was a distant, enigmatic land to the European mainstream, and as a result never felt a place. Perhaps each composer found the humble and charming rhapsody as the best way to invite foreign listeners into their hearth, home, and wood, rather than the explosive and magisterial symphony of their German neighbors. For as Grieg also believed: “Artists like Bach and Beethoven, erected churches and temples on the heights. I only wanted to build dwelling for men in which they might feel happy and at home.”