Norwegian composers - More than Grieg

[M. Henriksen]

The friends of unsung composers do of course know that Norway has more to offer than Grieg. But Karstein Djupdal has put together this website (not very stylish, but it serves its purpose) with a list of Norwegian composers from the baroque and up to composers born before 1925:

http://www.djupdal.org/karstein/norske-komponister/

A lot of unsung names here, and interesting reading in the links provided under each name. Unfortunately for all non-Norwegian speaking people (that would be most of the world) most sources are in Norwegian. But I can help if translation is needed.

The categories in this composer-timeline is as follows:

- Baroque
- Classical and early romantic
- National romantic, "German" romantic, "the golden age"
- Late romantic
- Modern style, impressionism, expressionism, neoclassical, "the new Norwegian style"

The list should kill a few hours!


Morten

[Josh]

That looks pretty interesting.  Unsung Norwegian composers from before 1900 tend to be hard to come by in recording.

By the way, I do question whether living from 1755 - 1836 (Israel Gottlieb Wernicke) would place one in the Baroque period. I also don't imagine many people would consider a composer who lived from 1741 to 1807 to be a Baroque composer.  Not really important, but it does seem a tad odd.  The musical eras may be seen differently in Norway, I suppose.  Mostly, I get the impression the Baroque era is seen to have ended by 1750.  I don't recall ever seeing Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) classified as Baroque, for instance.

[M. Henriksen]

I do understand that you're questioning some of the categorizing Josh, I myself think it's very difficult to do so with composers overall.
The author of the website is however free to categorize whatever he wants, even if we might think it's wrong. So all I can say is that my personal approach to this site is that I don't care about the categorizing at all, I've just started to explore the many unknown names on that list.

I would say that the majority of these composers' music have never been represented in recording. That's something for the future!


Morten

[eschiss1]

Probably true!
(There have been a couple of recordings containing I.G. Wernicke's music, it seems, mostly originally recorded in the late 1970s. 

Mr. Djupdal's name I recognize as a pianist from a recording he made of Scriabin's sonata 5 hosted at his website (and which has also been uploaded under CC-license to IMSLP).  Good to find out what else he does and best to him for this excellent project!

[JimL]

By the way, I do question whether living from 1755 - 1836 (Israel Gottlieb Wernicke) would place one in the Baroque period. I also don't imagine many people would consider a composer who lived from 1741 to 1807 to be a Baroque composer.  Not really important, but it does seem a tad odd.  The musical eras may be seen differently in Norway, I suppose.  Mostly, I get the impression the Baroque era is seen to have ended by 1750.  I don't recall ever seeing Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) classified as Baroque, for instance.

The Baroque Period dates are pretty standardized, and stretch from approximately 1600 (just after the creation of opera) to 1750.  The best way to determine whether a composer can be classified as being in one period or another: listen to the music.  The styles are completely different.  I'd bet that Wernicke will be found to be High Classical, and maybe even early Romantic.

[Richard Moss]

With regard to the issue of 'text' being in Norwegian, the Google Chrome Internet Browser (available free, I believe) has an automatic translate function built in.  I've used it a couple of times recently once I'd found it and whilst the result might be a bit clunky in a few places, most of what it has produced is quite sensible to interpret!

All you need to do is 'copy' the norwegian text from one web page and 'paste' it into the box provided (for the text to be translated), select required languages from the options menus and off you go!

Best wishes

Richard Moss

PS I'm hoping to use this to translate some notes that are in dutch in a box set of R Strauss orchestral music (on the Brilliant lable) I bought a year or so ago and that I have had no joy in trying to contact them directly for an English translation!

[kdjupdal]

Hi!
I just discovered this interesting forum.

Thanks for bringing my web page to attention. I put together the list because of my interest to find out more about unknown, sorry unsung, Norwegian composers.

As to the question of Wernicke and musical eras:
The composers should be classified according to musical style, and not date of birth. I am in no way an expert on all these composers, and I haven´t heard the music of most of them. But I think I read in some of the sources that Wernicke still composed in a Baroque style. I think we can assume that the musical eras were later in Norway than mainland Europe, as Norwegian composers were not always up to date on the latest trends. And some of these composers were organists who had Bach as an ideal. So actually even Ludvig Mathias Lindeman 1812 – 1887 wrote in Bach style.

One other thing I discovered working with this list is how many Norwegian woman composers there actually are from the 19th century.

Anyway there is a lot of good music to be found among these composers (but also some less good music of course), and unfortunately only a handful of them are performed today, even in Norway.


greetings,
Karstein

[Alan Howe]

Welcome to the forum, Karstein!

[M. Henriksen]

Velkommen til forumet, Karstein!

(Norwegian isn't very difficult to understand is it!? )


Morten