Nordic sound

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The Nordic tone is a so-called national tone that is perceived by contemporaries and today's recipients in relation to composers and musicians from Northern Europe ( Scandinavia , Denmark , Finland ). It is not an isolated case because music is often associated with regions or nations. Certain sounds or timbres are assigned to specific regions and the nationality or origin of the musician or composer is identified based on certain peculiarities in the music. In scientific analysis, the Nordic tone is often given music-theoretical attributes: " Excessive seconds , Lydian fourths , drone fifths , Doric sixths , Mixolydian seventh as well as pentatonic , ostinato techniques and axial sustaining tones." These ascriptions are often supplemented by a nature related to Northern Europe romance .

The Nordic Sound and Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg is one of the main representatives of this Nordic style of composition. Grieg tried to integrate the peculiarities of the folk music of his Norwegian homeland into his personal style. He used the collection of Older and Newer Norwegian Mountain Melodies (Ældre og nyere norske Fjeldmelodier) by Ludvig Mathias Lindeman, a collection of traditional Norwegian melodies, which were generally of great importance for Norwegian art music in the latter part of the 19th and first part of the 20th century so that one can speak of a “folk music Bible of the Norwegian composers”. The melodies contained were adapted and edited by Grieg, which gave Edvard Grieg's music a special character. The peculiarities of the Norwegian instruments had an influence on the musical sound: This explains an intonation that deviates from the western tone system . B. showed in quarter tones as a "lower leading tone " or "floating third ". The reason for this were peculiarities in the construction of Norwegian instruments, such as the langeleik , a drone zither or the Hardanger fiddle . In addition, the collection of mountain melodies also brought musical forms with it. Traditional dances should be mentioned here, e.g. B. Peasant dances, called Slåtter, the Springar (jumping dance as a pair dance in ¾ time) and the Halling for male individual dancers. Grieg's harmonious treatment of the melodies from Lindeman's collection is also interesting. In addition to the modification mentioned, Grieg felt it was necessary to write a new harmonization for these melodies, which, however, he already regarded as inherent in the material.

Political influences in the creation of the Nordic sound

The demand for a national tone is often politically motivated. It is no wonder that the awareness of the Nordic tone fell in the 19th century. Nationalist movements could be seen across Europe at the time, and Norway in particular was fighting for independence against Sweden. Edvard Grieg, for example, was a patriot himself, but complained about the cultural deficit of his fatherland. So he saw it as his job to help create a Norwegian “cultural treasure” and to develop a personal style that reflected his affection for his homeland. So there was a return to the folk music that surrounded one and that was perceived as Norwegian by the Norwegians themselves. In this way one distanced oneself, or so it was felt, from other national styles of Europe. In this context it is important not to perceive the Nordic tone as a fixed, irrefutable musical fact, but as the result of category thinking. In other words, describing the sound of a musical work as national is deeply subjective. It grows out of also subjectively formed categories and judgments. In this context, the national spirit - hypothesis to mention that also emerged in the 19th century and was also used in and in relation to the music. Here the composer has a secondary role in the creation of the composition, since he becomes the mere executor of the folk spirit and his own motifs are not taken into account. Viewed in this way, it is not the individual coloring of Grieg's personal style that emerges, but the collective whole of the Norwegian people.

The Nordic tone today

Even today, many representatives of the Scandinavian music scene have a Nordic tone, for example in the works of Jan Garbarek , Terje Rypdal , Nils Petter Molvær and Ketil Bjørnstad . The feeling of closeness to nature associated with the Nordic clay can also be found there. References to the Nordic tone can also be found in interpreters of metal , especially symphonic metal and Viking metal . A romanticization of the Middle Ages and a preference for Nordic myths are also common . But this already existed in the 19th century, especially in the Romantic era . Today these ideas seem to be closely related to the Nordic as such .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Oechsle: The "Nordic sound" as a central phenomenon in music history. In: Die Tonkunst , Magazine for Classical Music and Musicology, Vol. 4, No. 2, April 2010, Subject: Music in Denmark , p. 240.
  2. ↑ See Finn Benestad: Grieg and the Norwegian Volkston. A lifelong love story. In: Edvard Grieg. Edited by Ulrich Tadday, Munich 2005 (= Music Concepts. New Series, Vol. 127), p. 68.
  3. ↑ See Finn Benestad: Grieg and the Norwegian Volkston. A lifelong love story. In: Edvard Grieg. Edited by Ulrich Tadday, Munich 2005 (= Music Concepts. New Series, Vol. 127), p. 68.
  4. ↑ Finn Benestad: Grieg and the Norwegian folk tone. A lifelong love story. In: Edvard Grieg. Edited by Ulrich Tadday, Munich 2005 (= Music Concepts. New Series, Vol. 127), p. 69.
  5. ↑ Cf. Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller : Edvard Grieg in the field of tension between European and national musical culture. In: Light comes from the north: Norway's way to Europe. Edited by Manfred Sicking and Olaf Müller, Aachen 1994, p. 117 f.
  6. ↑ See Heinrich W. Schwab : The lyrical piano piece and the Nordic sound. In: Genre and work in the music history of Northern Germany and Scandinavia. Lectures at the Kiel Conference 1980, ed. by F. Krummacher and HW Schwab, Kassel / Basel / London 1982 (= Kieler Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft, vol. 26), p. 143.
  7. ↑ Cf. Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller: Edvard Grieg in the field of tension between European and national musical culture. In: Light comes from the north: Norway's way to Europe. Edited by Manfred Sicking and Olaf Müller, Aachen 1994, p. 116.
  8. ↑ Cf. Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller: Edvard Grieg in the field of tension between European and national musical culture. In: Light comes from the north: Norway's way to Europe. Edited by Manfred Sicking and Olaf Müller, Aachen 1994, p. 117.
  9. ↑ See Finn Benestad: Grieg and the Norwegian Volkston. A lifelong love story. In: Edvard Grieg. Edited by Ulrich Tadday, Munich 2005 (= Music Concepts. New Series, Vol. 127), p. 73.
  10. ↑ Cf. Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller: Edvard Grieg in the field of tension between European and national musical culture. In: Light comes from the north: Norway's way to Europe. Edited by Manfred Sicking and Olaf Müller, Aachen 1994, p. 120.
  11. ↑ See Finn Benestad: Grieg and the Norwegian Volkston. A lifelong love story. In: Edvard Grieg. Edited by Ulrich Tadday, Munich 2005 (= Music Concepts. New Series, Vol. 127), p. 67.
  12. ↑ Cf. Carl Dahlhaus : The idea of ​​nationalism in music. In: Carl Dahlhaus: Between Romanticism and Modernity. Four studies on the history of music in the late 19th century. Munich 1974 (= Berlin musicological works, vol. 7), p. 79.
  13. ↑ Cf. Carl Dahlhaus: The idea of ​​nationalism in music. In: Carl Dahlhaus: Between Romanticism and Modernity. Four studies on the history of music in the late 19th century. Munich 1974 (= Berlin musicological works, vol. 7), p. 76.
  14. ↑ For example the album title of the Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal : "After the Rain", "If Mountains Could Sing" and "Skywards" (published by ECM).