Eivind Groven
Encyclopedia
Eivind Groven was a Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 microtonal composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

-theorist. He was from Telemark
Telemark
is a county in Norway, bordering Vestfold, Buskerud, Hordaland, Rogaland and Aust-Agder. The county administration is in Skien. Until 1919 the county was known as Bratsberg amt.-Location:...

 and had his background in the folk music of the area.

Biography

Groven was born in Lårdal
Lårdal
Lårdal is a former municipality in Telemark county, Norway.The parish of Laurdal was established as a municipality January 1, 1838 . On 1 January 1964 a merger took place between Lårdal and Mo, creating the new municipality Tokke. Before the merger Lårdal had a population of 1,929.-The name:The Old...

 and came from a gifted family of musicians and artists, prominent in his home area. His father, Olav Aasmundsson Gøytil, was the youngest of eight siblings, and two of his father's brothers played the hardanger fiddle. His mother, Aslaug Rikardsdotter Berge, was the youngest daughter of Rikard Aslaksson Berge, known for preserving a great amount of old tunes, religious songs and dance-tunes. Two of Groven's maternal uncles also played the hardanger fiddle, and his mother's sisters, as well as Aslaug herself, were gifted folk singers. Thus, Groven's rural background was filled with traditional music.

Groven was the youngest of five brothers. Two of his brothers began to play the fiddle, and soon Eivind joined them. His father Olav was also an apt player, and in their childhood, the brothers learned notes, and sometimes played together, when they got their hands on classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...

. Otherwise, local folk music ruled. As Eivind grew up, he understood the value of writing down the tunes he heard from other fiddlers, and in this way, he soon gained great knowledge. He was also a skilled mathematician, and early on surpassed his older brothers.

At the age of 16, Groven was infected with a serious case of wet gangrene
Gangrene
Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...

 in the lungs and barely survived it. During his reconvalescent period, he studied music and played the fiddle. He later recalled: "I was free to do whatever I wished in that time".

Eivind Groven studied at Notodden
Notodden
is a town and municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Øst-Telemark. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Notodden....

 to become a teacher, as his father had been, but soon abandoned this, because music called to him. He studied musical theory and composition for a year, mostly Berlioz and Beethoven. He held Beethoven in highest esteem for the rest of his life, and wished for the 9th symphony
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...

 anthem to be played at his funeral. Unlike many other young Norwegian composers at the time, he refused to go abroad, but stayed at home, composing, and developing his own distinct musical forms, based on a merging of the sonata form
Sonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

 with the special metamorphic principles unique to the dance music from Telemark, closely related to the forms of late baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

.

In 1925, Groven married Ragna Hagen, the younger sister of the author Ingeborg Refling Hagen
Ingeborg Refling Hagen
Ingeborg Refling Hagen was a Norwegian author and teacher.- Early life :Ingeborg Refling Hagen was born in Hedmark, Norway, in the parish Tangen besides Mjøsa, as the fourth child of the local miller...

. This resulted in a fruitful artistic relationship, and Groven created great music based on the texts written by his sister-in-law. He and Ragna had four children, Aslaug, Tone
Tone Groven Holmboe
Tone Alis Groven Holmboe is a Norwegian composer and teacher.-Personal life:She is the second daughter of composer and innovator Eivind Groven, and teacher and singer Ragna Groven....

, Dagne and Gudmund. His older brother Olav Groven, an equally gifted folk musician, died from pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

 in 1928, and Eivind reckoned this a heavy blow.

Meanwhile, in 1931, Groven was appointed by the Norwegian Broadcasting Company, NRK, to be responsible for half an hour of folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 every week. Thus, he got a lot of gifted rural musicians to the radio, thereby preserving the folk music for posterity. Reactions from the urban public were harsh and unfriendly. Debates intensified, and people living in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 mostly expressed their disgust for this "barbaric music". Groven worked on, said little, as was his way, but it is known that he silently burnt all the hate-mail. He received great and valuable support from his original rural community, and from his family. Groven resigned his post in NRK during the war, after a brief and unwelcome encounter with Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

, in his own studio.

From 1938 and into the war, Groven started his work on just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...

, which resulted in his special organ, completed in 1952. Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...

 wrote to Groven and wished he could try this organ, and when he was granted the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

, he seized the opportunity. He exclaimed that a great organ had to be built. The concept of pure tuning in all keys had been Groven's dream from childhood.

After WWII, Groven participated in editing and publishing seven volumes of written and collected tunes for hardanger fiddle, along with two fellow folk musicians in Norway. The work was completed after their deaths. Groven continued composing, and was in later years greatly admired for his musical style and his use of the orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

.

His wife Ragna died in 1960, and Groven remarried two years later, to Signe Taraldlien from Telemark. In the end, she outlived him by twenty years.

Groven got Parkinson's disease in 1964, and had to put away the fiddle. The medications available at the time caused undue stress to his heart, and he died at the age of 75, in Oslo during the winter of 1977. He is buried alongside his first wife in the cemetery at Tangen, Hedmark
Hedmark
is a county in Norway, bordering Sør-Trøndelag, Oppland and Akershus. The county administration is in Hamar.Hedmark makes up the northeastern part of Østlandet, the southeastern part of the country. It includes a long part of the borderline with Sweden, Dalarna County and Värmland County. The...

.

The folk music

Eivind Groven began writing down fiddle tunes from an early age. During his life, he collected some 2000 fiddle tunes from various parts of the country. He worked as a consultant in NRK, and here, he was instrumental in creating a folk music archive, and in getting the company proper facilities for recording. The first recordings are dated 1936. From those recordings, he wrote down a number of tunes.

In 1954, a committee was formed for editing and publication of Norwegian folk music in print
The Norwegian folk music series
The Norwegian folk music series is a scientific collection of traditional Norwegian dance music, divided into two separate series, a hardanger fiddle series, and a regular fiddle series. The Hardanger fiddle series is already published , and the fiddle series is in production...

. The result of this work is a seven volume series of Norwegian Hardanger fiddle tunes, finished after Groven's death. In this work, Groven was the central expert, editing and piecing together tunes into larger groups, regular families of dance tunes. The work would have been impossible without his contribution, and he worked on this until he was unable to write anymore, about 1973. The economical compensation for this was sparse, and the project was nearly shut down. When the other members of the committee died, Groven worked on alone.

Musical style

Groven's musical style is heavily influenced by his folk music background, both harmonic and formal. The blue note
Blue note
In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the...

s common in folk music were often compensated in classical orchestra through imaginative use of overtones and in orchestration. Groven's harmonies reflects often the harmonies of the hardanger fiddle, which is commonly played at on two or even three strings at a time. He also extracted harmonies from the Norwegian cither, the Langeleik
Langeleik
The langeleik also called langleik is a Norwegian stringed folklore musical instrument, a droned zither.-Description:The langeleik has only one melody string and up to 8 drone strings....

, or the willow pipe.

It has been pointed out that Groven's harmonic principles are not far from the principles of the early Flemish
Flemish people
The Flemings or Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons...

 Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 composers, such as Dufay
Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...

 and Obrecht
Obrecht
Obrecht is the name of:* Jacob Obrecht , Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance* Hermann Obrecht , Swiss politician...

. Like them, he often uses the sixth-chord, with a third at the bottom. Groven often thinks rather polyphonically, and this can also be traced to the hardanger fiddle, as well as to his admiration for Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...

.

In early years, critics accused him of atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

, but in fact, Groven's music is quite tonal. He can, however use drastic modulation
Modulation
In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a high-frequency periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a modulating signal which typically contains information to be transmitted...

s, which in this context turn out as fairly logical. Apart from this, he uses the old modes that are present in traditional Norwegian music. One has to remember, though, that he never heard much of the early Flemish music, or even his older contemporary Stravinsky, and yet similarities can be found. Those similarities can be explained out of tonal feeling and tradition. Stravinsky in the early stage of his production used Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n folk music in an experimental way, like Groven.

Groven's form is metamorphic. He often uses a kind of fortspinnung
Fortspinnung
Fortspinnung is a German term conceived in 1915 to refer a specific process of development of a musical motif. In this process, the motif is developed into an entire musical structure by using sequences, intervallic changes or simple repetitions.It is also possible to use the fortspinnung form...

, and turns themes over to new themes gradually, in a very organic way.

Groven did not believe in the concept of absolute music
Absolute music
Absolute music is a concept in music that describes music as an art form separated from formalisms or other considerations; it is not explicitly about anything; it is non-representational. In contrast to program music, absolute music makes sense without accompanying words, images, drama, or...

. He stated rather that "all music is about something". Thus, one will find that most of his works are based on literature, poems or novels, or even plays. He wrote a number of songs over poems written by Henrik Wergeland
Henrik Wergeland
Henrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist...

, and choral works based on texts by the Norwegian novelist and playwright Hans E. Kinck
Hans E. Kinck
Hans Ernst Kinck was a Norwegian author and philologist who wrote novels, short stories, dramas, and essays.He was born in Øksfjord in Loppa, Finnmark, where his father was the local health inspector. He died in Oslo....

 and his sister-in-law Ingeborg Refling Hagen. His piano concerto
Piano concerto
A piano concerto is a concerto written for piano and orchestra.See also harpsichord concerto; some of these works are occasionally played on piano...

 and two symphonies are also based on works by the latter two authors.

Groven also composed music for hardanger fiddle, experimenting with new ways of tuning the instrument, and wrote a number of folk tune arrangements for his own organ, using blue scales and irregular intervals, not to be achieved on a regular equal-tempered piano.

He wrote also a number of essays on the topics of pure tuning and the overtone scale, as well as an essay of his own invention, the pure-tuning automath.

Orchestra

  • Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: Innover viddene. 1938,51.
  • Symphony No. 2, Op. 34: Midnattstimen. 1946.
  • Piano concerto, Op. 39a (1950)
  • Fjelltonar, Op. 27 ("Stutarlåt", "Vinjesong", "Siklebekken"). 1938.
  • "Hjalarljod", Op, 38. 1950.
  • Symfoniske slåttar No. 1, Op. 43. 1956.
  • Faldafeykir No. 2, Op. 53. 1965.

Songs

  • "Anden Aurikelsang", Op. 7. 1926.
  • "Å så rødblond", Op. 9. 1926.
  • "Men en kveld", Op. 12. 1929.
  • Songs, Op. 13 ("På hospitalet om natten", "Anden nat på hospitalet", "Moderens korstegn"). 1930.
  • "Sommerfuglen", Op. 14. 1930.
  • Songs, Op. 22 ("Til min Gyldenlak", "Serenade fra Venetianerne"). 1934.

Chorus

  • "Paa hospitalet om natten" for mixed chorus. 1952.
  • "På Heksmo" for male chorus. 1931.
  • "Stenen i Stefanens pande" for mixed chorus. 1932.
  • "Salme" for male chorus. 1938?
  • "Hellige tone" for female chorus. 1930s.
  • "Om kvelden" for mixed chorus. chorus. 1930s.
  • "Fantegutten" for mixed chorus. early 1930s.
  • "Den tyngste sorg og møda" for mixed chorus. 1946.
  • "Hugen" for mixed chorus. 1946.
  • "Guro rid til ottesong" for mixed chorus. 1955.
  • "Barnets aasyn" for mixed chorus. 1959.
  • "Bukkevisa" for mixed chorus. 1950s.
  • "Olav Liljukrans" for mixed chorus. 1960.
  • "Margjit Hjukse", Op. 48, for mixed chorus. 1964.
  • "Til Telemork" for mixed chorus. 1963–64.

Chorus, soli and orchestra

  • Brudgommen, Op. 16. 1933.
  • Mot ballade, Op. 20. 1933.
  • Draumkvædet, Op. 51. 1963.

External links

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