Haugtussa Opus 67, or The Mountain Maid, is a song cycle for soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 and piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 composed by Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...

 in 1895 and published in 1898. It is the only song cycle in his entire repertoire. The text was written by the 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...

 writer Arne Garborg

Arne Garborg

Arne Garborg, born Aadne Eivindsson Garborg was a Norwegian writer.Garborg championed the use of Landsmål , as a literary language; he translated the Odyssey into it...

, an excerpt from his book of poetry Haugtussa

Haugtussa

Haugtussa is an epic circle of poems, written by the Norwegian author Arne Garborg. The poems are reckoned a classical example of Norwegian Neo-romanticism or Symbolism. The themes of the poems are closely related to Garborg's rural background, and a number of supernatural beings, like the draug,...

. It tells the story of Haugtussa, a young herding girl, and her first love affair with a boy, her first heartache. Both the lyrics, which brim over with imagery of gurgling brooks and tasty blueberries, and the music that mimics this imagery, intertwine the main character’s personal story and the mystic spring-like landscape that surrounds her, which may even motivate it.

Song cycle project

Edvard Grieg read Arne Garborg's Haugtussa in May 1895, and was so inspired that he composed twelve songs in a month, four of which he rejected. He then spent three years completing the project. He first conceived it as a larger work with orchestra, but in 1898 decided to set just a cycle of eight songs for voice and piano, and gave them a final polish before they were printed in September that year. Grieg wanted Haugtussa to reflect Garborg's poems, but by using only a few selected poems was able to give a true and complete new image to Haugtussa, thus creating a new whole. They were released in Nynorsk

Nynorsk

Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...

 and Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, translated by John Paulsen and Grieg and published by Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, translated to German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 by Eugen von Enzberg, and in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, published by Edition Peters

Edition Peters

Edition Peters, also known as C.F.Peters Musikverlag, is a German music publishing house, founded in Leipzig in 1800.From the 1860s it was largely run by members the Hinrichsen family, who were Jewish. The company was confiscated by the Nazis and administered by the "Trustee of Jewish Property"....

 in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

.

Songs

The song cycle consists of the following eight songs:

1. "The Enticement" - Haugtussa is dreaming.Just knowing the dream, just knowing the song
   the tune will hold fast in your mem'ry
   seductively beckoning all the day long
   its sounds echo deep in each rev'ry
   Bewitch'd by your spell,
   with me you must dwell
   your spinning wheel tread in the misty Blue-Fell!
   

"The Enticement"

1. "Veslemøy" (Young Maiden) - A description of the slender Haugtussa.
2. "Blueberry Slope" - Haugtussa is watching over her flock and sees a field of blueberries.
3. "The Tryst" - Haugtussa looks out upon the hill and sees the boy of her dreams.
4. "Love" - Haugtussa declares her love for the boy.
5. "Kidlings' Dance" - Haugtussa dances with her flock of goats.
6. "Hurtful Day" - A rainy day; he promised he would come, but she sat there alone.
7. "At the Brook" - Haugtussa sits by the brook speaking to it of her sadness.

F Major functions as a default tonic in the cycle, serving as the main key figure in the first, third and fourth songs, leaving the fifth to be constructed in C and the seventh in F Minor. A Major appears only once in the cycle, during the opening bars of the fourth song, which is strikingly noticeable within the tonal design of the entire song cycle.

Contents

Haugtussa opens and ends with the nature mysticism of "The Enticement" and "At the Brook". The second extended stage includes the two melancholic portraits "Veslemøy" and "Hurtful Day". Between them the climax is reached in the central love songs "The Tryst" and "Love", which have a cheerful, pastoral approach, and approached and transitioned from in, respectively, "Blueberry Slope" and "Kidlings' Dance". The main character, the Veslemøy, is a shepherd girl who has abilities that others do not have and therefore can not find a place for her personality in rural communities. She turns to nature for answers to her desires and questions. During the course of the text she falls in love with the boy Jon, and "Hurtful Day" describes her feelings when she is deceived by him. In the last song, "At the Brook", which is often compared with the last song of Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

's Die schöne Müllerin

Die schöne Müllerin

Die schöne Müllerin , is a song cycle by Franz Schubert on poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the earliest extended song cycle to be widely performed. The work is considered one of Schubert's most important, and it is widely performed and recorded....

or Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

's Dichterliebe

Dichterliebe

Dichterliebe, 'The Poet's Love' , is the best-known song cycle of Robert Schumann . The texts for the 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo of Heinrich Heine, composed 1822–1823, published as part of the poet's Das Buch der Lieder. Following the song-cycles of Franz Schubert , those of...

, she seeks refuge by a mountain brook, musically represented by a rhythmic figure

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

 on the piano. From verse to verse, Grieg gradually changes this passage using different harmonizations.

Performances

The first to perform the complete cycle of songs in Cristiania

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...

 was Eva Nansen

Eva Nansen

Eva Helene Nansen was a celebrated Norwegian mezzosoprano singer. She was also a pioneer of women's skiing.-Personal life:...

, wife of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a...

, with Grieg's colleague and friend Agathe Backer-Grøndahl at the piano, on 2 November 1899. Grieg was not present at the recital, for he had a concert in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 at the same time. Four of the Haugtussa songs were also performed on 22 October 1898 by the Norwegian-born Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 singer Dagmar Möller

Dagmar Möller

Dagmar Möller, born Dagmar Henriette Bosse , was a Swedish singer and vocal pedagogue. She was the dedicatee of Edvard Grieg's song cycle Haugtussa and took past in many theatrical productions during her musical career.-Life:Möller studied at the Stockholm Conservatory between 1882 and 1887, and...

, to whom the cycle was dedicated.

Selected recordings

• Aase Nordmo Løvberg
  Aase Nordmo Løvberg
  Aase Nordmo Løvberg is a Norwegian opera singer. She belongs among the 20th century's foremost Nordic singers. For many years she sang with Jussi Björling at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, and she has sung under renowned conductors such as Herbert von Karajan and Georg Solti.Løvberg made her debut...
  
   with Robert Levin
  Robert Levin (Norwegian pianist)
  Robert Levin was a Norwegian classical pianist and composer. Although he was an accomplished solo pianist and composer in his own right, Levin received international acclaim for his work as an accompanist with several of the world's most celebrated vocal and instrumental...
  
  , piano. Recorded in Oslo around March 1956. Released on the EP-disc HMV 7EBN 1

Sources

• Erling Dahl Jr.: Haugtussa, Opus 67, "The best songs I've written" at the Grieg Society.org
• Frode B. Bjerkevik: Edvard Grieg - Haugtussa at Hissig.no
• Debra Siebert, D.M.A.: Conflict and meaning in Edvard Grieg's "Haugtussa", University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2010, AAT 3460100

External links

• Haugtussa by Edvard Grieg at the International Music Score Library Project
  International Music Score Library Project
  The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
  
  .