CHSA 5319 – ICELANDIC COMPOSERS

Ísólfsson / Viðar: Orchestral Works for the Stage

Páll Ísólfsson

Composers in Iceland have had the problems – but also the benefits and the challenges – of a thinly grounded tradition. There was no orchestra in the country until 1921, and no conservatory until 1930, when the Reykjavík Music School opened, the first director of which was Páll Ísólfsson (1893 – 1974). Anyone before that who wanted to train as a classical musician had to go abroad, as Ísólfsson and his younger contemporary Jón Leifs did, both of them heading for Leipzig. Anyone who wanted to make a life as a composer probably had to stay abroad, which Leifs did, more or less consistently, until 1945. Ísólfsson, though, returned when his studies were over, as he could, being a musician of a kind for which there was a need in Iceland: he played the organ, and served as cathedral organist in Reykjavík for almost three decades.

He was, though, an all-round composer, and provided music for two theatre productions in Reykjavík during World War II. The city’s population at that time was only about 40,000, and although this was almost equalled by the number of occupying British, Canadian, and American servicemen, few of these would have been inclined to go to an early Ibsen play, The Feast at Solhaug, performed in the original language. This, in 1943, was the occasion of Ísólfsson’s theatre début. It might seem extraordinary that the permanent residents of the Icelandic capital could have summoned up a theatre company, an orchestra – even a modest chamber orchestra – and an audience for such a venture; however, this was wartime, and the staging of a Norwegian play, on Norway’s national day (17 May), with a cast led by a great Norwegian actress, Gerd Grieg (married to a distant relation of the composer), was a gesture of solidarity. At the end, Gerd Grieg came on stage alone, waving the Norwegian flag.

Veislan á Sólhaugum

The Feast at Solhaug is a domestic verse drama set in vaguely mediaeval times. It involves an unhappy marriage, two men in love with the same woman, poison that nobody actually drinks, and an outlaw who is ultimately redeemed. Ísólfsson gives it an overture that in its rough-hewn rhythm and phrasing as well as its modal flavourings may hint at the rural old-world setting. The main motif keeps coming back, amongst variants. There follows a short wedding march and a very short dance: a halling, a quick duple-time dance of Norwegian origin. The fourth movement, slow, is a portrait of the Mountain Dweller – or Hill-King, as he is named in the English translation of the play by William Archer and Mary Morrison. He is the outlaw whose return precipitates the drama. One result is the death of the man in whose house the action unfolds, for, having avoided his wife’s poison, he is killed by an over-hasty sheriff. The suite duly ends with a funeral march. Whether consciously or not, here Ísólfsson matches the tone in which Ibsen concluded his introduction to the published play, observing that though he had turned his original plan for a tragedy into a ‘lyric drama’, still, at the end, ‘a touch of pure tragedy has not been left behind’.

Úr Myndabók Jónasar Hallgrímssonar

Úr Myndabók Jónasar Hallgrímssonar (From Jónas Hallgrímsson’s Picture Book), staged two years later, was an even more ambitious enterprise – and certainly a more national one, no doubt stimulated by Iceland’s achievement in 1944 of independence from the Danish crown. Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807 – 1845) was a writer and travelling naturalist who added new words to the Icelandic language, such as reikistjarna (wandering star, i.e. planet). He was ‘the poet of Icelandic consciousness’, in the words of Halldór Laxness, who put together this celebration, for an opening precisely on the centenary of Hallgrímsson’s death: 26 May 1945. On stage that night, a boy as the young Hallgrímsson told his sister stories and poems, which took off as spoken scenes, songs, and dances, while a string orchestra in the pit played Ísólfsson’s score.

The prelude is again segmented and antique in sound, but shows an advance in continuity and variety of texture, the strings being divided into as many as eight parts in the interests either of force or of delicacy. More straightforwardly scored, the following march and minuet hint at Hallgrímsson’s time. Then comes the suite’s outstanding number, the ‘Þjóðlag’ (Folksong) in E minor, once more richly scored and with a middle variation for violins in four parts alone. The ending comes with a pair of ‘Vikivaki’: Icelandic folk dances, the first a little bit drunken, both taking the form A – B – A.

Jórunn Viðar

Belonging to the next generation, Jórunn Viðar (1918 – 2017) was able to start her advanced training at the conservatory which Ísólfsson headed, though she went to Berlin for further studies and continued at the Juilliard School, where Vittorio Giannini was her teacher, when she and her family were in New York in the mid-1940s. Almost certainly it was in New York that she met a fellow Icelander, Sigríður Ármann, there to complete her training in dance. The two of them collaborated on what would be the first ballet for the new National Theatre in Reykjavík, presented in May 1950, the month in which Ármann turned twenty-two.

Eldur

This was Eldur (Fire). ‘The music needs no explanation’, Viðar once said.

It was composed with the dance in mind. If you think of fire, countless images come to mind: flaming bonfire, flash, torch, flare, embers, ash.

It is with an instance of combustion that the work begins: lower strings rub down, like flint on steel, to spark a fire motif that spreads through the orchestra. If the fuel soon burns out, as it will, the fire continues more surreptitiously (horn solo, trumpet solo) until it bursts back – and goes out. There follows a central section that, if this were imagined as a pas de deux, might easily suggest smouldering, starting with solos for oboe and clarinet. The fire motif returns, tutti, forte. But this is too soon, a solo violin protests. The slow waltz must go on, as it does. Once more the fire motif reasserts itself, and this time the violin’s rebuff is perhaps not fully sincere. Fire swells again, but the waltz takes over one last time, followed by a remarkable passage for tangled woodwinds over horns. Then the fire blazes on, till all is spent.

Ólafur Liljurós

Two years later Viðar and Ármann got together at the National Theatre for another ballet, Ólafur Liljurós, which opened in October 1952 on a double bill with Menotti’s The Medium. Unlike Eldur, Ólafur Liljurós is a story ballet, based on an old ballad widely distributed in the Nordic lands. In his book on the traditional ballads of Iceland, Vésteinn Ólason notes the common features of the Icelandic versions (with variants in parentheses):

Ólafur rides along a rocky hillside, meets four elf-maidens who welcome him and invite him to drink (or live) with them. He refuses to live with the elves and would rather believe in God (Christ). One of the elf-maidens asks him to wait, and goes to fetch a sword which she hides under her clothing as she asks him for a kiss. When Ólafur bends down to kiss her, she thrusts the sword under his shoulderblade to his heart.

This synopsis works also for the ballet, for Viðar follows the source material closely. [13] She begins with a low pulsing suggestive of ‘Once upon a time’, out of which emerges a rising phrase that is repeated and extended, so that we remember it. Then the violas introduce a folk-style melody in swinging 6 / 8 time that can only be the theme tune of young Ólafur, whose epithet, ‘Lily of the Valley’, affirms his purity. As this theme is repeated in varied settings and keys one might wonder if Viðar knew anything of Vaughan Williams. Eventually the pace drops and the theme starts to dissolve, into a passage for strings that seems to suggest mists clearing to reveal further mists. [14] After this the upper strings, pizzicato, introduce a monitory rhythm (long, long, short-short, long) in preparation for, on the cellos, a variant of the Ólafur theme, one that has already been hinted at. Indeed, both Ólafur’s blithe melody and this new, unsettling one on the cellos can be traced to the same seed in the rising phrase of the opening bars. It is as if Viðar wants to show that this is a story not of good male versus wicked female but rather of an individual facing demons that emanate from within the self. The thematic difference is not of shape and rhythm, which are very similar, but of tempo and tonality: Ólafur’s theme started out in A major and stayed in major keys; this new idea is in E minor.

We are in the presence, clearly, of the first elf-maiden, who repeats her cajole (clarinet solo) and goes on perhaps to give some indication of the delights she offers. Ólafur, his theme reappearing, declines – with laughter.

[15] It is time for elf-maiden two. Noting that this creature is described in the ballads as entering with a silver jug, Viðar asked herself, as she recalled in an interview which she gave around the time of her eighty-fifth birthday, what might be inside that jug. Wine, was her answer. ‘I must admit I made her a little erotic’, she added, and the clarinet solo, accompanied again by the sinister rhythm, indeed gains in lubriciousness. An orchestral reprise rises into a wild dance of intoxication, but again Ólafur just laughs, the laughter coming this time before his tune.

[16] The third elf-maiden takes the tack which the first did: same rhythm (but now col legno), same cello line. Clearly this is not going to work, and the energy dribbles away, leaving none for a clarinet solo. Instead we hear a beautiful chorale-like moment on the strings – a vestige, perhaps, of the Christian touch that seems to be unique to Icelandic accounts of the story. His melody receiving a longer play at this point, Ólafur would seem to be on his way, unseduced and unscathed. We are, however, only about a third of the way through the score. And there is one elf-maiden left to go.

[17] She takes a different approach. For one thing, she leaves out the warning telegram of that compulsive rhythm. The cor anglais is her instrument, and the cello; and her appeal, dangerously, is more lament than temptation. Even more dangerously, the melody presents a curve in which, at times, Ólafur may see his own musical physiognomy. The young man is captivated, and the triplets of his earlier laughter become, at this tempo, those of fascination. Cor anglais and cello return. Ólafur must be in a quandary.

[18] This fourth elf-maiden seizes her chance, and suddenly enters into a rampageous dance that, for the first time since the second elf-maiden’s moment with the jug, requires an orchestral tutti. There follows a transition to another big dance number, in folk style, stamping and whirling in quick triple time. And it goes on. Even more confusing for poor Ólafur must be the machine of superimposed dances set on a brass ostinato. And surely the waltz that follows will have him lose his head. It seems not. [19] The elf-maiden again voices her disconsolateness through a solo cello, and though Ólafur still seems ready to depart, he does not do so fast enough. A gallop ensues, then the fatal stab wound, the receipt of which is graphically illustrated by a cymbal crash. [20] All that remains is elegy, with bells, and a final resolution in Ólafur’s A major.