JSV 60
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Svendsen, Johan

To islandske melodier

Two Icelandic Melodies

([de]: Zwei isländische Melodien für Streichorchester bearbeitet)

JSV 60

 

Dedicatee: Carl Warmuth

Svendsen’s arrangement of the two Icelandic melodies was premiered on 3 October 1874 in the gymnasium of Akershus Fortress in Christiania. Svendsen had discovered these melodies seven years earlier, in summer 1867, while traveling to Scotland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland together with Heinrich Brockhaus (1804–1874), a German bookseller and publisher. In November 1885, the music monthly Nordisk Musik-Tidende reported that the two Icelandic melodies were based on folk tunes Svendsen had written down in Iceland. Other sources, however, suggest that Svendsen may not have written down the melodies himself, but that notated versions were passed on to him. They are both melodies to the same text, "Keisari nokkur mætur mann". The emperor (“Keisari”) in question is Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190.

In addition to these two well-known melodies, in his study of Svendsen’s sketches, Panoramic Constrains - A Study of Johan Svendsen’s Musical Sketches and Exercises, Universitetet i Oslo, Oslo 2016, Bjørn Morten Christophersen identified fairly extensive sketch material to a third Icelandic melody, Breen (The Glacier), which Svendsen at some point probably had intended to include in the composition.

Composition: 1874.

Christiania

Instrumentation: str.
Reproduction (edition or facsimile):
Edited score (JSV)  

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File title:

To islandske melodier

File publication:

Norsk Musikkarv (NM)
Institutt for musikkvitenskap
Postboks 1017
Blindern 0315
Oslo
WWW: http://www.musikkarven.no/
E-mail: mailto://bjar-eng@online.no

Bjarte Engeset (Editor in Chief), Editorial Committee: Morten Christophersen, Bjarte Engeset, Jørn Fossheim, Audun Sannes Jonassen, Jørgen Langdalen, Øyvind Norheim


Last changed 2022-02-19 by bjarte