Re-inventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism: An Empirical Investigation of the Performance of the Slåtter op.72, no. 2. The Journal of Musicological Research, 31/4 (2012), 262-296.

Journal of Musicological Research ISSN: 0141-1896 (Print) 1547-7304 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gmur20 Reinventing Grieg's Folk Modernism: An Empirical Investigation of the Performance of the Slåtter, Op. 72, No. 2 COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Georgia Volioti To cite this article: Georgia Volioti (2012) Reinventing Grieg's Folk Modernism: An Empirical Investigation of the Performance of the Slåtter, Op. 72, No. 2, Journal of Musicological Research, 31:4, 262-296, DOI: 10.1080/01411896.2013.720914 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2013.720914 Published online: 25 Oct 2012. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 126 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gmur20 Download by: [University Of Surrey] Date: 18 February 2017, At: 08:38 Journal of Musicological Research, 31:262–296, 2012 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0141-1896 print/1547-7304 online DOI: 10.1080/01411896.2013.720914 Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism: An Empirical Investigation of the Performance of the Slåtter, Op. 72, No. 2 GEORGIA VOLIOTI COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Royal Holloway, University of London Performance traditions are constantly evolving entities. Some musical traditions purposefully look to the past to reinvent and consolidate a sense of national-cultural identity in the present, a compelling case for which is provided by the performance practice of Grieg’s Slåtter, Op. 72, No. 2. An investigation of this practice in piano and Hardanger fiddle recordings of this repertoire, by means of new empirical techniques for the comparative analysis of beat tempo and dynamics, traces the mechanisms of stylistic recombination in the performance of this music. Cultural-historical and ethnographic contextual evidence reveals tension between discourse and actual performance practice in (re)constructions of Norwegian cultural identity, with broader implications of reinventing the performance practice of this repertoire on contemporary Norwegian cultural memory. THE FOLK IN GRIEG’S SLÅTTER, OP. 72 Grieg’s 1903 piano arrangements of a collection of Hardanger fiddle melodies, the Slåtter,1 Op. 72, is a controversial work that stands midway A version of this article was presented at the International Performance Studies Conference (Performa ’11), University of Aveiro, Portugal, May 19–21, 2011, with the title “Between Tradition and Innovation— Whose Style is it Anyway? An Empirical Investigation of the Performance Practice of Grieg’s Slåtter.” I am very grateful to Nicholas Cook, Aaron Williamon, Matt Pritchard, and Helena Marinho for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful to Nicholas Gold and Neta Spiro for their advice on technical aspects of Viscovery SOMine 4 software. I would like to express my gratitude to Per Dahl at the Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound, University of Stavanger, for his kind and generous assistance with obtaining the discography used in this project. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions. 1 Throughout this article Slåtter refers to Grieg’s piano arrangements Op. 72, while the term slåtter (singular slått) refers to Norwegian folk dances such as those played on the Hardanger fiddle. 262 Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 263 between an oral folk tradition—that of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle— and a notated classical tradition. Transcriptions of these folk tunes were undertaken after desperate pleas made to Grieg by Knut Dahle, a fiddler from Telemark in southern Norway, who feared the disappearance of a great Norwegian tradition. Grieg arranged for violinist Johan Halvorsen to make initial transcriptions of a number of tunes played by Dahle before turning to the transcribed melodies for his own settings for piano.2 Ever since their compositional genesis, the Slåtter dances have been intimately linked to the expression of Norwegian national and cultural identity due to their Hardanger fiddle origins. The rise of folklorism and the fusion of indigenous folk culture with art music became significant players in the construction of nineteenth-century nationalist discourses that took part in the promotion and consolidation of an independent Norwegian state.3 In the twentieth century, many campaigns for the revival and protection of Hardanger fiddle music have been at the heart of a broader, pastorally grounded, nationalistic movement in Norway, seeking to preserve an indigenous instrument and its symbolically endowed landscape.4 Grieg’s Slåtter also marks the pinnacle in the composer’s creative development of a distinct musical language coupled with the emergence of a new modernist aesthetic.5 Unlike the earlier folk-song settings Op. 17 and Op. 66, Grieg’s treatment of the folk material in Op. 72 is both radical and innovative, yet is rarely seen as anything more than a precursor to the twentieth-century folk modernism that followed.6 The Slåtter’s complex mixture of diatonic and modal harmonies, the polyphonic textures resembling the sympathetic strings of the Hardanger fiddle, the extremes in dynamic contrast, and the angular, percussive rhythms 2 Grieg insisted that Halvorsen’s transcriptions be published at the same time as his own arrangements. For a full account of the sequence of events leading up to the composition of the work, see Finn Benestad and Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe, Edvard Grieg: The Man and the Artist, trans. William H. Halverson and Leland B. Sateren (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 363–70. 3 The composer Ludvig Mathias Lindeman collected and transcribed a substantial number of folk tunes, which were published between 1853 and 1867 in 13 volumes under the title Older and Newer Norwegian Mountain Melodies Collected and Arranged for Pianoforte. Many musicians, including the virtuoso violinist Ole Bull, also turned to folk sources for articulating a popular Norwegian musical style both at home and abroad. See Nils Grinde, A History of Norwegian Music, trans. William H. Halverson and Leland B. Sateren (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 134–42 and 152–62. For a critical discussion of the influence of folklorism on shaping nineteenth-century conceptions of Norwegian nationhood, see the chapter “National Contexts: Grieg and Folklorism in Nineteenth-Century Norway” in Daniel Grimley’s Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press, 2006), 11–54. 4 Chris Goertzen, “Reviving Folkemusikk,” Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 25–58. 5 Grimley, Grieg, 147–91. 6 Béla Bartók’s folk modernism has overshadowed Grieg’s in canonical reception. Bartók was aware of Grieg’s Slåtter and encountered the work even before visiting Norway while in Paris in 1910, where avant-garde circles praised “le nouveau Grieg.” See Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe, “The Emergence of Genius,” in Edvard Grieg Today: A Symposium, ed. William H. Halverson (Northfield, MN: St Olaf College, 1994), 20–21. 264 G. Volioti COPYRIGHT MATERIAL articulate a musical nationalism through the embodiment of a new “ideology or culture of sound.”7 These piano dances, therefore, have been received with mixed reaction, both within and outside Norway, due to their difficult modernist character and hybrid origins. Critical readings concerning the treatment of the folk material in the Slåtter have given rise to two broadly contrasting positions in the work’s historical reception. The first of these positions sees the creative fusion of folk and art music as the outcome of the exchange between local and universal impulses. In his analysis of the Slåtter, Ståle Kleiberg contends that Grieg’s piano arrangements retain, rather than suppress, the fundamental structural principles of the folk material by using the full range of resonance of the Hardanger fiddle and its idiomatic harmonic resources.8 Kleiberg contextualizes his reading within the language debate that was at the heart of events surrounding the establishment of an independent Norwegian state in the late nineteenth century. For Grieg, the peasants’ tongue needed to be given privilege and freedom of expression during this critical time in the struggle for independence. Just as a new Norwegian language could only emerge out of the indigenous dialects of the Norwegian people sharing a common cultural ground, so too the musical language of the Slåtter can be read as the democratization of the voice of the peasantry and a true celebration of the native folk. Grieg’s vision of a national spirit was compatible, however, with its expression through more cosmopolitan modes of discourse: “It is my opinion that just as man is an individual and a social being, in the same way the artist is both national and cosmopolitan.”9 As Daniel Grimley asserts, Grieg’s “Heimatkunst”—art inspired by the spirit of his native land—belongs to an organic process whereby the expression of national identity derives naturally, subconsciously, and spiritually from the composer’s cosmopolitan artistic impulses.10 Thus, local identity and universalism in Grieg’s music are not contradictory but mutual categories. Art music of an international status can be enriched by a local folk tradition, and at the same time art music can condition and preserve a rich local tradition by presenting it to a universal audience. In this sense, Grieg’s arrangements have been praised for bringing Norwegian folk music to wider international attention. The other position in the critical reception of the work adheres to a polarized view of Romantic nationalism. The Slåtter are seen as the outcome of a conventional and dominant harmonic system—that of the mainstream Austro-German tradition—that has been extended at the hands 7 As Dean Sutcliffe contends, mainly through his analysis of “Klokkeklang,” Op. 54, No. 6, but also extending his observations to the Slåtter, Grieg’s national identity can be found in the essence of a sound and not in overt manifestations of folk style. See Dean Sutcliffe, “Grieg’s Fifth: The Linguistic Battleground of ‘Klokkeklang,’” The Musical Quarterly 80/1 (1996), 168 and 179–80. 8 Ståle Kleiberg, “Grieg’s Slåtter, Op. 72: Change of Musical Style or New Concept of Nationality?,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121/1 (1996), 46–57. 9 Benestad and Schjelderup-Ebbe, Edvard Gieg, 284. 10 Grimley, Grieg, 110–15. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 265 of the composer to accommodate a local idiom, while the composer draws “new creative strength from handling the folk material.”11 Such readings potentially resonate with political undertones of the colonization of folk music by external and foreign forces, since during this creative handling of folk material the indigenous music is reduced to an estranged “other,” while the structure (instrumental/harmonic) imposed on it undergoes only superficial embellishment with folk elements, remaining otherwise intact. Grieg’s own remarks in the preface to the first C. F. Peters edition of the work (1903) have been interpreted, especially among the Norwegian folk community, to denote such an external ownership of the folk music in the Slåtter: “My task in transferring these pieces to the piano was to attempt— through what I might call ‘stylized harmony’—to raise these folk tunes to an artistic level.”12 As Grimley discusses in his recent review of critical debates within Norway, this top-down model of colonial appropriation has fueled vigorous campaigns seeking to reclaim the authentic identity of the work.13 These discourses have become more prominent in the past couple of decades, although their antecedents can be traced even further back. Commentators from within the surviving Norwegian folk tradition have openly criticized Grieg’s piano arrangements (and Halvorsen’s transcriptions) for misrepresenting the nature of his source material, especially the folk rhythms, and have strongly advocated a performance style that is true to the work’s folk origins—the Hardanger fiddle tradition. The discursive tensions emanating from Grieg’s most sustained engagement with a very specific folk repertoire continue to permeate the work’s troubled reception. While such tensions have attracted some musicological attention, it has been purely from a compositional-historical perspective. Existing accounts, such as those by Horton, Kleiberg, and, more recently, Grimley, only cover this controversial encounter between folk and art music in the Slåtter from one dimension of stylistic history. But how has Grieg’s folk modernism in the Slåtter been performed throughout the twentieth century? Given recent changes in the sociological context of the work and the quest for its “proper” origins, questions arise as to whether and how deeply such discourses have infiltrated actual performance practice. Is a sense of national-cultural identity in the Slåtter for piano expressed directly through performance style, or is it predominantly constructed through discourse? What mechanisms are involved in the crossover between folk fiddle and 11 John Horton, “Grieg’s Slaatter for Pianoforte,” Music and Letters 26/4 (1945), 230. Finn Benestad and William H. Halverson, eds., Edvard Grieg: Diaries, Articles, Speeches (Columbus, OH: Peer Gynt Press, 2001), 371. This quotation alone does not encapsulate entirely how Grieg felt about arranging the slåtter for piano. Biographical evidence elsewhere attests to his anxiety about the problematic generic status of the work and the difficulties of being caught between the main AustroGerman tradition and Norwegian folk music. See, for example, Grimley, Grieg, 168; and Kleiberg, “Grieg’s Slåtter, Op. 72,” 47. 13 Grimley, Grieg, 162–66. 12 266 G. Volioti piano performance traditions, and how far do pianists’ interpretations reflect an “authentic” style of performance? Moreover, what does this alleged need to inform the piano performance practice from the Hardanger fiddle tradition signify about the current condition of Norwegian cultural memory? In this article I address these questions through an empirical investigation of the performance practice of the second dance in Op. 72, “Jon Vestafes Springdans,” through piano and Hardanger fiddle recordings. This dance, which contains the springar rhythm, a beat pattern in triple meter, has been at the heart of recent discourses of authentic performance practice. In its Hardanger fiddle form, this type of dance exemplifies the springar rhythm as a pattern of unequal beat durations. This irregular beat pattern, therefore, provides ideal material for tracing the existence of a putative authentic style in piano performance. The remaining discussion falls into four parts. First, I examine briefly historical perspectives on performing the Slåtter and contextualize the idiomatic springar within recent developments in performance practice. Second, I present an empirical investigation of beat tempo and dynamics from fifteen recordings of “Jon Vestafes Springdans” to trace how the springar rhythm has been characterized by Norwegian pianists’ performances since the middle of the twentieth century. Third, I turn to a brief empirical case study of beat tempo from three Hardanger fiddle recordings representing different generations of fiddlers, and I outline how the characterization of the springar denotes putative pathways of stylistic transmission among this group of fiddlers, while considering evidence for the crossover between folk fiddle and piano performance traditions. Finally, I contextualize the findings of my investigation within a broader cultural-historical framework and discuss the implications of reinventing Grieg’s folk modernism for contemporary Norwegian cultural memory. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PERFORMING THE SLÅTTER, OP. 72 Much of the twentieth-century performance reception of the Slåtter has centered on its difficult modernist character. Some of the earliest performances of the Slåtter were met only with lukewarm responses by concert audiences and critics within Norway, even performances given by the composer himself: After Grieg’s public recital on March 21, 1906, which included the later piano compositions Stemninger, Op. 73, and Slåtter, Op. 72, Grieg wrote in his diary: Everything has one negative point. What hurt me was that the Norwegian Peasant Dances didn’t strike home as they should have. I played them with all the affection and magic I could muster. But—where my development as a composer has now led me, I don’t have my own people COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 267 with me, and that is hard to bear . . . But—I must not let that hinder me . . . The understanding of the general public will come in due course.14 During the final years of Grieg’s life, the understanding for which he craved came from Australian pianist Percy Grainger, whose performances of Op. 72 articulated the strong rhythmic and harmonic sense the composer had intended for these dances. In commending Grainger’s playing, Grieg noted in his diary: When he played Norwegian Peasant Dances . . . a voice within me cried: Why in all the world does the Australian Percy Grainger play these things perfectly with respect to rhythm and modulation, whereas the Norwegian Karl Nissen can’t get the hang of either? That is certainly backwards.15 At a later date Grieg added: “The way he plays the Norwegian Peasant Dances . . . he is breaking new ground for himself, for me and for Norway.”16 Although Grainger recorded several of Grieg’s piano works,17 he never recorded any of the Slåtter, regrettably leaving no audible evidence of what performance elements most likely captured the composer’s vision.18 The Slåtter have remained largely obscure throughout the twentieth century,19 their struggle for popular reception confirmed by their recorded representations. In contrast to the Lyric Pieces, for example, which have been far more amenable to public consumption and have had a more continuous performance and recording history since the early twentieth century,20 recordings of the Slåtter are scarce and are mainly by Norwegian pianists. Eva Knardahl’s recordings of the complete Grieg piano works between 1977 and 1980 for BIS records marked the first large-scale recording project 14 Benestad and Halverson, Edvard Grieg, 114. Diary entry dated October 3, 1906. See Benestad and Halverson, Edvard Grieg, 147. 16 Diary entry dated July 27, 1907. See Benestad and Halverson, Edvard Grieg, 193. 17 Grainger’s recordings of piano works by Grieg have been reissued in the three-CD anthology (Simax PSC 1809) Edvard Grieg: The Piano Music in Historic Interpretations, which was released under the auspices of the Norwegian Cultural Council in 1993 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. For a complete discography of the recorded performances of Grainger, see John Bird, Percy Grainger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 337–55. 18 For a discussion of Grieg’s influence on Grainger’s interpretations of Grieg’s piano music, see Eleanor Tan, “Grainger as an Interpreter of Grieg’s Work,” Australasian Music Research 5 (2000), 49–60. Tan explores Grainger’s performance aesthetic in the Piano Concerto, Op. 16, and “Bridal Procession,” Op. 19, No. 2. For an empirical investigation of Grieg’s and Grainger’s performance styles from their recordings of “To the Spring,” Op. 43, No. 6, see Georgia Volioti, “Playing with Tradition: Weighing Up Similarity and the Buoyancy of the Game,” Musicae Scientiae 14/2 (2010), 85–114. As demonstrated through tempo data analysis, Grainger’s style closely approximates Grieg’s manner of playing both in terms of beat-level performance gestures and the larger-scale conception of the temporal structure of this piece. 19 These pieces were classed under a “neglected legacy” in the 1993 International Symposium on Edvard Grieg. See Schjelderup-Ebbe, “The Emergence of Genius,” 24. 20 Despite their label of “amateur” repertoire, the Lyric Pieces have enjoyed much international attention and popularization through the recorded legacies of prominent twentieth-century exponents of Grieg’s piano music, including Percy Grainger, Walter Gieseking, and Emil Gilels. 15 268 G. Volioti that introduced many of his lesser known piano compositions, including the forgotten Op. 72, into commercial recording catalogs.21 Owing to the paucity of performances of the Slåtter dances throughout the twentieth century, the fifteen recordings sourced for the current study are not a partial reflection of stylistic currents, but can be deemed highly representative of the performance-recording history of this repertoire (see Appendix 1). In the past two decades, interest in the Slåtter has been refocused on issues of performance practice. According to the pianists Einar Steen Nøkleberg and Eleanor Bailie, even the challenging modernist elements in these piano pieces—including harsh dissonance, intricate accent patterns, and complex rhythms—can best be tackled when performance interpretation is informed by the Hardanger fiddle tradition.22 Of special importance is the interpretation of the metric-rhythmic aspects in the Slåtter, since these bear direct relevance to the work’s folk dance origins.23 The different forms of slåtter music still played to this day are commonly defined by their rhythmic character, which derives from their dance function—hence the dance names springar, gangar, or halling.24 The springar is a lively dance in triple meter, existing in a variety of local forms across the geographical area of the Hardanger fiddle—the southwest part of Norway. Norwegian folklorists, who have meticulously collected and transcribed Hardanger fiddle melodies, emphasize how the complex nature of the rhythmic-metric asymmetries in the springar dance give rise to regional variation. As Jan-Petter Blom notes: By 3/4 meter one normally refers to three homologous, binary or evenly divided beats (2/8, 4/16, etc.), the first of which carries the dynamic stress. These features do not hold true for the springar. In fact all springar dialects are in principle based on rhythms consisting of ternary or unevenly divided beats.25 In the folk tradition no fiddler plays the springar with three equal beats or with equal rhythmic subdivisions within individual beats. A prevalent variant 21 The Gramophone Classical Catalogue (1991) only lists Eva Knardahl’s recording under Grieg’s Op. 72. See Mark Wiggins and Margaret Maycock, eds., The Gramophone Classical Catalogue (Harrow, Middlesex, UK: General Gramophone Publications, 1991), 152. William H. Halverson’s account of recordings listed in the 1992–1993 Schwann Catalog, again, only cites Knardahl’s for the Op. 72. See William H. Halverson, “The Neglected Legacy,” in Edvard Grieg Today: A Symposium, ed. William H. Halverson (Northfield, MN: St Olaf College, 1994), 74. 22 Einar Steen Nøkleberg, On Stage with Grieg: Interpreting His Piano Music, trans. William H. Halverson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 350–94; Eleanor Bailie, Grieg: The Pianist’s Repertoire—A Graded Approach (London: Valhalla Publications, 1993), 493–517. 23 The functional context of the Hardanger fiddle has traditionally been ceremonial dance music. See Pandora Hopkins, Aural Thinking in Norway: Performance and Communication with the Hardingfele (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1986), 175–80; and Grinde, A History of Norwegian Music, 91–103. 24 See Jan-Petter Blom, “The Dancing Fiddle: On the Expression of Rhythm in Hardingfele Slåtter,” in Norwegian Folk Music, Series I : Slåttar for the Harding Fiddle, ed. Jan-Petter Blom, Sven Nyhus, and Reidar Sevåg (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1981), vol. 7, 305–12. 25 Blom, “The Dancing Fiddle,” 309. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 269 of the springar in the Telemark region is a pattern characterized by the lengthening of the second beat, which also carries the strongest accent, and the corresponding shortening of the third beat. The third beat is usually executed with a crisp and light action, functioning as an upbeat for the next measure. Other stylized patterns of the springar exist too, although which beats in the triple meter are emphasized depends not only on regional variation across the different districts but also on more subtle forms of idiosyncratic variation within a district. Even within the same geographical area there are fiddler traditions with different degrees of asymmetry and means of achieving it.26 Since such metrical asymmetries cannot be fully captured in musical notation, but are the outcome of oral/aural transmission, discrepancies can be found between the fiddle versions of slåtter still played today and their adaptation by Halvorsen and Grieg.27 In order to overcome the limitations of Grieg’s arrangement and convey to pianists the idiomatic character of the springar, Norwegian folklorist Sven Nyhus and the Norwegian pianist Geir Henning Braaten advocate a radical rescoring of the second dance in their 2001 edition of the work.28 The precursor to this new piano edition was the transcription of old Hardanger fiddle recordings. In 1993 Nyhus, a prominent and influential folk scholar and fiddler in Norway,29 transcribed the slåtter tunes played by Knut Dahle on wax cylinder recordings dating from 1912, as well as tunes played by Johannes Dahle (grandson of Knut Dahle) on his 1953 recording.30 These transcriptions reveal many elements of the idiomatic style of the Dahle Hardanger tradition, elements that the new piano edition sought to incorporate. For example, in Nyhus and Braaten’s edition, the first measure line in “Jon Vestafes Springdans” is shifted forward so that the piece starts with an anacrusis, placing the second beat of the measure in a metrically stronger position, thus attracting more emphasis throughout the piece (see 26 See Reidar Sevåg and Olav Sæta, eds., Norwegian Folk Music, Series II : Slåttar for vanlig fele (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1992), vol. 1, 51. As Pandora Hopkins has noted, within the Hardanger tradition the preservation of old fiddlers’ styles is at a constant evolutionary arms race with the development of new styles that produce distinct regional and individual musical identities. See Hopkins, Aural Thinking in Norway, 224–25 and 229. 27 Anthologies of Norwegian fiddle music stress the limitations of standard notation for the transcription of folk tunes. While fingerings or bowing patterns can be captured in notation, other aspects, including intonation, sound quality, timbre, and especially metric-rhythmic asymmetry, lie outside the grasp of any notation system. See Jan-Petter Blom, Sven Nyhus, and Reidar Sevåg, eds., Norwegian Folk Music, Series I : Slåttar for the Harding Fiddle (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1979), vol. 6, 15–17; and Sevåg and Sæta, Norwegian Folk Music, Series II, 1:47–51. 28 Geir Henning Braaten and Sven Nyhus, eds., Edvard Grieg: Slåtter Op. 72 for Klaver (Oslo: MusikkHusets Forlag, 2001). 29 Sven Nyhus was a major contributor and one of the chief editors of the final two volumes of the folk fiddle tune anthology Norwegian Folk Music, Series I : Slåttar for the Harding Fiddle, vols. 6 and 7 (1979 and 1981, respectively). He has also been a key figure in the folk fiddle revival within Norway, with particular influence on shaping traditions of folk fiddle playing at festivals and competitions. See Goertzen, “Reviving Folkemusikk,” 46–54. 30 These recordings were remastered and released in 1993 by Musikk-Husets Forlag A/S, Oslo, Griegslåttene: Hardingfeleinnspillinger av Johannes og Knut Dahle, M.H. 2642-CD. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL 270 G. Volioti EXAMPLE 1 Grieg, Slåtter, Op. 72, “Jon Vestafes Springdans,” mm. 1–31, according to the Sven Nyhus transcription of the dance. Reproduced from Slåtter Op. 72 for klaver– Redivert utgave eter Dahle tradisjonen på hardingfele (M–H 2877), transcription: Sven Nyhus. By permission from Musikk-Husets Forlag A/S, Oslo, Norway (www.musikk-huset.no). Example 1). This corrective rescoring also changes some other features of Grieg’s arrangement. An additional quarter-note rest is inserted at measure 14 to ensure that the new phrase at measure 15 starts on a strong beat. To compensate for this insertion, a quarter note is excised from measure 30 so that the second strophe starts in the correct metrical position (seen in Example 1); similar changes occur in the second strophe of the piece. On the whole, these alterations are intended to convey the sense of irregular phrase rhythm that is inherent in the folk genre.31 What effect have these discourses had on the performance practice of “Jon Vestafes Springdans”? How far and by what means do Norwegian pianists express their closeness to the folk tradition? In what follows, I explore these questions through an empirical investigation of piano recordings. AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF “JON VESTAFES SPRINGDANS” FROM PIANO RECORDINGS Data Collection I extracted beat tempo and dynamics from the recordings using the sound editor Sonic Visualiser (version 1.1).32 Timing data were gathered by a 31 Apart from regionally stylized rubato producing idiomatic emphasis on different beats, another feature contributing to performance variation in the metric-rhythmic structure of the Hardanger springar is the freedom to depart from the triple meter by the occasional insertion or omission of a beat. See Blom, Nyhus, and Sevåg, Norwegian Folk Music, Series I, 6:16. 32 Freely available at http://www.sonicvisualiser.org. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 271 process of manual tapping to each performance followed by a rigorous dataediting stage using the Sonic Visualiser plugins “Attack Detection Function” and “Power Curve: Smoothed Power Slope” to accurately assign the beat onsets within each sound file.33 Since all the recordings in the current sample are of good sound quality (the earliest date from 1950), the plugin-assisted editing of tapped timings and their alignment onto beat onsets was not compromised by any background noise distortion. Dynamics data were generated by running the plugin “Power Curve: Smoothed Power” through each sound file and using the corrected beat timings to extract the loudness at each beat location.34 Loudness values were converted into dBSPL (sound pressure levels)—the typical way of describing loudness levels in acoustics—using the online program “Dyn-a-matic.”35 Self-Organizing Maps (SOMS): Objectives of Analysis and Pre-Processing of Data The objective of the current study is to investigate how the springar rhythm is executed in performance and what similarities or differences exist across the fifteen recordings. Since “rhythm,” as defined by W. Jay Dowling and Dane L. Harwood, is a temporal pattern with durational and accentual properties relating to musical structure, beat tempo and beat dynamics have direct relevance for the performance characterization of the springar rhythm.36 A vast amount of psychological literature now exists to support the idea that musical structure, including metric-rhythmic structure, is directly reflected in performance.37 Many musicological studies have utilized this premise for 33 Concerning error minimization in beat detection when using audio analysis plugins, see Craig S. Sapp, “Comparative Analysis of Multiple Musical Performances,” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, September 23–27 (Vienna, Austria: Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft, 2007), 498. For detailed information on how these plugins were developed, see Craig S. Sapp, “CHARM Mazurka Project Plugins for Sonic Visualiser,” July 9, 2006, http://www.mazurka.org.uk/ software/sv/plugin, accessed 29 June 2012. 34 See Sapp, “Comparative Analysis of Multiple Musical Performances,” 498. For detailed information on how this plugin is generated using an exponential smoothing filter, see Craig S. Sapp, “CHARM Mazurka Project: SV Mazurka Plugin–MZ Power Curve,” July 9, 2006, http://www.sv.mazurka. org.uk/MzPowerCurve, accessed 29 June 2012. 35 Available at http://www.mazurka.org.uk/software/online/dynamatic, accessed 29 June 2012. 36 See W. Jay Dowling and Dane L. Harwood, Music Cognition (San Diego: Academic Press, 1986), 185–86. 37 Selected examples include Eric Clarke, “Generative Principles in Music Performance,” in Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation and Composition, ed. John Sloboda (Clarendon, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988, 1–26); and Caroline Palmer, “Music Performance,” Annual Review of Psychology 48/1 (1997), 115–38. For an extended account of psychological performance research, see Alf Gabrielsson, “The Performance of Music,” in The Psychology of Music, 2nd ed., ed. Diana Deutsch (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), 501–602. For a more recent overview of empirical performance studies, see Eric Clarke, “Empirical Methods in the Study of Performance,” in Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects, ed. Eric Clarke and Nicholas Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 77–102. 272 G. Volioti COPYRIGHT MATERIAL undertaking empirical analysis of performances, especially of timing, duration, and tempo, with particular focus on historical change and the cultural factors contributing to what performers do and why.38 Self-organizing maps (SOM) were used for the analysis of data. This computational clustering method enables the systematic comparison of different performances by identifying recurrent expressive patterns and their location within an individual performance and across a number of performances. SOMs remain a relatively underexplored method for comparative performance analysis, most recently reported by Neta Spiro, Nicholas Gold, and John Rink.39 The application of SOMs as discussed by Spiro and colleagues has a strong analytical-formalist research objective: a bottom-up approach, starting with a large sample of recordings, for deriving the performed musical structure prior to relating it to the score-based structure. The use of SOMs in the current study has a different aim in that it is primarily intended to investigate how the historically variable expression of a specific metric-rhythmic pattern in the music has shaped a performance tradition over time. SOMs are a type of artificial neural network (also known as Kohonen networks),40 and operate on the principle of reducing high-dimensionality data into a low-dimensional representation while preserving the topological properties of the input space. SOM analysis runs in two modes: training and mapping. Training builds a map according to an input vector and the training conditions specified. Mapping classifies the new vector representation in low-dimensional space (a two-dimensional map of cluster distribution). In SOM terminology each measure of music from the piece will represent a three-dimensional vector in space, since in 3/4 time each measure has three beats. The input space comprises the total number of measures of music (i.e., 90 measures × 15).41 The SOM was instructed to use the single measure as 38 For selected examples from the literature see the following: David Epstein, Shaping Time: Music, the Brain and Performance (New York: Schirmer, 1995); Robert Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); José A. Bowen, “Tempo, Duration and Flexibility: Techniques in the Analysis of Performance,” Journal of Musicological Research 16/2 (1996), 111–56; Nicholas Cook, “The Conductor and the Theorist: Furtwängler, Schenker and the First Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” in The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. John Rink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 105–25. The work of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music also reflects more recent developments in this field: For various projects see http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk, accessed 29 June 2012. 39 Neta Spiro, Nicholas Gold, and John Rink, “The Form of Performance: Analysing Pattern Distribution in Select Recordings of Chopin’s Mazurka Op. 24 No. 2,” Musicae Scientiae 14/2 (2010), 23–55. 40 See Teuvo Kohonen, Self Organising Maps (Berlin: Springer, 2001). 41 It is only possible to derive timing values for three whole-beat inter-onset intervals up to the penultimate measure of the piece (m. 90). The last measure of music does not yield three whole beats, since the quarter-note rests would require intuitive tapping, and it is excluded from the analysis. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 273 the unit of analysis to search for similar measure types, in terms of either beat tempo or beat dynamics, across the high-dimensionality input space and group them into homologous clusters. Because the dance, which has a constant quarter-note pulse throughout, is built on the regular repetition and variation of the opening motif,42 it makes sense to look for the performance interpretation of the springar rhythm at the single measure level. Since the objective is to investigate how the springar beat pattern is characterized in performance, either through tempo differentiation (which beat within the measure is emphasized by increasing its duration) or dynamics differentiation (which beat within the measure is stressed by increasing its loudness), the relative shape of the beats in the music is important in the comparative analysis. Beat tempo, expressed as the rate of change in beat values, does not permit a direct comparison of beat durations across performances due to the non-linearity of tempo change at different speeds.43 In addition, a direct comparison of absolute dynamic values across different performances can be misleading because recording and playback sound levels of individual performances vary. It is, therefore, more meaningful to work with the relative dynamic values (the difference between loudness measurements from one point in the music to the next), because these are indicative of changes in dynamics levels within a performance. The raw data were preprocessed by expressing each absolute beat-timing value into a relative proportion of the containing measure and converting absolute beat-dynamics data into offsets (positive or negative) from the previous beat.44 Clustering data for beat tempo and beat dynamics were generated in Viscovery SOMine 4.45 The training conditions used were the complete set of all performances in the sample. The SOM-Ward clustering method was chosen for creating a map. All other settings were left in default mode as they appear in the software package. After training and mapping in SOMs, measures of similar shape are clustered in the same area of the two-dimensional cluster distribution map. Since SOM analysis retains the original topology of the input space as it reduces high-dimensionality data into a lower-dimensionality representation, it is possible to trace precisely 42 Characteristic of Hardanger fiddle slåtter is their motivic construction through improvisatory repetition and variation in performance. See Hopkins, Aural Thinking in Norway, 178–85. 43 See Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing, “Does Expressive Timing in Music Performance Scale Proportionally with Tempo?,” Psychological Research 56/4 (1994), 285–92. 44 This beat-to-beat preprocessing is deemed a more sensitive approach for expressing dynamic changes than scaling over the whole piece, such as by relativizing the data in relation to either the loudest or quietest point within each recording. Scaling the data by taking only a single reference point in a recording raises the issue of whether it is perceptually possible to judge dynamic differences that might be located far apart in the piece. The beat-to-beat approach is intended to have a more plausible perceptual correlate. 45 Available at http://www.viscovery.net/. The manual accompanying the download and installation of this software contains detailed instructions on using Viscovery SOMine 4, as well as the procedure used for clustering. 274 G. Volioti COPYRIGTH MATERIAL where in each performance, and where in relation to the score, these clusters occur by running a “Map Evaluation by Cluster Recall.”46 Data output from Viscovery SOMine 4, including the basic statistics characterizing individual clusters (such as the mean values of relative beat shapes) and the cluster membership output following the procedure of “Map Evaluation by Cluster Recall,” were exported and processed in Microsoft Excel. The aim of my analysis in this article is to investigate whether and how far the alleged idiomatic style akin to the folk tradition is empirically visible in the performance practice of “Jon Vestafes Springdans,” especially in Norwegian pianists’ recordings. A detailed account of each performance in relation to all other performances and to the musical score lies beyond the current scope. Listening observations are used to supplement discussion of the aesthetic qualities of particular interpretations in the sample. While the clustering data are intended to prompt analysis inflected by listening, the purpose of such qualitative observations here is not the perceptual verification of cluster types. The beat-tempo profiles (tempo plotted as beats per minute) of selected performances will also be used to compare how approaches to the rhythmic characterization of the springar, as indicated by the clustering data, relate to individual pianists’ overall temporal conception of the piece in performance.47 The ensuing commentary focuses more extensively on beat-tempo data. Results from the dynamics data are discussed only briefly, since these are intended to enable a broad comparison with the timing data. In this article I treat the two types of data separately to consider how beat-tempo differentiation across the sample compares with beat-dynamics differentiation, and if there are any historical trends in these two broad categories of performance strategy for characterizing the springar. In order to provide an ethnographically based analysis of the recordings, certain empirical findings are considered in light of Norwegian pianists’ 46 Note that since the SOM method operates at the single measure level to produce a clustering map based on the average of all measures of all performances in the sample, it provides greater resolution about the internal temporal evolution of each performance (as a sequence of measure types defined by their relative beat shapes) than other clustering techniques (e.g., hierarchical clustering or K-means clustering) that reduce each performance in a given sample into a single global measure, such as the mean tempo, and then group the performances according to their overall similarity. For some of the limitations of using only mean tempo to group and compare performances, see Nicholas Cook, “Methods for Analysing Recordings,” in The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music, ed. Nicholas Cook, Eric Clarke, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, and John Rink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 235–36. 47 The present study is not primarily concerned with comparing how performance tempi have changed over time, such as whether performances of “Jon Vestafes Springdans” are getting faster or slower. Since SOM, like any other clustering method, is a reduction technique, a particular cluster represents a generic measure shape within the entire sample, which inevitably introduces a certain level of statistical abstraction from the musical reality of each performance. The same cluster, therefore, may afford different functions in relation to the musical structure and may have varying degrees of perceptual salience within the same performance or across different recordings. For this reason, the qualitative character of these clustering data may be elucidated through listening observations and comparisons with a performer’s beat-tempo profile. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 275 discourses, including brief excerpts from interview material collected specifically for this study. Interviews were structured around a series of simple questions aimed at gathering information about the pianists’ backgrounds, musical training, and possible sources of influence that may have shaped their interpretations of “Jon Vestafes Springdans.” These ethnographic illustrations are intended to supplement the discussion of how far a sense of national-cultural identity in the Slåtter is expressed directly through performance style or is constructed in discourse. Results and Discussion SOM identified four cluster types as shown in Figure 1a: C1(t) is an undifferentiated cluster; C3(t) denotes lengthening of the third beat, or a “phrase-final” gesture;48 C4(t) denotes a prolongation of the first beat, or a “downbeat” gesture;49 and C2(t) is the cluster with the emphasis on the second beat, characteristic of the idiomatic springar rhythm. The cluster composition for every measure in the piece provides an overview of the generic performance strategies in the sample (see Figure 1b). The abundance of the C1(t) cluster50 indicates that, on the whole, the performance interpretation of this dance is not strongly characterized by beat-tempo differentiation. Most pianists in the sample, therefore, use a regular approach to rhythmic interpretation by opting for equally measured beat lengths throughout the piece. This finding supports the prevalence of a modernist performance aesthetic that essentializes a more literal execution of the notated rhythms.51 48 On the tendency for performance tempo to slow down at the end of phrases, see Neil Todd, “A Model of Expressive Timing in Tonal Music,” Music Perception 3/1 (1985), 33–58; and Neil Todd, “A Computational Model of Rubato,” Contemporary Music Review 3/1 (1989), 69–88. 49 Concerning the performance of metric accents through timing variations, see Carolyn Drake and Caroline Palmer, “Accent Structures in Music Performance,” Music Perception 10/3 (1993), 343–78. 50 In Viscovery SOMine 4, the numerical order of clusters in the nomenclature C1, C2, and so on, corresponds directly to their concentration, with the most abundant cluster being the first one. 51 Various musicological studies converge on the fact that an objectivist, or structuralist, ideology of performance arising in post-war performance practice has been perpetuated throughout the second half of the twentieth century. See, for example, Taruskin, Text and Act, 110–12. Taruskin argues that a desire for uniformity of metrical pulse entered with twentieth-century aesthetics. For an overview of some of the key attributes of modernist performance practice, see Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style, 229–40. See also Robert Fink’s extended study, “Rigoroso ( = 126): The Rite of Spring and the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52/2 (1999), 299–362; and Nicholas Cook’s large-scale empirical study of a modernist tendency in phrase arching, “Squaring the Circle: Phrase Arching in Recordings of Chopin’s Mazurkas,” Musica Humana 1 (2009), 5–28. It should be noted, however, that while the aforementioned studies can shed light on features of modernist performance practice, the term “modernist style of performing” should be tentatively used as a generic category. Clearly what constitutes a “modernist style of performing” is not a fixed standard of comparison but is subject to interpretative variation owing to repertoire-, performer-, and recordingspecific trends, as well as methodological issues (e.g., what performance parameters are documented or “measured,” how this is done, etc.). We should not, therefore, embrace uncritically “performance modernism” as a uniform or periodizing concept. 276 G. Volioti COPYRIGHT MATERIAL FIGURE 1a Cluster shapes for beat tempo (15 piano recordings). FIGURE 1b Cluster count by measure for beat tempo (15 piano recordings). FIGURE 1c Percentage cluster composition within each strophe for beat tempo (15 piano recordings). COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 277 The extent and type of beat-tempo differentiation attributed to the remaining clusters vary across the three strophes of the dance (see Figures 1b and 1c). While a detailed measure-by-measure analysis lies beyond the current scope, some general observations should be noted.52 The first two strophes of music share both quantitative and qualitative similarities in terms of the concentration of the C3(t) and C4(t) clusters and their position in the music (see Figures 1b and 1c). This is hardly surprising, since the second strophe is an exact repetition of the first one an octave higher. By contrast, the third strophe attracts more beat-tempo differentiation by exhibiting relatively higher concentrations of the C3(t) and C4(t) clusters than the previous two strophes (see Figure 1c). This is consistent with the textural and registral changes that occur in the music. A chordal texture and wider leaps between the parts may require more deliberate placing of the first beat, hence the increase in C4(t). Most pianists differentiate the beginning of the third strophe by placing the first beat of the marcato passage at measure 61, the prevalence of the C4(t) cluster at this spot (11 out of 15 pianists), confirming the general tendency in the sample. In a heavier musical texture, ornamentation or accents on the third beat of a measure will also entail agogic placing, hence the higher occurrence of C3(t). In many pianists’ recordings, the temporal demarcation of the third beat at measures 80 and 86, where C3(t) is concentrated (see Figure 1b), functions as a phrase-final gesture that articulates the boundaries of the penultimate sempre fortissimo phrase of the piece (measures 81–86). There are only two measures throughout the piece where the C2(t) cluster is used by more than half the pianists in the sample (2 and 79); all other occurrences of this cluster type are contributed by a few pianists each time (see Figure 1b). This observation points to the need to differentiate between the sparing and systematic use of C2(t) within individual performances, because only the latter strategy would indicate that C2(t) is purposefully employed as part of an idiomatic style of performance. Clearly there are instances in which the music itself invites the emphasis on the second beat, due to ornamentation, or because the second beat may acquire temporal lengthening from leaning into it after the dotted rhythm that usually precedes it: For instance, although the prevalence of the C2(t) cluster in measure 2 is suggestive of a semiotic function in establishing the character of the opening rhythmic motif, this emphasis on the second beat is more likely attributed to an implicit property of the notated rhythms and/or the bare musical texture of the bass motif, rather than a collective idiomatic characterization of the springar. The high concentration of C2(t) at measure 2 appears to be a “one-off” incident in the sample, especially since such a collective trend is seldom repeated when the bass motif returns, as for example at measures 69–71. 52 For a score-based analytical reading of this piece, see Grimley, Grieg, 168–72. 278 G. Volioti FIGURE 2 Cluster composition by individual performer for beat tempo (15 piano recordings). The percentage cluster composition by individual performer in Figure 2 shows which pianists in the sample use the C2(t) cluster as part of a systematic performance strategy for expressing the springar rhythm idiomatically. The C2(t) is mostly prevalent in the performances of two contemporary Norwegian pianists: Håkon Austbø (57% concentration) and Ingfrid Breie Nyhus (40% concentration). By contrast, the recordings of Norwegian pianists from around the middle of the century, including Robert Riefling (1950), Ruth Lagesen (1967), and a bit later Eva Knardahl (1977), exhibit very small amounts of the C2(t) cluster (2%, 4%, and 4%, respectively). In addition, even later performances by Norwegian pianists, including Einar Steen Nøkleberg, Håvard Gimse, and Geir Henning Braaten, exemplify only low levels of the C2(t) cluster relative to Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus. Nøkleberg’s three performances contain relatively similar levels of the C2(t) cluster (17%, 12%, and 17% for his 1978, 1988, and 1993 recordings, respectively). Gimse’s 2001 performance contains 11 percent, while in Braaten’s 1993 recording the concentration of C2(t) is only 1 percent.53 53 Given Braaten’s involvement in the making of the re-scoring of the dance, this empirical finding potentially underlines an extreme discrepancy between discourse and an idiomatic performance style, something that will be explored further in due course. By contrast, the Brazilian pianist Isabel Mourao exhibits a higher level of the C2(t) cluster (21%), although her interpretation also presents an overall metrically strict performance. Any contextual evidence linking this Brazilian pianist to Norwegian authenticity discourses cannot be ascertained further than the CD liner notes, which mention the folk fiddle origins of the Op. 72 dances. See Leonard Seeber, Grieg Solo Piano Music, vol. 2, liner notes accompanying VOXBOX CDX 5097 (1993), 4. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 279 Although a higher concentration of the undifferentiated C1(t) cluster in the majority of performances in this sample (Figure 2) signifies the pervasiveness of an objectivist performance aesthetic, this collective trend encompasses a range of expressive possibilities for interpreting Grieg’s modernism. In Riefling’s 1950 recording, the restless motoric drive of the constant quarternote pulse projects a strongly linear conception of time—the very essence of modernism. The rhythmic flow of the piece, represented on the tempo graph as the beat-level fluctuation, occurs within a relatively small margin (approximately 30 beats per minute), indicating that the temporal trajectory remains largely unchanged throughout the three strophes (see Figure 3a). The mechanics of this performance are pure clockwork: The notated rhythms are executed very precisely, cadential pauses or phrase boundaries are tightly integrated in the unbroken continuity of the rhythmic pulse, and rubato is virtually absent. This striking lack of any temporal demarcation of the strophic layout, especially the absence of a marked ritenuto for the transition to the third strophe (m. 60), is clearly reflected in Riefling’s beat-tempo FIGURE 3a Beat-tempo profile for Robert Riefling. FIGURE 3b Beat-tempo profile for Eva Knardahl. 280 G. Volioti profile (Figure 3a). In this performance, not even the physicality of the third strophe appears to interfere with the imperative to maintain a strict rhythmic pulse throughout the piece; it is as if the idea of tempo rubato is being caricatured in this thoroughly modernist interpretation. Knardahl’s rendition of the piece embodies a rather different modernist conception. Her performance comprises a more thematically constructed temporal structure than Riefling’s approach. Knardahl clearly delineates the strophic layout of the dance, especially the transition to the third strophe at measures 60–61 (see Figure 3b), and purposefully brings out the smaller phrase units within individual strophes with energy and rigor. The phrasing of the third strophe is especially angular and the gestures marking the phrase segments, such as measures 61–68, 69–72, 73–74, 75–76, and 77–80, are evident in the beat-tempo profile. Knardahl accelerates across the sempre fortissimo passage (mm. 81–86) and again over the final phrase (mm. 87–91), thus giving the piece a frenetic finale. This highly sectionalized temporal trajectory in Knardahl’s performance projects a fragmentary conception of time but within a cleanly articulated musical structure, and may thus be identified with the “geometric modernist aesthetic.”54 The effect of a higher concentration of the C2(t) cluster, as can be heard in the recordings of Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus, is an irregular sense of pulse created by the frequent demarcation of the second beat in the music, although each performer employs different expressive means to achieve this idiomatic springar. In Austbø’s recording, the rhythmic flow in the first half of the opening strophe (mm. 1–14) has a bouncing quality due to the use of a more staccato articulation for executing the middle beats. Across measures 3–14, the audible emphasis on the second beat is stronger every other measure. Austbø consistently couples the music into two-measure units, with the middle beat in the first measure of a unit functioning as a downbeat gesture—somewhat akin to a heavier and bolder dance step—and a lighter quality for the middle beat in the second, thus approximating a rising movement. The undulating metric-rhythmic energy in the first half of the strophe is contrasted with the mellow suppleness of the rhythms in the second half (mm. 15–30), where the emphasis on the second beat is less intense. The leaning onto the middle beat is now more subtle, at times even lyrical, although not entirely devoid of sharpness. The legato touch employed here, 54 With reference here to Taruskin’s dualism of the geometric and the vitalist as discussed in Text and Act, 110–12, 130–31, and 140–45, while vitalism in performance embraces the expressive bending of time, geometry encompasses an objective style of strict tempos and the score-based interpretation of the musical structure. Even though, given these characteristics, Riefling’s strongly motoric interpretation could also come under the rubric of the “geometric,” I find that it is Knardahl’s performance that reflects more literally a geometric conception of the musical structure, especially in the way it is made up of neatly packed smaller units somewhat akin to a mosaic comprising clearly discernible recurring shapes. In making these observations, however, my intention is not to assign rigid “labels” to each performance, but rather to highlight that even within an objectivist performance aesthetic a variety of interpretative possibilities may still be accommodated. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 281 appropriately matching the left-hand moving bass line, is interspersed with spirited accents on the third beat, especially in measures 15–20, and features crisply articulated ornamentation on either the second or third beats. Ingfrid Nyhus’s recording has a different characterization of the middle beats that typifies an idiomatic metric-rhythmic flow. In the opening six measures, the placing of the second beat is consistently heavy and deliberate. Across measures 3–6 there is an alternating coupling of downbeat and upbeat gestures similar to Austbø’s approach, although the demarcation of the middle beat at measures 4 and 6 (which denotes the upbeat pulse) has a striking quality: The articulation of the first eighth note of the middle beat in measures 4 and 6 approximates a secco staccato, resulting in an abrupt-sounding rising gesture.55 Measures 7–10 present the metric pulse in rhythmic augmentation, since a strong downbeat gesture is now audible only at two-measure intervals (i.e., mm. 7 and 9). The regularity of this metric coupling is blurred across measures 11–14, because the middle beat in measure 12 is poignantly placed to create a momentary suspension in the metric pulse. Measure 13, again, has a clear downbeat function. The middle beat is less resolute across the second half of the strophe, consistent with the thematic changes in the music that render this part less amenable to a harsh characterization of the middle beat in the measure.56 The beat-tempo clustering data in the current sample reveal a collective tendency for a measured approach to rhythmic execution, which in the majority of performances results in a predictable metric pulse in accordance with the score, and only a selective uptake of the idiomatic springar in two contemporary recordings. Empirical findings and listening observations from the performances of Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus reveal that these two pianists’ styles cultivate a more supple notion of Grieg’s modernism by incorporating an idiomatic metric-rhythmic swing in the dance.57 How 55 This characterization appears to be the result of slurring the first eighth note of the middle beat at measures 4 and 6 with the previous beat, an interpretative feature that makes the middle beat in these measures function as the strong beat due to the shifting of the measure line. The recent rescoring of the dance shows this slurring at these places in the music (refer to Example 1), and Nyhus explicitly claims to have based her performance on this edition. See Sven Nyhus and Ingfrid Breie Nyhus, Edvard Grieg: Peasant Dances Op. 72 and the Dahle Slåtter, liner notes accompanying Simax PSC 1287 CD (2007), 12. 56 As these observations from Austbø’s and Nyhus’s recordings reveal, the metric-rhythmic quality of the C2(t) cluster can vary both within and across performances. Musical meter is not only the sole attribute of the performed musical structure but also a property of the perceiver. Further psychological investigations would be desirable in establishing more firmly the relationship between the cluster composition of each performance and its perceptual salience, especially how an idiomatic springar meter is perceived by listeners. 57 By contrast to my earlier designation of the performances of Riefling and Knardahl as “motoric” and “geometric,” respectively, the interpretations of Austbø and Nyhus potentially exemplify a “vitalist” approach to Grieg’s modernism. More importantly, however, such differences in performance poignantly bring out the perpetual tension inherent in the Slåtter: the tendency for ambivalence in the expression of musical (and cultural) identity that deliberately inflects any real sense of belonging. The empirical analysis and discussion will continue to explore these issues further. 282 G. Volioti COPYRIGHT MATERIAL do these tempo trends compare with beat-dynamics differentiation in the sample? The SOM analysis yielded four cluster types for beat dynamics (see Figure 4a): C1(d) is an undifferentiated cluster; C2(d) denotes accent on the third beat; C3(d) indicates emphasis on the first beat; and C4(d) denotes a dynamic stress on the second beat. In this sample of recordings, the second most prevalent accentuation pattern is the C2(d) cluster with emphasis on the third beat (see Figure 4b). This performance strategy is largely consistent with the notated accent scheme of the piece: The third beat in the measure, which also frequently coincides with the sharpened fourth in the music, carries the dynamic accent. On the one hand, these accents, which are integral to the harmonic and metric-rhythmic angularity of the dance in performance, embody an interpretative aesthetic closely allied with the modernist character of the piano arrangement. On the other, however, the persistent dynamic marking of the third beat throughout the piece poses the question of intentionality for performance, especially since Grieg, as it has been claimed, misunderstood the original folk rhythms. The third strophe, which in the score contains the most heavily marked accentuation scheme in the piece, attracts relatively less differentiation through beat dynamics than the previous two strophes (see Figures 4b and 4c). This trend is in contrast to the beat-tempo data seen in Figures 1b and 1c, and indicates within this sample a prevalent performance strategy for expressing the culmination of the physical momentum in the third strophe of the piece by employing relatively more timing variation to achieve the desired dynamic contrast.58 In the first two strophes the reverse pattern can be observed: Against a higher concentration of the undifferentiated beat-tempo cluster C1(t), there is more opportunity for differentiating the beats within the measure through dynamic accenting (compare Figures 1c and 4c).59 The beat-dynamics cluster composition for individual pianists (Figure 5) shows that the C2(d) cluster is present in all recordings (precise levels fluctuate from just over 20% to just over 40%). Notwithstanding the limitations 58 Any observation about the putative synergy between beat tempo and beat dynamics is made rather cautiously here, since such a comparison entails two different types of data with different means of extraction from the recordings. The exponential smoothing function underlying the operation of the Sonic Visualiser plugin “Power Curve: Smoothed Power,” used to derive dynamics, shifts the peak of the loudness curve from the beat attack by 100 milliseconds. The extracted loudness values are only approximately equal to the beat locations, and this presents a potential limitation to any direct comparison between beat tempo and beat dynamics. 59 Another explanation about these trends in dynamics differentiation is the overall dynamic setting of each strophe in the piece. The first two strophes, which are marked piano and pianissimo, respectively, provide a quiet setting and, hence, against this background it is relatively easier to bring out an accent through even a subtle difference in dynamic levels from one beat to the next within the measure. By contrast, in the third strophe, which is marked fortissimo, producing an accent would require a more considerable increase in dynamic intensity from what is already a high dynamic level. Timing, such as agogic placing, appears to provide a compensatory performance strategy for creating dynamic contrast. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 283 FIGURE 4a Cluster shapes for beat dynamics (15 piano recordings). FIGURE 4b Cluster count by measure for beat dynamics (15 piano recordings). FIGURE 4c Percentage cluster composition within each strophe for beat dynamics (15 piano recordings). 284 G. Volioti COPYRIGHT MATERIAL FIGURE 5 Cluster composition by individual performer for beat dynamics (15 piano recordings). of dynamics data when comparing performances, the accent on the third beat of the measure signifies a more continuous stylistic trait throughout the sixty-year performance history of the piece as represented by the current sample. When the beat-tempo and beat-dynamics clustering data are considered together (e.g., Figures 2 and 5), findings indicate an overlayering of performance strategies across the sixty-year span. The prevalent accentuation trend favoring the third beat, as indicated by the notated accent scheme in the music, and the collective tendency for equal beat lengths, again as implied by the notated rhythms, provide a stylistic background more firmly rooted in an objective performance practice interpreting the written text. Against this collective background, the interpretative strategy attempting to distance itself from the notated rhythms of the dance and seeking to approximate instead the un-notated metric irregularities of the folk idiom emerges as a foreground feature of the stylistic reinvention of the piano performance tradition. However, even in the recordings of Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus, the notated accents on the third beat are by no means an obsolete interpretative feature, but are restylized alongside the idiomatic metric swing (see Figures 2 and 5). For example, as can be seen in more detail in Table 1, the opening measures in Austbø’s performance exhibit the idiomatic lengthening of the second beat (C2(t) cluster) combined with a dynamic accent on the third beat (C2(d) cluster). The overall effect is a more pronounced leaning onto the middle beat coupled with a jolting and bouncy third beat, which results in an audible counterpoint of accents within the same measure. This pattern can be traced in Ingfrid Nyhus’s performance too (e.g., measures 32 and 34). Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 285 TABLE 1 Excerpts of Combined Beat-Tempo and Beat-Dynamics Data from Analysis of Piano Recordings Knardahl 1977 Braaten 1993 Austbø 2006 Measure Nyhus 2007 Measure C1(t) C2(d) C1(t) C2(d) C2(t) C1(d) 1 C2(t) C1(d) 31 C2(t) C2(d) C1(t) C2(d) C2(t) C2(d) 2 C2(t) C2(d) 32 C1(t) C2(d) C1(t) C2(d) C2(t) C2(d) 3 C1(t) C4(d) 33 C1(t) C2(d) C1(t) C2(d) C2(t) C2(d) 4 C2(t) C2(d) 34 C1(t) C2(d) C1(t) C2(d) C2(t) C1(d) 5 C2(t) C4(d) 35 C1(t) C2(d) C1(t) C2(d) C2(t) C2(d) 6 COPYRIGHT MATERIAL An alternative accentuation strategy entails a less marked third beat within the measure. This may be achieved when the placing of the second beat (C2(t) cluster) is also accompanied by dynamic emphasis on the same beat (C4(d) cluster), thus making the third beat sound weaker. This pattern can be detected in measure 35 in Ingfrid Nyhus’s performance (Table 1). By contrast, in the recordings of Knardahl and Braaten, which typify the more collective tendency for a textual interpretation of the dance, there is greater abundance of a steady rhythmic pulse (C1(t) cluster) coupled with an audible accent on the third beat (C2(d) cluster), as, for example, in the opening measures of the piece (Table 1).60 The previous background-foreground analogy provides only one view of the mechanism of stylistic change and recombination in the life of this piano tradition. Performance style as a mode of identity expression is a far more complex cultural discursive construct than empirical-quantitative data alone might capture, and its sociological operation, therefore, requires a more contextual treatment. Using brief ethnographic illustrations, I will now consider the role of individual pianists in the recent reshaping of the piano tradition. In order to trace the relationship between discourse and performance practice in (re)constructions of cultural identity, I will examine how the occurrence of the idiomatic C2(t) beat-tempo cluster within the sample fares with contemporary Norwegian pianists’ knowledge of recent authenticity debates. Alongside Håkon Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus, the other three Norwegian pianists who have recorded this piece either later in the twentieth century or early in the twenty-first—Einar Steen Nøkleberg, Geir Henning Braaten, and 60 These comparisons stem from the separate data outputs of the SOM analyses of tempo and dynamics, respectively, and their use here is more illustrative rather than conclusive about the combined effect of tempo and dynamics for expressing the musical structure. For an extended analysis and discussion of methodological issues when beat-tempo and beat-dynamics data are processed together in SOMs (i.e., a six-dimensional analysis), see Georgia Volioti, Tradition, Agency and the Limits of Empiricism: Perspectives from Recordings of Grieg’s Piano Music (Ph.D. Diss., Royal Holloway University of London, 2011), 285–99. 286 G. Volioti Håvard Gimse—can also be directly linked to discourses of authentic performance practice. In his account of this dance, Nøkleberg explicitly states the need to inform performance interpretation by the folk tradition, and indicates where the music provides opportunities for incorporating the irregular springar rhythm: “One passage that lends itself to a springar rhythm is the fortissimo section in Jon Vestafes Springdans.”61 Despite such claims, the current study does not provide empirical support for the idiomatic execution of the springar in terms of beat tempo in the opening fortissimo phrase of the third strophe (mm. 61–64) in any of Nøkleberg’s three recordings.62 Moreover, the overall character of these three performances is not compatible with an idiomatic style that systematically incorporates an irregular meter, and the low concentration of the C2(t) cluster in all three recordings corroborates this (refer to Figure 2). Similarly, the low empirical visibility of the idiomatic C2(t) cluster in the performances of Gimse and, especially, Braaten attests to the non-congruence between these pianists’ discourses and their actual performance styles as documented here with respect to beat tempo. Both Braaten and Gimse have knowledge of the rescoring of the second dance, yet neither pianist exhibits the so-called idiomatic freedom to depart from the notated metric-rhythmic scheme of Grieg’s piano arrangement. Braaten was directly involved in the making of the 2001 edition, while Gimse’s awareness of the rescoring effect is explicitly demonstrated by his own comments: Grieg (and Halvorsen) misunderstood the rhythms in the second dance, but the shifting of the bar line at the start of the piece can help pianists with this problem. In my recording I chose to play the piece, hopefully, with rhythms that recall some kind of dance-like freedom.63 Listening to Gimse’s recording, against the backdrop of the clustering data, I find that his interpretation exemplifies the dance-like exuberance he talks about, but through expressive means—such as “coloring” the rhythms through varied articulation—within a robust metric-rhythmic frame, and not through integrating the temporally marked stylization of the middle beat. For this Norwegian pianist, as he expressed it, 61 Nøkleberg, On Stage with Grieg, 354. In both Nøkleberg’s 1988 and 1993 recordings, the SOM analysis shows that this stretch of music (mm. 61–64) accommodates the repeated use of the C4(t) cluster, which implies stronger emphasis on the first beat of each measure. In his 1978 recording the analysis shows the alternating use of the C4(t) followed by the C1(t) cluster across these fortissimo measures. 63 Excerpt from personal communication with Håvard Gimse on November 24, 2008. The pianist was asked to talk about any aspect of his performance of “Jon Vestafes Springdans,” whether from his recordings or any other performance occasion. I am grateful to Gimse for participating in my study and granting permission to publish these comments. 62 COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 287 the feeling of being close to the folk music and the originality of the harmonies and rhythms in the Slåtter are important elements that draw me to these dances . . . and one of the major motivations behind my 2001 recording project.64 This feeling of closeness to the folk tradition for Gimse, as well as for Braaten and Nøkleberg, appears to be more strongly elaborated in discourse than directly expressed in their performances through the idiomatic lengthening of the middle beat.65 Both Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus, who actually integrate an idiomatic style in this sample, also have knowledge of the recent rescoring of the piece, yet neither pianist provides any evidence for the “literal” execution of the new edition, such as through the insertion of an additional beat at measure 14 and the compensatory excision at measure 30. After processing these recordings in Sonic Visualiser to extract beat tempo, all fifteen performances yielded exactly the same number of beats in accordance with the Peters edition and not the 2001 version. Achieving an irregular springar rhythm in performance clearly lies beyond the literal reading of any score and pianists’ discourses further elucidate the malleability of this stylistic aspect. On being asked to comment on his interpretation of the second dance, this is what Håkon Austbø had to say: The folk music expert, Tellef Kvifte, had told me years ago: “Halvorsen put the bar line in the wrong place.” In Telemark they play the springar with a short third beat. The third beat is very crisp and light because that’s how it is danced. . . . So, if you shift the bar line at the beginning the first group becomes an upbeat. The second beat is now stronger, a little heavier, and the third beat lighter so the metre is almost something like between a 5/8 and a 3/4. It has a swing with this lightness at the end. . . . I have been aware of this re-barring for more than 10 or 15 years now. . . . When I recorded “Jon Vestafes Springdans” I had to make choices. In the recording I try to respect both the text and the original—the authentic— version. If you do the re-barring literally then you insert a crotchet rest at bar 14 and you can compensate later on, at bar 30, by taking a beat out. . . . But the idea of the re-barring is more about an intuitive feeling of the rhythmic flow of the music rather than a literal execution. In my recording, for example, I don’t add deliberately an extra rest to insert a whole beat at bar 14, but I make a slight fermata and then go on. And at 64 See note 63. In making these observations, and as I have pointed out in relation to Gimse’s performance, interpretative strategies other than beat tempo alone, especially timbral aspects, contribute to the characterization of the folk element in this music. Metric-rhythmic asymmetry captured in terms of beat tempo is, after all, only one component of the expressive sound world of these performances. 65 288 G. Volioti bar 30 I don’t cut anything out. . . . I guess this swing in the metre is a difficult feature to perceive and its interpretation varies.66 The final remark in Austbø’s account poignantly hints at the potential perceptual difficulties that exist in assimilating the idiomatic springar in piano performance. Nøkleberg, too, has emphasized the intricate nature of the Hardanger fiddle rhythms and the complexities of any stylistic blending: I simply couldn’t understand the rhythm. The fiddlers were keeping time by stomping their right foot, but how could this stomping help them when the beats were always uneven? . . . Their rhythms seemed totally different from those in my score! . . . When I tried to incorporate some of the fiddler’s flavor I was very clumsy and could not even stomp out the beat, much less play the pieces.67 In light of these remarks, the lack of an irregular springar approximating the Hardanger fiddle rhythms in some of these contemporary Norwegian pianists’ recordings could also be attributed to the perceptual limitations underpinning the cognitive mechanism of stylistic appropriation and bordercrossing between the two performance traditions.68 Furthermore, the discrepancies that can be traced between individual pianists’ discursive knowledge of authenticity issues and their actual performance styles highlight the intricate relationship between collective and individual constructions of identity. In the Slåtter, the search for origins embraces a collective endeavor to consolidate and preserve a specific musical heritage and the way this is interpreted and remembered through cultural memory. While all five contemporary Norwegian pianists share the same cultural reservoir, each one expresses their “moral obligation” to the folk tradition differently, and as freely participating agents in the tradition they will have their own reasons and motivations for doing so.69 By opting to incorporate an idiomatic swing in the rhythm, Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus 66 Excerpt taken from interview with Håkon Austbø on October 27, 2008. Here the pianist was initially asked to talk in general about performing Grieg’s Slåtter before he was asked to comment more specifically on his interpretation of the second dance. I am grateful to Austbø for participating in this study and granting permission to publish these comments. 67 Nøkleberg, On Stage with Grieg, 354. 68 Pandora Hopkins has explored the esoteric nature of Hardanger fiddle traditions through preliminary listener tests, revealing that outsiders, such as individuals from different musical traditions, have difficulty in correctly identifying the metric-rhythmic structure of Hardanger fiddle dances. See Hopkins, Aural Thinking in Norway, 187–210. 69 Theories of agency and social re-production are grounded on agents’ ability actively to reinterpret the structures of sociocultural practice, such as the learned configurations of musical knowledge that are transmitted through a performance tradition, and not passively to propagate such structures in the reproduction of social life. See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 289 articulate their closeness to the folk tradition in more explicit music-stylistic terms than the rest. These two performers sound different from their contemporaries and clearly deviate from the general tendency in the sample. While these two pianists are conditioned by the same cultural reservoir, they purposefully exploit it as a source of creativity to nurture a distinct artistic persona. The notion of an authentic style in this repertoire serves both a collective ideology of cultural reinvigoration and individual scripts for identity construction. The search for the music’s origins has a plurality of performative functions, and in the current study this search emerges as the “shared diversities” of contemporary Norwegian pianists’ styles and discourses. The quest for a folk-informed piano style, therefore, cannot be solely identified with the imperative of historical positivism. Ironically, if the rescoring of the piece was partly motivated by the need to rectify Grieg’s shortcomings in notating the original tunes, it appears that these recent efforts have struggled just as much as Grieg to encapsulate the essence of this music in an exclusively written form. As the pianist Austbø went on to comment, I feel there is definitely a double filter operating in Grieg’s Slåtter. We have Halvorsen’s transcriptions and more recently the re-barring of the score which tells pianists about the swing in the rhythm. But the text is not enough for interpreting the Slåtter. The sound and the original features of the Hardanger fiddle are important too. One has to go to these sources and listen to the Hardanger sound. This sound is so rich, complex and different from the piano that it forces us—pianists—to think critically about where this music came from. To interpret this repertoire one has to be aware of more things than the piano tradition.70 I now turn to a brief empirical case study of beat tempo from Hardanger fiddle recordings, seeking to corroborate further the pathways of stylistic transmission between the folk tradition and the piano performance practice of this repertoire. AN EMPIRICAL CASE STUDY OF HARDANGER FIDDLE RECORDINGS Methodology Beat tempo was extracted from three Hardanger fiddle recordings (see Appendix 1) and converted into relative durations prior to processing in 70 Austbø, interview with the author, October 27, 2008. 290 G. Volioti SOMs in the same manner as described for the piano recordings.71 For this analysis the opening five measures of melody (corresponding to mm. 3–7 of the piano score) were used. Given the improvisatory nature of fiddle playing, the fiddle version of this dance does not predictably follow the notated score, but rather the fiddlers make various additions and omissions of the musical material throughout the piece: The opening five measures are played consistently with the notated piano arrangement, thus allowing a direct comparison with pianists’ characterization of the springar. This five-measure segment, moreover, contains the principal thematic material upon which the entire dance is built and can be deemed representative of the character of the dance. My discussion of this excerpt is based on beat-tempo data only.72 I examine the fiddlers’ characterization of the springar and discuss how the stylistic similarities traceable here potentially underline pathways of transmission and influence among the three fiddlers, while considering how pianists’ idiomatic interpretation of the springar, as exemplified primarily by Austbø and Ingfrid Nyhus, compares with the beat-tempo findings from this group of fiddlers. Results and Discussion The SOM analysis yielded an eleven-cluster solution:73 The cluster composition of each fiddler’s five-measure excerpt is shown in Figure 6. All three recording excerpts reveal audible metric emphasis on the second beat across this musical segment. This finding is consistent with the presence of an asymmetric folk springar, as performance practice discourses within Norway have 71 It should be noted, however, that by contrast to piano recordings, the detection of beat onsets in Hardanger fiddle music is compounded by the complexity of the Hardanger fiddle sound. Its rich timbre, due to the resonance of the sympathetic strings, as well as other idiosyncratic features such as improvisatory ornamentation, slurring and double-stopping, can blur the identification of distinct note onsets. 72 For the extraction of beat dynamics from piano recordings, it is assumed that the peak of a note’s loudness corresponds with, or lies very close to, the note onset (i.e., at the attack phase the note is loudest); thereafter, the note intensity decays. Given that the intensity of a string note can change throughout its duration (i.e., the peak of loudness does not necessarily correspond with the note onset), beat dynamics cannot represent adequately dynamic stress patterns in Hardanger fiddle music. In addition, the rich texture of the Hardanger fiddle sound compounds the identification of discrete note onsets. For these reasons the extraction and SOM analysis of beat dynamics from Hardanger fiddle recordings are not pursued here. Moreover, the validity of any direct comparison between piano and Hardanger fiddle beat dynamics would be highly conjectural. 73 This eleven-cluster solution is not a massive reduction of the initial input space (fifteen measures in total). While it is possible to specify a lower cluster solution in Viscovery SOMine 4 (e.g., six or four clusters) to describe this sample, the eleven-cluster solution is deemed a more adequate representation for two reasons: First, the eleven-cluster solution provides finer resolution of the beat-tempo variance within the sample than a lower cluster solution, because it reflects even subtle differences in these fiddlers’ playing; second, given that the data set is so small, detection of the location of the cluster types in the music and comparison of the cluster composition across the three fiddlers is perfectly feasible without the need for any further computational reduction. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 291 FIGURE 6 Beat-tempo cluster shapes and cluster composition for the fiddlers (mm. 3–7 of piano score): (a) Johannes Dahle, 1953; (b) Knut Buen, 1988; (c) Åshild Nyhus, 2007. claimed and as the preceding empirical investigation of pianists’ idiomatic interpretation of this dance has also shown. This audible metric asymmetry, however, does not always correspond with the temporal prolongation of the second beat in fiddlers’ playing. For instance, at measure 3 all three fiddlers emphasize the second beat by accenting the upper note of the octave as 292 G. Volioti they execute the double stop, yet this beat type is the shortest in duration within the measure as indicated by the clusters C7(t), C11(t), and C8(t) in Figure 6.74 Across these five measures of music only Knut Buen and Åshild Nyhus exhibit the pronounced lengthening of the middle beat (clusters C2(t) and C6(t), respectively) at measures 4 and 6, while this beat-tempo pattern is absent from Johannes Dahle’s excerpt. Close listening to Dahle’s recording reveals that his articulation of the rhythmic asymmetry at measures 4 and 6 involves slurring together the first beat with the first eighth note of the middle beat in such a way that one hears a very idiosyncratic quasi elision of the second eighth note of the first beat and an emphasis on the middle beat. Effectively the momentum in the rhythmic pulse is directed toward the second beat.75 At measures 4 and 6, Dahle accents the first eighth note of the third beat, which is audibly more marked than the other beats. This emphasis on the third beat is also reflected in Dahle’s beat tempo (clusters C9(t) and C5(t) at mm. 4 and 6, respectively). Although in their recordings Buen and Åshild Nyhus articulate the first three eighth notes in measures 4 and 6 in a manner that resembles Dahle’s idiomatic slurring, the middle beat is in fact more exaggerated, while the third beat is short and snappy. Åshild Nyhus almost clips the second eighth note of the third beat to produce a crisp up-beat gesture at these points in the music (mm. 4 and 6). Her gesture is audibly different in quality from Buen’s rhythmic execution of the third beat in the same measures. This difference is also reflected in the beat tempo by the cluster types C6(t) and C2(t) for Åshild Nyhus and Buen, respectively (see Figure 6). Notwithstanding the limitations of working with a short musical fragment, the stylistic similarities traceable among these fiddlers can be interpreted, in part at least, in light of pedagogical lineages or other patterns of transmission and influence. Johannes Dahle (1890–1980) was the grandson of Knut Dahle (1834–1921), the fiddler from Tinn in Telemark who supplied the original slåtter tunes for Halvorsen’s transcriptions, which subsequently gave rise to Grieg’s piano setting. Johannes Dahle has been a prime twentieth-century exponent and disseminator of the original Dahle fiddle tradition from Telemark, and his 1953 recording is deemed representative of this style. Knut Buen (b. 1948), who remains to this day an exclusively folklore performer and a highly respected interpreter of Norwegian folk music, was apprenticed as a young boy to Johannes Dahle.76 Since Buen’s style absorbed elements of the Dahle tradition directly from the master, such similarities as 74 C7(t), C8(t), and C11(t) can be classed as a cluster group because they share qualitative similarities in their cluster shapes (i.e., the first beat is the longest in the measure and the middle beat is the shortest). C2(t) and C6(t) are also similar due to the lengthening of the middle beat, and C9(t) and C5(t) are again related by virtue of a more pronounced third beat. 75 This slurring across the first three eighth notes within the measure is indicated in the 2001 rescoring of the piano arrangement (refer to Example 1). 76 See liner notes accompanying Simax PSC 1040 CD (1988), 24. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 293 the idiomatic slurring at measures 4 and 6 can be partly understood in the context of this line of transmission. Åshild Nyhus (b. 1975), on the other hand, is a younger-generation fiddler and classical violinist descending from a tradition of fiddle players from Røros, and does not share any direct pedagogical lineages with Johannes Dahle.77 Listening observations, however, reveal commonalities between Åshild Nyhus and Johannes Dahle beyond the idiomatic slurring at measures 4 and 6. When comparing their excerpts at half the playback speed in Sonic Visualiser, it is apparent that both Åshild Nyhus and Johannes Dahle embellish the middle beat at measures 3, 5, and 7, a gesture that also brings out the metric emphasis on these beats. This pattern of ornamentation is absent from Buen’s playing and potentially attests to an indirect mode of influence on Åshild Nyhus’s style from musical recordings; indeed, Nyhus claims to have informed her interpretation by her knowledge of the Dahle tradition from the 1993 transcriptions of the Hardanger fiddle recordings of both Johannes and Knut Dahle.78 The fiddlers’ beat-tempo data combined with listening observations provide evidence for both the idiomatic emphasis on the second beat and the idiomatic shortening of the third beat in the performance of the springar. These empirical findings corroborate the crossover between the folk fiddle tradition and the recent reshaping of the piano performance practice of this repertoire. Although the lengthening of the middle beat was most prevalent in the piano recordings of Austø and Ingfrid Nyhus, this beat pattern was not detected in all three fiddle excerpts analyzed here. One limitation of the study could be the brevity of the musical segment used. Furthermore, in the fiddlers’ playing, the metric asymmetries of the springar are not always directly reflected in beat tempo; as I have already pointed out this could be attributed to the intricate means of sound production of the Hardanger fiddle, which are very different from the piano. Close listening, however, especially to Dahle’s recording excerpt, confirms that the idiosyncratic features of his playing have found their way, whether directly or indirectly, into the styles of other performers, both fiddlers and pianists.79 CONCLUDING REMARKS An empirical model of performance analysis from musical recordings has been useful in examining the tensions that exist between discourse and performance practice in the expression of national-cultural identity in Grieg’s 77 See liner notes accompanying Simax PSC 1287 CD (2007), 25. A project undertaken by Sven Nyhus, the father of Åshild Breie Nyhus and Ingfrid Breie Nyhus. See liner notes accompanying Simax PSC 1287 CD (2007), 12. 79 The idiomatic slurring at measures 4 and 6 was also noted in Ingfrid Nyhus’s performance in the empirical analysis of piano recordings. 78 294 G. Volioti COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Slåtter. The empirical investigation of fifteen piano recordings has shown that the performance practice of “Jon Vestafes Springdans” has undergone a radical reinvention in recent years, due to discourses within Norway that seek to reinstate the true identity of the Slåtter. Nevertheless, musical-cultural identity appears to be more strongly elaborated in discourse than directly expressed through performance style. Among the present sample, only two contemporary Norwegian pianists showed the systematic integration of an idiomatic springar. The low empirical visibility of a folk-informed piano style, however, does not negate a shared sense of attachment to the folk tradition, and through it a commitment to Norwegian cultural identity. As Benedict Anderson and John Hutchinson assert, national identity is largely constructed in discourse rather than through purely musical means, although constructions of national-cultural identity will have artistic repercussions as categories of ideology and reception as well.80 In addition, cultural collectives, including cultural memory, seldom operate as unified entities, but often exhibit complex patterns of sociocultural behavior, and may be more profitably grasped as a “collected” body of individual expressions.81 In other words, the collective incentive to preserve the folk elements in the performance of the Slåtter can also be understood as the collected expression of individual Norwegian pianists’ styles and discourses based on their particular predispositions and motivations. Furthermore, when cultural identity cannot be solely traced through purely musical means, since it resides within more abstract and individual modes of discourse, it becomes difficult to make any rigid distinctions between contemporary Norwegian pianists who integrate an idiomatic springar and those who do not. The expression of Norwegian cultural identity in the performance of the Slåtter, moreover, does not necessitate a complete rejection of the music’s modernist aesthetic. On the one hand, Norwegian pianists who do not systematically incorporate an idiomatic springar, but rather adhere generally to the notated metric-rhythmic scheme, could still be celebrating the Norwegian folk elements in this music. On the other hand, however, the two pianists who articulate more explicitly a swing in the metric pulse are by no means “stripping” this music of its modernist peculiarities. These sorts of tensions, as highlighted by my findings, bring us full circle to posing the question: What kind of folk modernism is embodied by Grieg’s Slåtter? While a robust assessment is too extensive to do more than gesture toward here, the key point that emerges from the current 80 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith, eds., Nationalism: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 81 See Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41/2 (2002), 185–86. According to Kansteiner’s terminological distinction, a “collected” memory can be conceptualized as an aggregate of individual memories, each of which behaves just like its individual composites, and also can accommodate the psychological appropriations and the insights of the memories of individuals. Reinventing Grieg’s Folk Modernism 295 study is that Grieg’s Slåtter deliberately incite a tendency toward abstraction both in composition and performance. In the Slåtter, a sense of belonging to a particular musical (and cultural) world cannot be deciphered directly through compositional syntax and style of performing, but rather the Slåtter provide the site within which the ambivalences and equivocations of a sense of belonging find their ultimate expression. The urge to reclaim the authenticity of the Slåtter through reaching back to a more distant past—the style of the Dahle Hardanger fiddle tradition— potentially articulates a wider sense of present-day incompleteness and even loss. The folk element has been an enduring historical subject and potent symbol of national identity embedded deep within Norwegian cultural consciousness. The fast urbanization of Norway and the transformation of rural communities through the influx of foreign influences can be seen as potent triggers for the emergence of sites of memory. As Pierre Nora contends, sites of cultural memory resurface and are intently orchestrated when identity, especially national, is threatened.82 The moment when the lieux de mémoire manifests itself is when a particular fund of living memory tends toward disappearing.83 Many folk arts and crafts have been consciously revived since the early twentieth century as part of an ardent nationalistic movement within Norway, including campaigns to preserve the Hardanger fiddle. Seeking to emulate the distant past, which still echoes in the Dahle recordings, is not merely an act of historical positivism, but could be seen to underline a deeper nostalgia for an unspoilt rural landscape and the urge to escape the ruthless wheel of modernization. Reinventing Grieg’s folk modernism in performance appears to serve both retrospective and prospective functions. Stylistic change and re-combination are indispensible to the continuity of any performance tradition, and the past undoubtedly provides a vital stylistic resource for creative possibilities in performance. The recent renewal of the performance practice of “Jon Vestafes Springdans,” however, is far from a neutral script of social constructivism, since an idiomatic folk modernism instills the present as the fulfillment of an ideal and desired past within contemporary Norwegian cultural memory. APPENDIX 1 COPYRIGHT MATERIAL Piano Recordings Austbø, Håkon. Brilliant Classics 93516/13; recorded 2006. Braaten, Geir-Henning. Victoria VCD 19033; recorded 1993. 82 See Pierre Nora, “Entre Mémoire et Histoire,” in Les Lieux de Mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 23–43. The translation of this essay appeared as “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989), 7–24. 83 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 11–12. G. Volioti 296 Földes, Andor. Mercury MG 10136; recorded ca. 1950.∗ Gimse, Håvard. NAIM CD 059; recorded 2001. Knardahl, Eva. BIS -CD-1626/28; recorded 1977. Lagesen, Ruth. SONET SLPS 1408; recorded ca. 1967.∗ McCabe, John. RCA Gold Seal GL 25329; recorded 1980.∗ Mourao, Isabel. VOXBOX CDX 5097; produced 1993 (digital remaster from analog tapes; originally recorded 1971). Nyhus, Ingfrid Breie. Simax PSC 1287; recorded 2007. Oppitz, Gerhard. BMG/RCA 82876 60391-2; recorded 1993. Reynolds, Sylvia. Connoiseur Society CD 4231; recorded 1999. Riefling, Robert. Simax PSC 1809; produced 1992 (original: Musica SK 15 517 [CTPX 16 896], recorded 1950.) Steen-Nøkleberg, Einar. Caprice CAP 1153; recorded 1978.∗ Steen-Nøkleberg, Einar. Simax PSC 1040; recorded 1988. Steen-Nøkleberg, Einar. Naxos 8 550884; recorded 1993. ∗ Transfer from LP provided by kind permission of the Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound, University of Stavanger. Hardanger Fiddle Recordings Buen, Knut. Simax PSC 1040; recorded 1988. Dahle, Johannes. Musikk-Husets Forlag 2642-CD; reissued 1993 (originally recorded 1953). Nyhus, Åshild Breie. Simax PSC 1287; recorded 2007. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL