Harald Sæverud - Elegie (Elegy)
(17. April 1897 – 27. March 1992)
1916
Dedicated to Victor Schuster
Date of first performance unknown.
Harald Sæverud was born in Bergen, the son of a respected and modestly wealthy business man and a devout mother. When Sæverud was 12 years old, disaster hit the household: his father, with his business partners, was found guilty of tax evasion and became bankrupt. He was sent to jail for three months. It was at this time that young Harald began to write music, perhaps as an inner escape from grim reality. His first formal studies took place at the Bergen conservatoire where his main teacher was the pianist and composer Borghild Holmsen (1865-1938). By the time he was 17 Sæverud was working on his first symphony, often skipping school in order to do so.
Between 1920 and 1922 Sæverud studied at the Berlin Hochschule. While there a wealthy friend hired the Berlin Philharmonic for the first performance of “Overtura Apassionata”.
Later in life Sæverud would claim that he learned nothing in Berlin, and that his only teachers were Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. However, letters from the period show that he did in fact learn a lot in Berlin, where he studied with Friederich Koch (1862 – 1927).
Upon returning to Norway in 1922 he slowly built a reputation as one of the country’s most promising young composers, making ends meet as a music critic and by giving piano lessons. He received unexpected encouragement from Carl Nielsen (1865 –1931), who wrote Sæverud a letter expressing his great enthusiasm for his “Five Capricci” for piano, op. 1.
Harmonien (today known as Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra) would eventually become Sæverud’s main expressive outlet. The ensemble went on to premiere many of his orchestral works.
In 1934 Sæverud married Marie Hvoslef (1900 – 1982), an American of Norwegian ancestry, daughter of a very wealthy ship magnate who had died in 1926. Marrying Marie Hvoslef enabled Sæverud to devote himself to composition full-time. It also facilitated the building of Siljustøl, the impressive mansion in the outskirts of Bergen which would become their home. Siljustøl, with its wild nature, would, from 1939 until Sæverud’s death, serve as his main source of inspiration, together with his family.
The completion of Siljustøl was timely. The Nazi occupation of Norway during WW2 started in April 1940. Sæverud was one of the few Norwegian artists with an unequivocal anti-Nazi stance throughout the war. WW2 turned out to be an especially fertile period for Sæverud. The anger caused by the Nazi invasion brought out a strong rush of creativity in him. This difficult time induced him to compose three symphonies (Nrs. 5, 6 and 7), as well as several other orchestral works and piano pieces. The Ballad of Revolt (“Kjempevise-slåtten”), by far his most famous work, was written out of rage against the occupation.
By the end of WW2 Sæverud had become an established composer. The Ballad of Revolt made him into a kind of national hero in a country that had just begun to recover from five years of foreign invasion.
Shortly after the war, the radical actor and theatre director Hans Jacob Nilsen (1897 –1957) asked Sæverud to write new music for a stage production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Sæverud hesitated at fist but, on rereading the play, he decided he had indeed something to contribute. His Peer Gynt score stands among his most powerful creations.
In the 1950s the Koussevitzky foundation commissioned Violin Concerto, op 37. The State of Minnesota commissioned a symphony (his eighth, the “Minnesota Symphony”, op. 40) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the state in 1958.
Although the new wave of modernism that swept Norway in the 1960s relegated Sæverud to a less prominent position (at least in the eyes of the young generation), he continued to be held in high regard by the musical establishment and the public. He was made an honorary member of Harmonien, and was commissioned to write a work for the celebration of the 900th anniversary of the city of Bergen (“Fanfare og Hymne”, op. 48). He also wrote the opening work for the official opening of Bergen’s Grieghallen, in 1978 (“Overtura Monumentale”, op. 53). In 1977 he received the highest public honour available in Norway: the medal of Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olav. In 1986 he was made the Festival Composer at the 34th Bergen International Festival, for which he composed his last orchestral work: a suite for orchestra and choir based on Ibsen’s “Keiser og Galilæer” (Emperor and Galilean).
Although the final years of his life were marked by illness and predictable physical weakness, he remained alert and engaged with the world around him to the very end. Between 1986 and 1989 he wrote a number of small piano pieces and a Sonatina for viola and piano.
He was given a state funeral.
Sæverud is, arguably, Norway’s pre-eminent symphonic composer. With his nine symphonies, five concertos and numerous orchestral works, including ballet and stage music, he created a distinctive body of work, wide in scope and imagination. His music for piano stands as a truly original and unique contribution to the literature.
He began writing in a style redolent of late romanticism. For roughly a decade he experimented with atonality before finding his mature voice around the beginning of the Second World War. His music is characterized by an intense focus on the present moment and is strongly influenced by Western Norwegian nature, with its abrupt contrasts both in landscape and weather. He was always mostly interested in musical lines and the way they interact with one another, and was a master at the exacting art of two-part writing. He always demanded full characterization of every note and every phrase, often stating that “every note is a personality”.
The Elegy for violin and piano has an interesting history. The extant manuscript found at the Bergen Public Library, bearing the dedication “Til Hr. Konsertmester Victor Schuster”, is dated “Winter 1916”. This makes Sæverud 18/ years old at the time of the work’s composition. Schuster was, at the time, the concertmaster of Harmonien (the name by which the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra went by until the mid 1980s). Although Sæverud wrote other small pieces for violin and piano in his teens, it is Elegy that has grown wings, as it were. This is because Sæverud rediscovered the piece in 1986, during his preparations for his residency as Festival Composer. Trond Sæverud (the composer’s grandson) played the piece with Einar Røttingen during the Festival. Sæverud, however, soon came up with the ingenious idea of entirely removing the piano part. In retrospect, the decision makes perfect sense: the piano part is drenched in Romantic pathos, not associated with the mature Sæverud style. Rather than making a revised version of the violin line he gave it to Trond, giving him permission to do as he pleased with it. I heard Trond performing the work in this new guise in April 1988, knowing nothing whatsoever about the piece. It made so deep an impression that I asked the composer for the score. He gave me one copy, giving me his blessing to make my own version. And so it is that there are two solo versions of Sæverud’s Elegy: one by Trond Sæverud and a slightly later one by me (Ricardo Odriozola). The former can be heard on the CD “Harald Sæverud – Complete Works for Violin” (PSC 1087) while a performance of the latter can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQR2bwWXLTY
The original score with piano accompaniment is interesting for several reasons.
It shows Sæverud’s inclination toward melancholy from a very early age, also making it apparent that his original roots lay within Romanticism. This mode of expression is found in his first two symphonies and, particularly, in his turbulent Piano Sonata op. 3. When Einar Røttingen played the sonata for Sæverud in the late 1980s, the composer could not even remember having written it, so at odds its mode of expression was with his mature style. Having gone through the stages described in the above biographical sketch, he eventually learned to say what he had to say using as few notes as possible. As a grown-up man and artist he chose to follow the example of the classics rather than that of the romantics. He went to great pains to make every note and every gesture count. This way of composing, epitomised by the Piano Sonatinas op. 30 and the Violin Duets op 32, is in clear opposition to the turbulent and expansive early works.
The original score of Elegy is also a prime example of Sæverud’s impeccable calligraphy. Even as a young man he must have understood that the only hope to gain interest for one’s music is to present it to eventual performers in an attractive and ready-to-use manner. Elegy also display’s Sæverud’s fastidious attention to detail, even at that tender age. Although the use of articulation and dynamics would become more complex later on, Elegy (essentially a legato, singing piece) is full of details pertaining to tempo, timing and expression and, indeed, dynamics and articulation. Sæverud clearly shows the voice-leading in a multilayered piano part (very challenging to engrave!) and even gives some pedalling directions to the pianist.
All the same, Sæverud would have none of that in his late years. Established as a master of two-part writing who set melody and the interaction of musical lines very highly in his priorities, he was, as a man of 89, understandably taken by the stark beauty and power of the melody of his youthful Elegy. A 70 year-long circle drawn from his 18 year old to his 89 year old self was closed.
Regarding the Trond Sæverud and Odriozola versions, it is interesting to note that Trond S’s version eventually absorbed some of the new ideas the composer had introduced into Odriozola’s one. These include the following:
- The two consecutive up-bows in the fourth and third measures before the first key change.
- The five pizzicato notes in the first measure of the second key change.
- The higher octave of the four final measures.
One detail that was common to both versions, in accordance with the composer’s wishes, was the “blue note” in measure 18. Interestingly, Sæverud only wanted this microtonal shading the second time the melody containing it is stated. “Blåtone” (or blue note) is a term used in Norwegian folk music to denote a pitch that does not correspond to regular, tempered tuning. Trond Sæverud writes:
I went back and forth on whether to do the blue note. Still unsure if it is needed or effective. And he did not have this in mind 70 years earlier, I think.
(email to R.O. 22. May 2020)
[…] in this specific case, the blue note was added, as far as I remember, when I was present - and as part of an effort to improve on this piece that I must admit felt a bit forced at the time.
In live performances, I found ways of making a facial expression during the blue note that told the audience that “now I’m doing something unusual” and they got it. But in recordings, without any visual element, I’m still uncomfortable doing it in this piece - afraid that it just comes across as a mistake, as out of tune, since there is no other similar example elsewhere in the piece.
(email to R.O. 24. May 2020)
Sæverud has used this device (equally sparingly) on his Lucretia Suite op. 10 and on the Fifth Symphony op. 16.
My session with the composer on this piece brought about the following alterations:
- Beginning the piece with an up-bow, which gives an immediate sense of yearning to the music.
- The aforementioned two consecutive up-bows in the fourth and third measures before the first key
change. These were added for dramatic effect.
- The left-hand pizzicato, three measures before Tempo I. Sæverud wanted this to be very loud and
incisive.
- The aforementioned octave displacement in the final measures. I told Sæverud I would be
performing the piece in Bergen’s St. Mary’s Church. “They will look up and see Jesus” he said,
referring to the large crucifix that used to hang above the centre of the nave.
Elegy is a very effective piece of music that always makes an impression on listeners. Hopefully it will eventually enter the repertoire.
Ricardo Odriozola 22. June 2020