Haugtussa (Grieg)

Haugtussa, Op. 67, or The Mountain Maid, is

a song cycle for soprano and piano composed by
Edvard Grieg in 1895 and published in 1898. It is
the only song cycle in his entire output.[1] The
text was written by the Norwegian writer Arne
Garborg,[2] an excerpt from his book of poetry
Haugtussa. It tells the story of Haugtussa, a
young herding girl, and her first love affair with
a boy, her first heartache. Both the lyrics, which
brim over with imagery of gurgling brooks and
tasty blueberries, and the music that mimics this
imagery, intertwine the main character’s
Edvard Grieg, portrait by Eilif Peterssen
personal story and the mystic spring-like
(1891)
landscape that surrounds her, which may even
motivate it.

Contents
Song cycle project
Songs
Contents
Performances
Selected recordings
Additional information
Sources
References
External links

Song cycle project
Edvard Grieg read Arne Garborg's Haugtussa in
May 1895, and was so inspired that he composed
twelve songs in a month, four of which he
rejected.[2] He then spent three years completing
the project. He first conceived it as a larger work
with orchestra, but in 1898 decided to set just a
cycle of eight songs for voice and piano, and gave
them a final polish before they were printed in
September that year.[2][3] Grieg wanted
Haugtussa to reflect Garborg's poems, but by
using only a few selected poems was able to give
a true and complete new image to Haugtussa,
thus creating a new whole. They were released in
Nynorsk and Danish, translated by John Paulsen
and Grieg and published by Wilhelm Hansen in
Copenhagen, translated to German by Eugen
von Enzberg, and in English, published by Music score of Haugtussa, The Mountain
Edition Peters in Leipzig.[2] Maid, by Edvard Grieg, published in 1898

Songs
The song cycle consists of the following eight songs:

1. "The Enticement" – Haugtussa is dreaming.

2. "Veslemøy" (Young Maiden) – A description of the slender Haugtussa.
3. "Blueberry Slope" – Haugtussa is watching over her flock and sees a field of blueberries.
4. "The Tryst" – Haugtussa looks out upon the hill and sees the boy of her dreams.
5. "Love" – Haugtussa declares her love for the boy.
6. "Kidlings' Dance" – Haugtussa dances with her flock of goats.
7. "Hurtful Day" – A rainy day; he promised he would come, but she sat there alone.
8. "At the Brook" – Haugtussa sits by the brook speaking to it of her sadness.
F Major functions as a default tonic in the cycle, serving as the main key figure in the first, third
and fourth songs, leaving the fifth to be constructed in C and the seventh in F Minor. A Major
appears only once in the cycle, during the opening bars of the fourth song, which is strikingly
noticeable within the tonal design of the entire song cycle.[4]

Contents
Haugtussa opens and ends with the nature mysticism of "The Enticement" and "At the Brook".
The second extended stage includes the two melancholic portraits "Veslemøy" and "Hurtful Day".
Between them the climax is reached in the central love songs "The Tryst" and "Love", which have
a cheerful, pastoral approach, and approached and transitioned from in, respectively, "Blueberry
Slope" and "Kidlings' Dance". The main character, the Veslemøy, is a shepherd girl who has
abilities that others do not have and therefore can not find a place for her personality in rural
communities. She turns to nature for answers to her desires and questions. During the course of
the text she falls in love with the boy Jon, and "Hurtful Day" describes her feelings when she is
deceived by him. In the last song, "At the Brook", which is often compared with the last song of
Franz Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin or Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe,[5] she seeks refuge by
a mountain brook, musically represented by a rhythmic figure on the piano. From verse to verse,
Grieg gradually changes this passage using different harmonizations.

Performances
The first to perform the complete cycle of songs in Cristiania was Eva Nansen, wife of the
Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, with Grieg's colleague and friend Agathe Backer-Grøndahl
at the piano,[6] on 2 November 1899.[7] Grieg was not present at the recital, for he had a concert
in Stockholm at the same time. Four of the Haugtussa songs were also performed on 22 October
1898 by the Norwegian-born Swedish singer Dagmar Möller, to whom the cycle was dedicated.[8]

Selected recordings
Aase Nordmo Løvberg with Robert Levin, piano. Recorded in Oslo around March 1956.
Released on the EP-disc HMV 7EBN 1

Additional information

Sources
Erling Dahl Jr.: Haugtussa, Opus 67, "The best songs I've written" (http://www.griegsociety.or
g/utskrift.asp?id=4782&kat=1022&sp=) at the Grieg Society.org (in Norwegian)
Frode B. Bjerkevik: Edvard Grieg – Haugtussa (https://web.archive.org/web/2012033103201
7/http://www.hissig.no/artikler/grieg/) at Hissig.no (in Norwegian)
Debra Siebert, D.M.A.: Conflict and meaning in Edvard Grieg's "Haugtussa", University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, 2010, AAT 3460100
References
1. Tunbridge, Laura (2011). The Song Cycle (https://books.google.com/books?id=DS8VesiqWF
cC&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q&f=false). Cambridge University Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-521-
72107-5.
2. Foster, Beryl (2007). The songs of Edvard Grieg (https://books.google.com/books?id=3coWe
My2wZYC&pg=PA186#v=onepage&q&f=false). Boydell Press. pp. 203–205. ISBN 1-84383-
343-3.
3. Faulkner, Anne Shaw (2005). What We Hear in Music: A Course of Study in Music
Appreciation and History (https://books.google.com/books?id=-XWDqySOhrAC&pg=PA479#
v=onepage&q&f=false). Kessinger Publishing, LLC. p. 479. ISBN 1-4191-6805-3.
4. Grimley, Daniel M. (2006). Grieg: music, landscape and Norwegian identity (https://books.go
ogle.ie/books?id=Nzyt33bbAvQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false). Boydell
Press. p. ?. ISBN 1-84383-210-0. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
5. Grimley, Daniel M. (2006). Grieg: music, landscape and Norwegian identity (https://books.go
ogle.com/books?id=Nzyt33bbAvQC&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false). p. 5. Retrieved
20 December 2015.
6. Grimley, Daniel M. (2006). Grieg: music, landscape and Norwegian identity (https://books.go
ogle.com/books?id=Nzyt33bbAvQC&pg=PA131#v=onepage&q&f=false). p. 121. Retrieved
20 December 2015.
7. Benestad, Finn; Schjelderup-Ebbe, Dag (1990) [1980]. Edvard Grieg – mennesket og
kunstneren (in Norwegian) (2 ed.). Oslo: Aschehoug. pp. 343–349. ISBN 82-03-16373-4.
8. Lein, Melinda (2009). Positioning the songs of Grieg and Debussy in standard vocal
repertoire (https://books.google.com/books?id=UXyZFD9MfxUC&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f
=false). University of Missouri. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-109-20303-5.

External links
Haugtussa (http://imslp.org/wiki/Haugtussa,_Op.67_(Grieg,_Edvard)) by Edvard Grieg at the
International Music Score Library Project.

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This page was last edited on 9 December 2017, at 18:44 (UTC).

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