Survey of Norwegian oboe literature

The majority of an oboist's repertoire consists of compositions from western European countries such as France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. While this repertoire is substantial, there is a vast number of compositions from other European countries which have remained virtually unheard in the United States. Norway is one of these countries. The purpose of this study was to investigate Norwegian solo oboe literature. The goal of the study was to identify, examine, and catalog relatively unknown Norwegian oboe literature so that the existing body of international literature might be expanded. This study presents a complete examination of over 100 compositions for the oboe which have been written by Norwegian composers. This catalogue lists oboe literature alphabetically by composer under the following classifications: solo oboe, oboe with keyboard instrument, oboe with orchestra or band, and oboe with chamber ensemble. Each listing consists of the title, composer, analytical perspectives, composer's commentary if available, and author's commentary

Nordic Narratives of the Second World War : National Historiographies Revisited

How have the dramatic events of the Second World War been viewed in the Nordic countries? In Nordic Narratives of the Second World War, leading Nordic historians analyse post-war memory and historiography. They explore the relationship between scholarly and public understandings of the war. How have national interpretations been shaped by official security-policy doctrines? And in what way has the end of the Cold War affected the Nordic narratives? The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive postwar characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context. Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history

The Eclipse Effects of Stardom: Edvard Grieg as a Challenge to National Musicology

Taking Norwegian musicology as a case study, this article explores scholarly forgetting at the intersection between academic music historiography and public music history. More specifically, it takes the national historiography about Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) as a starting point to explore how national stardom, based on ritualized commemoration, can paradoxically result in scholarly forgetting. In order to establish musicology as an academic discipline, the first generation of Norwegian music scholars had a delicate mission to fulfill. These scholars had to both consolidate Edvard Grieg’s significance as a national artist and legitimize his reputation as an internationally recognized genius. Still, from its beginnings in the 1950s up to the early 1990s, the scope of Norwegian musicology was very much nationally oriented. By making Grieg a star of national culture, there was much less room for more critical approaches to his legacy, going beyond the level of historical anecdote and popular myth. This article examines how this specific style of creating national stardom for Grieg in music historiography has contributed to forgetting processes both within and beyond Grieg studies, that is both in scholarship and in national memory culture. Additionally, it will demonstrate how a more critical historiography of Grieg studies might open up forgotten knowledge and thus interrupt the continuous process of recycling and repetition of memories and anecdotes that is central to the Norwegian “Grieg cult.” This is a balancing act, since musicology should, on the one hand, observe its contract with the audiences and readers without, on the other, continuously reifying Grieg’s stardom in a way that eclipses those aspects of the man and his work that are not in compliance with the national myth. In this way, I will argue, scholarship can be both a catalyst of and an antidote to forgetting.acceptedVersio

The Nordic Ingredient. European Nationalisms and Norwegian Music since 1905

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Orkney, Shetland and the networks of the Northern Reformation

This article explores the possible implications of the relationship between Orkney and Shetland and Norway for understanding the spread of the Reformation, focusing on the period between the late 1520s, when Reforming ideas began to be preached in Bergen, and 1560, when the Reformation was introduced into Scotland, including Orkney and Shetland. Draws on a scholarship which has shown the importance for the Reformation of language, trade, migration and urban/rural distinctions it investigates tantalising hints of contact between Orkney and Shetland, Norway (particularly Bergen) and Germany in questions of religion. This article does not seek to revise current understandings of the relationships of Orkney and Shetland to Scotland but seeks to explore what insights into (proto-)Reformation processes in Orkney and Shetland when possible influences from debates the Norwegian context – specifically Bergen – are considered alongside the influence of Scottish debates about religion. It concludes that whilst there is some evidence of contacts between individuals and that these contacts must have had aspects which related to religious practice, both the rural nature of Orkney and Shetland communities, and their relative isolation, meant that Reformation ideas were slow to take hold