All-day seminar on Ibsen and Grieg, at the Smithsonian Institution, Sat, Nov. 19, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm., by Harald Herresthal, professor of music, Norwegian Academy of Music, Arvid Vollsnes, professor of Music, University of Oslo, and Mary Kay Norseng, professor of Scandinavian Studies, UCLA.
Norwegian Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) is a giant of world literature and one of the world’s most frequently performed dramatists. This engaging seminar focuses on one of his greatest plays, the poetic fantasy Peer Gynt, and the music that Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg composed to accompany it.
Ibsen wrote the drama in 1867, and it was first performed, with Grieg’s music, in 1876 at Oslo’s Christiania Theater. Grieg had complained about having to write music for “the most unmusical of all subjects,” but had taken on the challenge. The production was a huge success, and both play and music have been performed regularly, together or separately, ever since.
The lectures are highlighted by music and video recordings.
9:30 to 11 a.m. Nationalism, Folklore, and the Creation of Peer Gynt
Norway’s music, literature, and theater from the 1830s to the “golden age,” culminating with the 1876 performance of Peer Gynt. How Grieg’s predecessors used folk music to create a national style in music; the folkloric basis for Peer Gynt.
11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Ibsen: The Man and the Playwright
Ibsen’s early years and his preoccupation with historical dramas rooted in Norway’s proud Viking past, to his Italian years, when he refused to write any more “nationalistic dramas.” The movement in his work to universal themes; Peer Gynt and the play’s phantasmagoric main character, both national caricature and modern Everyman, outlaw and poet, folk legend and teller of his own tale.
12:30 to 2 p.m. Lunch
Participants provide their own lunch.
2 to 3:15 p.m. Ibsen and Grieg: The Collaboration
How they worked together, their different visions for the music, and the conflict between them during the project.
3:30 to 4:30 p.m. New Musical Approaches
How Peer Gynt was received in other countries and how 20thcentury composers tried to give the drama a less romantic, more realistic atmosphere in contrast to Ibsen’s wishes.
The instructors are Harald Herresthal, professor of music, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo; Arvid Vollsnes, professor of music, University of Oslo; and Mary Kay Norseng, professor of Scandinavian studies, University of California, Los Angeles.
When: Saturday, November 19, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm.
When: The Smithsonian Institution. Location indicated on ticket
Tickets: Resident Members $85; Gen. Admission $131; Senior Members $77