Medvirkende:
Ragnhild Hemsing, fiolin og hardingfele
Mathias Eick, trompet
Steinar Raknes, kontrabass
Terje Isungset, perkusjon

Ragnhild Hemsing speaks on VETRA:

We have a rich and vibrant folk music tradition in Valdres. But this cultural heritage could easily have been lost to us if collectors like Ludvig Mathias Lindeman had not made the trip to our valley.

Lindeman was careful to write down the title and name of the variant he had the tune for. This has also enabled me to choose a melody where I can clearly show the local variants of the same melody within Valdres. This is extremely interesting and speaks to the richness of the cultural heritage, and about how folk music and folk tunes have developed within a limited area over the course of 100 years.
This has been an exciting musical journey where the melodies have been given their own unique artistic design. Lindeman is the most significant representative of a family of musicians who have left their mark on Norwegian musical life for over 200 years. He was himself an outstanding organ player and improviser who wrote melodies and major church music works, published a chorale book, and collected folk melodies and texts. In 1883, he and his son established the Organist School in Christiania.

In the latter half of the 1840s, there was a general increase in interest in folk music in line with nation building. In 1848, Lindeman applied to the university for support for a trip to the mountains to record folk melodies. The response was positive, and that same year he completed his first trip. It went to Valdres and resulted in records of 86 old hymn tunes and 83 secular melodies. One of the sources was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. With Lindeman’s epoch-making records of Valdresingen, Andris Vang, and other sources in the summer of 1848, the collection of what has been preserved of Norwegian folk music in Valdres begins.

As with other valleys and villages in Norway, and folk music the world over, large parts of the folk tunes have, like fairy tales and myths, migrated throughout Scandinavia and Europe. Several of the melodies that Lindemann wrote down from Valdres can be found in related forms in Germany, Sweden and Denmark. And the local people have not just been passive recipients, but to a large extent active co-creators. The folk tunes and folk songs in Valdres, with their folk music tradition, are strongly linked to nature and wildlife. Stev and slåtter with named persons and legends with underground beings clearly show that the material is strongly linked to the valley and is part of Valdres’ folk history and identity.

This is my background for this project, where I have selected melodies and hymns from Valdres that Lindeman has collected. I wanted to take the music a step further in an artistic project, where I take care of the important cultural heritage and bring it forward in a modern setting and bring out an unknown and rarely played material. In addition, I have written a couple of songs myself as a natural part of the project.

Ragnhild has brought on exciting and talented improvising musicians on the project, such as Mathias Eick on trumpet, Steinar Raknes on bass and nature’s percussionist, Terje Isungset.

This concert is the second of a total of three atmospheric late-night programs in the newly renovated Old Aker Church.

August 10, 2024
21:00
Old Aker Church
1 hour

Artists:
Ragnhild Hemsing, violin and Hardanger fiddle
Mathias Eick, trumpet
Steinar Raknes, double bass
Terje Isungset, percussion