Eyvind Alnæs Songs, Vol. 2

Eyvind Alnæs, Norway’s great song composer

Around 1900, Norway had three leading composers of art songs: Edvard Grieg, Agathe Backer Grøndahl and Eyvind Alnæs. On the second volume of a three-part series, mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland, soprano Ann-Helen Moen and pianist Nils Anders Mortensen bring us 30 of Alnæs’ songs.

Alnæs (1872-1932) ranked alongside Grieg and Backer Grøndahl as Norway’s foremost composer of romances around 1900. His songs were recorded by singers of the stature of Kirsten Flagstad and Feodor Chaliapin. The songs are beautiful and exquisite, and are colored by the composer’s rare melodic talent. The piano parts in his songs make considerable demands on the accompanist. He wrote in a late-Romantic style, and was also an organist: from 1916 to 1932 he served as organist and cathedral cantor at Vår Frelsers Kirke in Oslo.   

The album brings together songs set to poems by some of Norway’s best-known writers, including Herman Wildenvey, Olaf Bull, Vilhelm Krag, A. O. Vinje, Henrik Wergeland, Knut Hamsun and Olav Aukrust. The programme moves from the tenderness of “Moderen synger” and “Liden Kirsten” to the nature poems of Vinje, giving two singers and one pianist a wide range of moods and colours.

Eyvind Alnæs… whenever I say or read his name, I think of beautiful melodies, grace and elegance. He had the lyrical gift of creating truly beautiful music; melodies that captivate you, move you, and enhance the message of the text. If I were to compare Eyvind Alnæs to one of the greatest composers in the song repertoire, it would be Robert Schumann, who also had the ability to capture the listener with the beauty of the music. Is this not a wonderful quality to possess as a composer? 

Eyvind Alnæs was indeed a beloved composer in his time. It is moving to read this excerpt from the obituary by Torolf Voss in Aftenposten, 27 December 1932: “Eyvind Alnæs is dead – such was the painfully sorrowful message that spread quickly through the city around midday on Christmas Eve. A message of mourning that not only seemed unbearably painful to us here at at home, but that will also be received with profound sorrow across the Nordic musical world, and far beyond, wherever Alnæs's lovely romances and lyrical works have taken root. (...) Alnæs undoubtedly produced his greatest art as a composer of romances; here, he usually hit the mark perfectly. He created over one hundred romances, and through them left a rich legacy of lyrical works that future generations will surely listen to with the same rapture as his contemporaries.”

It is also the romances that truly made Alnæs’s music famous, and I firmly believe that the most beloved of them have remained in singers' concert repertoire from the time they were composed up to the present day.

Alnæs was born in Fredrikstad in 1872 and, following Edvard Grieg and Agathe Backer Grøndahl, became one of the leading Norwegian romance composers around 1900. Like Grieg a few years before him, he went to Leipzig at the age of 20 to study with Carl Reinecke, after initial studies in Oslo with Peter Lindeman, among others, at the Music and Organ School in Kristiania. Grieg observed Alnæs’s talent and endorsed his scholarship application with the following words: “Mr. Alnæs has shown me some of the songs he has composed, which display such evident talent. (...) I therefore strongly recommend him for any public support by which this aim may be advanced.”

After three years in Leipzig, followed by two years in Berlin, he returned to Norway, where he began his main work as an organist and choir conductor. He first worked at Bragernes in Drammen, but Agathe Backer Grøndahl is said to have remarked that he was far too talented to live in Drammen! Fortunately, a few years later, he secured a position as organist at Uranienborg Church in Oslo. His crowning achievement was his appointment as organist at Oslo Cathedral (The Church of Our Saviour), where he also founded what is now the Oslo Cathedral Choir. He remained at the Cathedral until his death on Christmas Eve in 1932.

After his studies in Berlin, Eyvind Alnæs was thoroughly trained in the Romantic tradition. Apart from 88 romances, his list of works includes around 20 piano pieces, a suite for violin and piano, symphonic variations, two symphonies, a piano concerto, and several organ works, including the harmonisation of the entire Norwegian chorale book. However, he did not achieve truly great success with his instrumental music, which can be explained by his admiration for the style and idiom of the late Romantic period. Perhaps this, combined with Alnæs’s great lyrical talent, was not quite the ideal match? He was, however, considerably more talented as a composer of choral works. Several works for male choir, especially his Christmas Motet, have been beloved choral works for male, female and mixed choirs at many Christmas concerts over the past hundred years. 

But let us return to the romances. They made Alnæs one of the most frequently performed composers of his time, and his new works were well received by performers, audiences and critics alike. The piano accompaniments in his songs reveal that Alnæs himself was a brilliant pianist and a sought-after accompanist, being written with imagination, beauty, and expressiveness. They provide strong support for the often beautiful melodies of the songs, and this is only one of the elements that contribute to the remarkable completeness of so many of his romances. The influence of the German Lied tradition is clearly evident, yet his songs often display a natural and playful text declamation, and occasionally a subtle hint of influence from folk music. As a result, the relationship between text, melody and piano writing is often very successful. Personally, I consider many of Alnæs’s romances to be among the very best works in this genre by Norwegian composers. 

With valuable help from Kirsti Wilhelmsen’s master’s thesis ‘Eyvind Alnæs as a Composer of Romances’ (University of Oslo, 1968), we have identified 88 songs to be released across three albums. 

This second volume opens with Opus 30, which includes the gem Ved Syrintid (‘When the lilacs bloom’). As on volume 1, this is followed by a wide range of songs spanning from Opus 2 to his final Opus 45, in which Alnæs for the first (and only) time shows a hint of more advanced tonal language. In Steinbrytervise (‘The miners’ song’) from Opus 19, Alnæs moves towards the style of Norwegian folk songs in his interpretation of Henrik Wergeland’s powerful poem. In Den dag kjem aldri, at eg deg gløymer (‘The day that I forget you will never come’), he demonstrates with his touching setting of Vinje’s well-known poem that he also masters the strophic lied form. Opus 22 contains songs in which Alnæs draws on Norwegian folk music, particularly in Attergløyma (‘The Spinster’) and So skal gjenta hava det (‘How a girl ought to have it’), but in this opus, we also find Tungalda (‘The great wave’) – a rare attempt by Alnæs to write a song on a large and expansive scale, spanning over two octaves. The album concludes with Kulokk (‘Cow call’), found in manuscript form, where Alnæs moves closest to folk music. I am not sure whether he was inspired by an actual folk song here, or whether the song is simply written in a folk music style.
This album contains opuses in which Alnæs continues to set texts by Norwegian poets of his own time: Olaf Bull, Nils Collett Vogt, Vilhelm Krag, Anders Hovden, and even Knut Hamsun and Sigbjørn Obstfelder. One collection combines the new and the old: Opus 22, with texts by Anders Hovden and Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, while Opus 12 draws on the poets Aasmund Olavsson Vinje and Ivar Aasen. He also has one opus devoted solely to texts by Herman Wildenvey (Opus 30).

As with album I in this series (LWC1423), there is no song cycle as such on this album. None of the opuses feature a consistent theme or narrative development, but the songs are well grouped together, and form a coherent whole. 

I hope you will continue to enjoy Alnæs’s romances. Happy listening!

Marianne Beate Kielland

This text takes inspiration from articles in Cappelens musikkleksikon, Norsk biografisk leksikon (nbl.snl.no) and Store norske leksikon (snl.no).