The Nordic Sessions

Music, stories, song and dance from 18th-century Scandinavia

In the past, Sweden and Denmark were important kingdoms in the 18th century – and they were usually at war with each other.

The courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen employed musicians from all over the world. The music at the courts was influenced by European taste, and also helped shape musical preferences abroad. Two prominent figures in this period were playwright and musician Ludvig Holberg, and composer and poet Carl Michael Bellman, based in Copenhagen and Stockholm respectively.

Norway was a Danish-ruled province, but it nevertheless had a distinctive musical culture of its own. Most of the musical sources are handwritten music books, where most often only the melodies were notated. Good tunes travel far, and, like other folk art, they change and mutate along the way. English, Dutch, German and French melodies came to Norway where they were adapted to our musical language, and several of our medieval ballads and halling dance tunes can be traced back to such a cultural exchange. In fact, some of them quickly became national: A minuet became a “springleik”, and a polonaise or a “Folia” was used for “pols”-dancing. Foreign hymns and lovesongs also became part of our national heritage.

In “The Nordic Sessions”, Bjarte Eike and Barokksolistene explore the links between folk music and art music from a time before these concepts existed. They present a mix of tunes from collections or old traditional folk music learnt orally from various Nordic and Celtic folk-masters, served with anecdotes and stories - from weddings, funerals, theatres and beerhouses in cities and the countryside.