Halfdan Kjerulf: Norwegian songs and male-voice part-songs

About Halfdan Kjerulf

Kjerulf was born in Christiania, now Oslo, on 17 September 1815 and died at Grefsen, then just outside the city, on 11 August 1868. He began by studying law, but illness ended his studies in 1839; a summer in Paris in 1840 turned him towards music. After his father's death in 1841 he worked as a journalist at Den Constitutionelle, where the poet Andreas Munch was editor, while continuing to compose. In 1845 he became the first conductor of the newly founded Studentersangforeningen, and in 1848-49 he studied harmony and composition with Carl Arnold in Christiania. A state grant, the first given to a Norwegian musician, took him to Copenhagen for lessons with Niels Gade and then to Leipzig, where he studied privately with Ernst Richter.

His own works are mainly songs, male-voice part-songs and piano pieces. Solvirkning (1846) to a text by Welhaven is often called his first fully achieved song, and Brudefærden i Hardanger (1848) his best-known part-song. Norges fjelde, to words by Henrik Wergeland, followed in 1853 and became one of the most sung male-voice songs in Scandinavia. He also arranged Norwegian and foreign folk songs for male chorus, which is why French chansons and Bellman's Fredman songs appear under his name, and he published collections of Norwegian folk melodies in 1861 and 1866. Agathe Backer Grøndahl and Erika Nissen were among his pupils.

The catalogue mirrors that mix. Twenty-three entries are filed as classical, two are unclassified, and the longest pieces run only a few minutes. Several titles have lost their Norwegian diacritics, and the Bellman and French items are arrangements whose source is not recorded on the file.

Listening and playing notes

These are strophic songs, so the words carry the form. Keep the declamation natural and resist adding rubato at every line; the piano writing is spare and usually doubles the voice only at cadences. In the male-voice items, balance the inner parts before the melody, because the tenor line often moves faster than the tune. Norwegian vowels need to be decided before rehearsal, and the French songs need a lighter, more forward sound than the Norwegian ones.

Selected scores

1. Natten er så stille

   A barcarole from the Album for Mandssang, no. 3, to a text by Johan Ludvig Heiberg beginning "Natten er så stille, luften er så klar"; the catalogue title has lost its diacritics.

2. Jubilate, amen

   A choral setting of Thomas Moore's hymn "Hark! the vesper hymn is stealing"; the catalogue does not record the voicing.

3. Fredmans Epistel 60

   One of Bellman's Fredman's Epistles in Kjerulf's arrangement; the melody is Bellman's, not Kjerulf's own.

4. Fredmans Epistel No. 58

   A second Bellman epistle from the same group of Swedish arrangements; the catalogue title has a double space before the number.

5. Chanson à boire

   A French drinking song for male voices; the catalogue title has lost the accent and the preposition.

6. The mountains of Norway

   The part-song Norges fjelde, to words by Henrik Wergeland, published in 1853 and among his most widely sung works.

7. Fredmans Epistel No. 64

   Another of the Bellman settings; the epistle number is the only identification the catalogue gives.

8. Les Compagnons de la Marjolaine

   A French folk song arranged for male chorus, one of several French items in the collection.

9. Le célèbre Menuet d'Exaudet

   An arrangement of the menuet by André-Joseph Exaudet, a tune that circulated widely in eighteenth-century France.