Danish music

[Your Old Comrade]

Carl August Nielsen (9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish composer, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer.

Flute Concerto (1926)
Dedication: Holger Gilbert-Jespersen

1. Allegro moderato
2. Allegretto un poco - Adagio ma non troppo - Allegretto - Poco adagio - Tempo di marcia

Aurèle Nicolet, flute and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur

The Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (FS 119) was written in 1926 for Holger Gilbert-Jespersen, who succeeded Paul Hagemann as flautist of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. The concerto, in two movements, was generally well received at its premiere in Paris in October 1926 where Nielsen had introduced a temporary ending. The first complete version was played in Copenhagen the following January. The flute concerto has become part of the international repertoire.

In 1921, Nielsen heard the Copenhagen Wind Quintet rehearsing music by Mozart and was struck by the group's tonal beauty and musicianship. That same year, he wrote his Wind Quintet expressly for this ensemble. The last movement of the wind quintet is a theme and variations depicting in music the personalities of the five players and their respective instruments, much in the manner that Elgar portrayed his friends in the Enigma Variations. Promising he would write a concerto for each member of the quintet, he started with the flautist Holger Gilbert-Jespersen (1890-1975). As a result of poor health, he was only able to complete one more concerto before his death, the Clarinet Concerto, for the group's clarinetist, Aage Oxenvad, which he completed in 1928.

Nielsen began work on the flute concerto while travelling in Germany and Italy in August 1926, intending it to be performed in Paris at a concert devoted to four of his works on 21 October. Unfortunately, as a result of a prolonged stomach complaint, he did not complete the work in time and had to introduce a temporary ending for its Paris premiere

[Your Old Comrade]

1. Ella (00:00)
2. Fager som en Ros (03:54)
3. Leaves of Yggdrasil 06:46)
4. Ramund (10:47)
5. Tor i Helheim (14:16)
6. Svea (21:27)

7. Harpens Kraft (24:53)
8. Gammelkäring (28:13)
9. House Carpenter (31:43)

10. Reiar (35:21)
11. Gudernes Vilje (39:08)
12. Vinter (43:06)

Amalie Bruun has always paved her own path, challenging underground preconceptions of heavy metal ever since the release of her debut Myrkur EP in 2014. Her first two full-length studio albums, 2015’s M and 2017’s Mareridt, recast black metal in the most personal yet expansive of terms, their blending of Amalie’s Danish folk roots with tempestuous internal struggles breathing new life into a subgenre whose followers can be rigidly possessive.

With the release of her new album, Folkesange, Amalie Bruun has set out to journey into the very heart of the Scandinavian culture that marked her childhood. Folkesange relinquishes black metal for a refined yet far-reaching evocation of traditional folk, combining songs ancient and new to sublimely resonant effect.

After the nightmare-induced visions that wrought themselves throughout Mareridt, Folkesange offers an emotional sanctuary, a means to reconnect to something permanent and nature-aligned. It’s an awareness that’s become deeply bound to the album’s organic, regenerative spirit, from the opening track Ella’s heartbeat, frame-drum percussion and crystalline vocals that become the grounding for a rapt, richly textured awakening, to the gentle carousel of the closing Vinter, with its nostalgia-steeped connotations of seasonal, snowfall-bewitched awe.

Storytelling, rites of passage, and the invocation of a continuity that passes through time and generation are all part of folk music’s tapestry, and Folkesange taps into all these currents in their most essential form. In part a purist’s approach to the genre, free from over-interpretation and fusion, the use of traditional instruments throughout, such as nyckelharpa, lyre, and mandola offer a deeper, more tactile connection to their source, an unbroken line of communication back to the past.

But the album is no museum piece; it resonates in the here and now, aided by the spacious production of Heilung member and musical collaborator Christopher Juul. Cinematic yet intimate, Folkesange exists in a state of boundless reverie, bourne by string-led drones, cyclical, elegiac rhythms and Amalie’s frictionless voice, all carrier signals for deep-rooted, ancestral memories, and associations felt on an elemental level.

It’s a binding of the otherworldly and the earthy that echoes the the subject matter of many of the tales themselves. Written by Amalie, Leaves Of Yggdrasil’s medieval cadences bind tragic love story and mythology, full of both fairytale wonder and deeply human foible. Tor i Helheim, its dreamily persistent rhythm redolent of both innocence and encroachment, is based on a poem from the Icelandic Eddas, relating a journey into the underworld of Hel where the sparse nature of the accompaniment becomes the medium that carries you along in its thrall.

An immersive experience in its own right, but also belonging to a wider, pagan folk-based renaissance that has attracted a devoted following worldwide, Folkesange answers a need that has become ever more pressing in turbulent times. A zeroing in on a resonance that is both intrinsic and enduring, it’s a rediscovery of personal grounding, and an experience that reaches beyond culture to remind us of a shared, deeply rooted inheritance. A tuning fork that binds the personal and the universal, Folkesange is a reminder that the most transcendent experiences are those closest to home.

(Words by Jonathan Selzer)

Herja is roughly translated to "wage war" and is one of the two new albums by Danheim (2018).
Herja contains Viking War Songs and Epic Viking Battle Songs. In contrast to the Fridr album, Herja is based on a darker atmosphere and are inspired by the struggles, battles and hostile times of the Viking Age.

Song list:
00:00 # Danheim - Hrungnir
03:14 # Danheim - Atgeir
06:16 # Danheim - Berserkir
10:08 # Danheim - Feigr
13:35 # Danheim - Fimbulvetr
17:55 # Danheim - Fjolsvin
21:29 # Danheim - Forn Elding
25:21 # Danheim - Framganga
28:36 # Danheim - Gungnir
35:00 # Danheim - Skjoldborg
38:17 # Danheim - Surt
41:48 # Danheim - Ulfhednar
46:03 # Danheim - Valfothr

[Your Old Comrade]

Lyrics are from Sigerdrivamål (Norwegian: Sigrdrífumál) or Brynhildarljóð which is a heroic poem from The Older Edda; it is the first of the poems in the cycle about Sigurd Fåvnesbane.

It teaches us of both healing, shamanism, and the carving and importance of runes, especially in stanza 11.

In stanza 11 we see the word "Læknir" - games. We do not have an exact description of which knowledge and qualities it may have had in Norse society. But Greinruner might have been used and carved to treat wounds or diseases.

The complete poem is written in a new-fashioned way, depicts a meeting between Sigurd and the Valkyrie Sigerdriva. Sigurd rides through a ring of fire to free a human being who is bound inside. The woman is Sigerdriva, who is struck by sleep magic by Odin. As a thank you for Sigurd's help, she inaugurates him in the magic of runic art.

[Cybele]

[Your Old Comrade]

While originally being created as a Nordic hymn, the song's context fits for both Scandinavia and The North alike.