ABSTRACT
In the first half of the twentieth century, composers of more or less distinctive national styles emerged in the northern-European countries—Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. In the nineteenth century, the Norwegian movement toward national independence was reflected in the composition of patriotic songs and in the absorption of Norwegian folk music into art-music composition, the fusion of national and late Romantic styles having come to fruition in the music of Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendsen. In the field of Norwegian folk-music research, the pioneering work of L. M. Lindeman, from 1848 on, was continued in the folk-song collections of Sande, Elling, Eggen, and Sandvik after 1900, their work serving as an important source for twentieth-century Norwegian composers. While the followers of Grieg continued in the more traditional Romantic style well into the twentieth century, others attempted to synthesize authentic Norwegian folk music with more modern styles and techniques. After a brief period of impressionist influences on the music of such composers as Alf Hurum and Arvid Kleven in the 1920s, more modernistic tendencies modelled on folk sources became evident in the music of Bjarne Brustad (b. 1895), David Monrad Johansen (1888–1974), Harald Saeverud (b. 1897), and Klaus Egge (b. 1906). Because of his use of more dissonant linear writing in the twelve-tone idiom, Fartein Valen (1887–1952) remained somewhat isolated in Norway. Despite the individual approaches of these composers, their national musical characteristics remained prevalent through World War II.
