Travelling Songs

Scoring/subtitle:
for folk singers and ensemble
Year of composition:
2012
Instrumentation:
soprano, folk singers, violin, viola, cello, piano
Duration:
20 min
Commissioned by:
Waterline Barents
Premiere:
2012-02-15, Grenselandmuseet
Audio:

excerpt 1 (Anne-Lise B.+ singers from Arkhangelsk)

excerpt 2

excerpt 3 (singer from Nenets)

excerpt 4 (singer from Nenets)

excerpt 5 (Anne-Lise Berntsen)

Details:

Fortellinger på vandring / Travelling Songs are built around the folk music material provided and performed by singers from the Suzomje group (Arkhangelsk) and a Paraskovya Viucheiskaya, singer from Naryan Mar (Nenets autonomous Okrug, Russia).

Nils Henrik A. was invited to the project by Anne-Lise Berntsen. In 2009 they travelled to attend the Nenets song festival "Sava syo" in Naryan-Mar. Here they met and heard singer Paraskovya Vyucheyskaya from the Neney Syo group in Krasnoe settlement.

Three songs became the starting point for the composition. All songs are related to travelling. 1) a song of a Pomor fisherman who every year makes his way by land and by sea to the Eastern coast of Norway 2) A song of a Nenets man, who all his life nomads from one season to another; 3) a favorite song of Norwegians that moved to the Ribachiy Peninsula in the 19th century and their descendants who met with stern tests in Stalin's time.

The premiere took place in 2012 , as a tour of Finnmark and Russia. Norwegian premiere: Kirkenes, Febr. 15, and Russian premiere in Arkhangelsk, Febr. 22. Naryan Mar: Febr. 22.

Images:
Travelling Songs ensemble
Paraskovya Viucheiskaya in front
Score:
NB noter
Press/media:

The Norwegian and the Russian audience equally well reacted to the musical project and noted its singularity, profoundness, harmonious combination of folk and classical music. [...]

It is very important for us that Nils Henrik used Pomeranian and Nenets folklores and gave a new life to them. His composition makes me and many of my countrymen remember our own childhood and forgotten melodies performed by our mothers. I saw tears in the eyes of many of my countrymen when they were listening Paraskovya Vyucheyskaya’s voice. But these were simultaneously tears of sadness and joy. Sadness, because many of Nenets had been separated from their home and families in the Soviet period and found themselves in boarding schools. Joy, because we could again listen to the native voice of the tundra, but in a new way "- said Valentina Zganich, Director of Ethnic cultural center of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

—  The Norwegian Barents Secratariat, Barents.no, 2012-03-30 ↗