To: "VOCALIST" <vocalist>
Subject: Re: Senior Recital Reperiore--Scandinavian rep.
Date sent: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 14:17:43 -0500
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>


I am of Danish heritage for the most part.
> I would give anything to sing in Danish. Does anyone know of good Danish
> repitoir? > Jenie Madvig
>

I think doing something "different" for your recital is a wonderful idea.
Since your background is Danish, it would probably be most appropriate for
you to do some of this music, as opposed to, say, Spanish. It'll be easier
to get your pronunciation down, plus, one's voice is usually naturally
suited to the music of his/her own background.

I've sung a lot of Scandinavian music, including some Danish. Here are some
ideas:

Anything by Carl Nielsen. esp. "Saenk kun dit Hoved, du Blomst"
Peter Heise. esp. "Histude er koldt" and "Igennem bogeskoven"

Grieg. Though he's Norwegian, some of his songs are written to the Danish
words by H. C. Andersen. "Jeg elsker Dig!" and "To brune Ojne"

There's an anthology of Scandinavian music you can look for:
The Aksel Schiotz Anthology of Nordic Solo Songs. There are 5 volumes, one
for each country.

One thing I should mention, though, if you've never sung in Danish. It's a
terrible language to sing in!! I had a lot of difficulty with some of the
consonants, plus the fact that ALL vowels appear to be reduced (sound like
"uh") at ALL times.

Swedish and Norwegian are very similar languages, though, and there is a lot
of wonderful repertoire from each of these countries.

Then for something still more different: there's Finnish. The Finns have
spectacular music repertoire for voice. It's notably Scandinavian, and yet,
it's quite different from the other countries. The language is completely
unrelated, but as it happens, it's perfectly phonetic, which makes it very
easy to learn and to sing!! Finnish music can be found in the first
anthology listed, as well as an anthology of Finnish only songs--
"Suomalaisia Yksinlauluja", 2 volumes, published by Fazer. Composers to
look for are: Oskar Merikanto, Toivo Kuula, Yrjo Kilpinen. Jean Sibelius
is a Finn, but most of his music is written to Swedish, as well as German,
lyrics. And Kilpinen wrote to a lot of German lyrics as well... BTW, case
you hadn't guessed, Finnish is my background...

I'm sure Classical Vocal Reprints could find any of this music for you, but
I also have copies of everything I've listed.

Hope this is of some help. Let me know if I can help in any other way.

Alleson Aering
Montreal
kandahar-at-ican.net