Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Norton, Lillian.

See Nordica, Lillian.

Norvo, Red [Norville, Kenneth]

(b Beardstown, IL, 31 March 1908; d Santa Monica, CA, 6 April 1999). American jazz xylophonist and vibraphonist. After touring with a marimba band in the late 1920s he joined Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. Mildred Bailey, the singer in the band, became his first wife, and from 1936 to 1939 they led a small orchestra in New York. Norvo joined Benny Goodman’s sextet in 1944, at which time he changed permanently to the vibraphone. He was a soloist with Woody Herman’s First Herd (1946), and he toured with Billie Holiday. During the 1950s he led trios with guitar and double bass, one of which was an outstanding cool-jazz ensemble with Tal Farlow and Charles Mingus (1950–51). In 1959 he toured there with Goodman. He toured there again in 1968 and 1969, but during the 1960s and 70s he worked mainly in Nevada and California. Several albums with famous swing musicians announced his return to the international arena, and in the 1980s he toured Europe regularly.

In the early 1930s, with Whiteman and later with his own ensembles, Norvo proved himself an exceptional improviser on the xylophone, a previously neglected instrument in jazz. He usually played the vibraphone without vibrato, almost like a xylophone. His improvising, strongly influenced by Teddy Wilson’s piano style, suffered an occasional rhythmic stiffness at fast tempos, but was outstanding on such jazz ballads as Ghost of a Chance (1945, Baronet), recorded during a concert at Town Hall in New York. As a bandleader Norvo preferred delicate sounds. In the 1930s he led a drummerless sextet (trumpet, tenor saxophone, clarinet, xylophone, guitar, double bass) and an orchestra noted for its subtle approach to swing. In 1936–7 this orchestra specialized in the performance of highly praised arrangements by Eddie Sauter, in particular Remember (1937, Bruns.), which has an outstanding solo by Norvo. Norvo later brought his concern for clarity and restraint to the trio with Farlow and Mingus, as may be heard on Move (1950, Dis.). Among the leading musicians of the swing era, he was unusually successful in making a transition to the bop style.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.T. Simon: The Big Bands (New York, 1967, enlarged 2/1971, 4/1981)

A. Shaw: The Street that Never Slept: New York’s Fabled 52nd Street (New York, 1971/R1977 as 52nd Street: the Street of Jazz)

W. Balliett: ‘The Music is More Important’, Ecstasy at the Onion (New York, 1971), 194–211; repr. in Improvising: Sixteen Jazz Musicians and their Art (New York, 1977), 113–35

R. Stewart: ‘Red Norvo: a Tale of a Pioneer’, Jazz Masters of the Thirties (New York, 1972/R), 71–9

S. Woolley: ‘Red Norvo: Interview’, Cadence, ii/1 (1976–7), 3–5

J. McDonough: ‘Red Norvo: a Man for All Eras’, Down Beat, xliv/18 (1977), 16

S. Klett: ‘Red Norvo: Interview’, Cadence, v/7 (1979), 5–8, 10–11, 16 only

L. Tomkins: ‘Happy Again with the Trio: Red Norvo’, Crescendo International, xx/4 (1981), 22–3

B. Lylloff: ‘An Interview with Red Norvo’, Percussive Notes, xxxi/1 (1992), 42ff

Oral history material in US-NEij

BARRY KERNFELD

Norway

(Nor. Norge).

Country in Scandinavia. The kingdom of Norway came under Danish rule in 1380; the Norwegians seized independence and wrote a new constitution in 1814, but the Kiel treaty forged a union with Sweden in the same year. In 1905 Norway again became a sovereign state.

The oldest archaeological finds of musical objects are bronze lurs (long curved trumpets probably used in cult processions or for signalling) from 1500–500 bce, found both at Revheim in the west and Brandbu in the east, and bone flutes. Wooden musical instruments were found in the excavation of Viking ships dating from around 850 ce. A lyra-shaped harp from Numedal and a sheep-bone fipple flute from Bergen survive from the 14th century. Wood carvings in stave churches of the Middle Ages depict the ancient Norse harp, apparently a kind of lyre, and a sculpture in Nidaros Cathedral (Trondheim) shows a fiddler with a string instrument, probably the old Norse fidla. The Edda, bard poems and the sagas mention the lur as a military instrument, and the fidla, gigia, harp, pipe and trumpet were the instruments of the leikarar (jongleurs).

I. Art music

II. Traditional music

ARVID O. VOLLSNES (I), REIDAR SEVÅG/JAN-PETTER BLOM (II)

Norway

I. Art music

Christianity, introduced in the 10th century, brought Gregorian chant to Norway. The celebration of the life of King Olav (d 1030), the national saint, created a new liturgy and brought pilgrims and church music from central Europe. Olav’s cathedral (begun 1075) in Nidaros (now Trondheim) was an important centre; the archbishopric of Nidaros, established in 1152/3, comprised Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faeroe Islands, the Orkneys and the Western Isles of Scotland. A manuscript of around 1230 from the Orkneys contains the Hymn to St Magnus, the earliest example of polyphonic music (two parts, mostly parallel 3rds) from Scandinavia; no evidence has been found of polyphony used in Norway itself during the Middle Ages. During the 12th century cathedral schools teaching Gregorian chant were established in Trondheim, Oslo, Bergen and Stavanger. The Missale nidrosiense (Copenhagen, 1519) and the Brevarium nidrosiense (Paris, 1519) suggest that the Norwegian liturgy was fully elaborated by the end of the 15th century. With the arrival of the Reformation in Norway (1537), much diminishing the importance of Nidaros, and with the king, court and capital far away in Copenhagen, Norway lacked a major centre of cultural activity. Nevertheless some cities thrived; as fish, pelts and timber were exported from medieval times and mining was established in the 16th and 17th centuries, communications improved with central Europe, the Netherlands and England. The larger cities employed organists from the 14th century and municipal musicians by around 1600. The latter worked in large districts and could earn considerable income by sub-contracting their responsibilities. The king tended to bestow these privileges on his own musicians in Copenhagen, who then brought Danish, German and Dutch musical traditions to Norwegian cities. The Danish-Norwegian kings themselves visited Norway infrequently; their officials there were mostly Danish, though some Norwegians were educated in Denmark and came back as civil servants or clergy. Few Norwegian composers are known from this period; Caspar Ecchienus (fl late 16th century) and Johann Nesenus (d 1604, active in Göttingen) are among the earliest Norwegian composers of polyphonic music known by name. Most public musical events took place in churches and used music by foreign composers.

During the 18th century various private societies were formed for entertainment, including theatre and music. Members performed themselves, sometimes with visiting musicians. The oldest such society still in existence is the Musikselskab Harmonien in Bergen, its orchestra (now the Bergen PO) established in 1765. J.D. Berlin, whose family were active in Trondheim as performers and teachers, wrote the first Danish-Norwegian music textbook, Musikalske elementer (Trondheim, 1744).

The brief independence of 1814 encouraged the movement for a national Norwegian culture. The local traditions of the inhabitants of the mountains and valleys, including their music, became the subject of intense interest for the upper classes. Depictions of national costumes were popular, poetry and stories were written down, songs transcribed and traditional fiddlers invited to the capital. Some foreign composers, among them G.J. Vogler, began to quote or imitate traditional Norwegian music in their works; Waldemar Thrane was the first Norwegian to do this, in his Singspiel Fjeldeventyret (‘Mountain Adventure’), which was also the first Norwegian opera. Enthusiastically received, it had its première in 1825 in Christiania (now Oslo), and was given in Bergen and Trondheim soon afterwards. One of the most visible champions, in Norway and abroad, for Norwegian culture was the virtuoso violinist and composer Ole Bull. He used traditional music in his compositions and improvisations, gave concerts together with musicians playing the Hardanger fiddle and dancers in national costume, and established in Bergen the Nationale Scene (1850), the first theatre to use Norwegian rather than Danish as its main language.

During the first half of the 19th century there was no academy of music or conservatory in Norway; the only music education available to the general public was undertaken by the bands of the military services. Otherwise, young musicians studied abroad, some in Paris – among them Thomas Tellefsen, a pupil and friend of Chopin – and some at the Leipzig conservatory (established 1843), notably Halfdan Kjerulf, Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendsen, all of whom later developed a strongly national Norwegian idiom in their compositions. From the 1840s there was a steady increase in the number of professional musicians and musical organizations, and a great movement in the founding of male choirs, beginning among students and spreading to artisans, clerks and labourers. Every notable Norwegian composer of the period wrote for male choir. Later in the century mixed choirs also flourished and there were large choral festivals; nationalist ideology permeated the choral movement and its music, adding force to the country’s slow struggle towards freedom.

Beginning in 1841 the musician and scholar L.M. Lindeman published a number of books of piano or vocal arrangements of traditional Norwegian tunes he had collected. These became a major source for composers. Kjerulf, Grieg and Svendsen arranged and quoted the melodies and dances in their works; they also developed their own idiomatic uses of the music’s characteristic tonal, melodic and rhythmic features, and the stylistic traits of the resulting compositions came in turn to be regarded as typically Norwegian. Grieg was inspired by the nationalist enthusiasm of Ole Bull and of the young composer Rikard Nordraak (who composed the Norwegian national anthem, ‘Ja, vi elsker dette landet’). Grieg’s Norwegian ‘colour’ appealed not only to Norwegian audiences but to those abroad, helped by the Romantic notion of his music stemming from the exotic and unspoilt country on the border of Europe. Towards the century’s end the composer Johan Peter Selmer was noted for making his own use of the Norwegian idiom. Music in Norway was also responding to other influences. Agathe Grøndahl (also a well-known pianist) wrote songs and piano music reminiscent of an earlier Romantic style. Christian Sinding’s chamber music and symphonic works, and Gerhard Schjelderup’s operas, earned their reputations abroad. By the end of the century improvements in church music were evident, helped by Lindeman’s establishment in 1883 of an organ school in Christiania which in 1894 became a fully-fledged conservatory.

Around the time of World War I, while a number of older composers such as Johan Halvorsen were continuing in a Romantic tradition, the younger generation returned from Berlin and Paris with ideas on different kinds of modernism. Some wished to keep contact with the national musical idiom but without slavishly following Grieg’s example. This tension between the modern and the national resulted in some interesting music between the wars. Among the leading radicals were Fartein Valen, a lyrical atonalist, and Pauline Hall, who began as a kind of Impressionist; neither ever wrote music that could be called characteristically Norwegian, whereas Ludvig Irgens-Jensen used traditional and modal idioms. David Monrad Johansen, Harald Saeverud, Geirr Tveitt and Klaus Egge also included traditional elements in their works; Eivind Groven collected traditional melodies, mostly Hardanger fiddle tunes, and integrated them into his compositions.

Between the world wars music life in Norway changed rapidly. Music became part of the curriculum in all schools and a score of school bands and state and municipal orchestras were organized. Recorded music and radio spread the influence of jazz and popular music of Anglo-American origin, partly at the expense of German waltzes and operetta, but also at that of ‘classical’ concert music. Young composers after World War II rejected Romantic music, and inasmuch as the Nazis had made sinister use of elements of traditional Norwegian culture, ‘national’ music was not in vogue. Composers went to Paris or Darmstadt to study. Various types of neo-classicism were dominant, and a few composers tried 12-note techniques. From around 1960 influences also came from eastern Europe, particularly Poland. The resulting pluralism persisted through the rest of the century. In the 1950s a revitalization of church music began. Composers central to this were Knut Nystedt and Egil Hovland. Both were also noted for their secular music, and together with the radical Finn Mortensen and the more moderate Johan Kvandal they opened the way for modernist tendencies coming from the rest of Europe and the USA. The Norsk Jazzforbund was founded in Oslo in 1953. Maj and Gunnar Sønstevold were the leading composers of film music, the latter also a champion of electric instruments and electronic music. Arne Nordheim won acclaim for his multimedia work and music for television and the stage. Edvard Fliflet Braein and Antonio Bibalo were among the most prominent composers of theatre music, both enjoying success abroad.

Around 1970 some modernist composers such as Kåre Kolberg and Alfred Janson embarked on a ‘new simplicity’, joined by younger composers including Ragnar Søderlind. The teachings of Finn Mortensen brought out different styles in Magne Hegdahl, Olav Anton Thommesen and Lasse Thoresen. Among the younger generation, Håkon Berge (b 1954), Cecilie Ore (b 1954), Rolf Wallin (b 1957), Nils Henrik Asheim (b 1960), Asbjørn Schaathun (b 1961) and Gisle Kverndokk (b 1967) have won recognition abroad.

From the early 1970s the government pursued an active policy on music. A new pedagogical structure was set up, comprising every age from pre-school to adult. Most communities have their own music schools, and each region its conservatory and teachers’ college that includes music education. The State Academy of Music was established in 1973. Music education and research at university level have broadened, and music libraries and collections (including those of traditional music) improved. The national government funds the symphony orchestras of Oslo and Bergen and the National Opera (established 1959, based in Oslo), and joins the county governments in supporting a further five orchestras, a few contemporary music ensembles and a score of festivals. Some smaller groups and chamber orchestras are funded by the Norwegian Cultural Council. NorConcert (founded in 1967 as Rikskonsertene) is a state agency responsible for producing and supporting concerts and other musical events all over the country, giving priority to music for young people and producing teaching materials in coordination with concerts. The Norwegian Music Information Centre documents and distributes Norwegian music, including scores and recordings.

See also Bergen; Oslo; Trondheim.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.G. Conradi: Kortfattet historisk oversigt over musikens udvikling og nuvaerende standpunkt i Norge (Christiania, 1878)

A. Lindhjem: Norges orgler og organister (Skien, 1916, suppl. 1924)

O.M. Sandvik: Norsk kirkemusik og dens kilder (Christiania, 1918)

O.M. Sandvik and G. Schjelderup, eds.: Norges musikhistorie (Christiania, 1921)

O.M. Sandvik: Norsk koralhistorie (Oslo, 1930)

I.E. Kindem: Den norske operas historie (Oslo, 1941)

K.F. Brøgger: Trekk av kammermusikkens historie her hjemme (Oslo, 1943)

H.J. Hurum: Musikken under okkupasjonen (Oslo, 1946)

A. Hernes: Impuls og tradisjon i norsk musikk, 1500–1800 (Oslo, 1952) [with Fr. summary]

I. Bengtsson, ed.: Modern nordisk musik (Stockholm, 1957)

K. Lange and A. Østvedt: Norwegian Music (London, 1958)

Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid från vikingatid till reformationstid, ed. J. Granlund (Malmö, 1967)

B. Wallner: Vår tids musik i Norden: från 20-tal till 60-tal [Nordic music of today: from the 1920s to the 1960s] (Stockholm, Copenhagen and Malmö, 1968)

J. Dorfmüller: Studien zur norwegischen Klaviermusik der ersten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Marburg, 1969)

N. Grinde: Norsk musikkhistorie: hovedlinjer i norsk musikkliv gjennom 1000 år [Norwegian music history: an outline of Norwegian music life in the last 1000 years] (Oslo, 1971, 2/1993; Eng. trans., 1991, as A History of Norwegian Music)

K. Lange: Norwegian Music: a Survey (Oslo, 1971)

J.H. Yoell: The Nordic Sound (Oslo, 1974)

H. Herresthal: Norwegische Musik von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Oslo, 1978)

J.E. Brekke: ‘Om nokre kjenneteikn ved arbeidarkorrorsla i Norge’ [Concerning some characteristics of workers' choral societies in Norway], SMN, viii (1982), 125–41

C.M.H. Jaeger: A Survey of Notable Composers of Organ Music in Norway with Particular Emphasis upon the Organ Works of Egil Hovland (diss., U. of Washington, 1984)

K. Michelsen: ‘Musikkbibliotekene in Norge’, SMN, xi (1984), 81–9

P.A. Kjeldsberg: Piano i Norge: ‘et uundvaerligt instrument’ [The piano in Norway: an indispensable instrument] (Oslo, 1985)

C. Dahm: Kvinner komponerer: ni portretter av norske kvinnelige komponister i tiden 1840–1930 [Women composers: nine portraits of Norwegian female composers 1840–1930] (Oslo, 1987)

S.J. Kolnes: Norsk orgelkultur: instrument og miljø frå mellomalderen til i dag [Norwegian organ culture: instruments and context from the Middle Ages up to today] (Oslo, 1987)

B. Stendahl: Jazz, hot & swing: jazz i Norge 1920–1940 (Oslo, 1987)

A.S. Bertelsen: ‘Salmesangstriden i Norge på 1800–tallet: om melodiform og estetiske prinsipper’ [The 19th-century debate on hymn singing in Norway: rhythm and aesthetic principles], SMN, xvi (1990), 141–59

B. Stendahl and J. Berg: Sigarett stomp: jazz i Norge 1940–1950 (Oslo, 1991)

K. Habbestad and K. Skyllstad, eds.: Norsk samtiddsmusikk gjennom 25 år / 25 Years of Contemporary Norwegian Music (Oslo, 1992)

E. Kolleritsch: ‘Jazzarchive in Norwegen und Schweden’, Jazzforschung/Jazz Research, xxiv (1992), 175–81

H. Herresthal: ‘From Grieg to Lasse Thoresen: an Essay on Norwegian Musical Identity’, Nordic Sounds, ii (1993), 3–9

H. Herresthal: Med spark i gulvet og quinter i bassen: musikkalske og politiske bilder fra nasjonalromantikkens gjennombrudd i Norge [With a kick on the floor and a 5th in the bass: musical and political pictures from the national Romantic breakthrough in Norway] (Oslo, 1993)

H. Herresthal: ‘Nordlichter: norwegische Komponisten nach Grieg’, Fono Forum, x (1993), 28–34

S.J. Kolnes: Norsk orgel-register 1328–1992 (Førdesfjorden, 1993)

E. Ruud: ‘Musikkterapi i Norge’ [Music therapy in Norway], Nordisk tidsskrift for musikkterapi, ii/2 (1993), 29–34

H. Herresthal: ‘100 år med musikk i Den Gamle Logen’ [100 years of music in the Old Lodge], Et hus i Europa, ed. D. Andersen (Oslo, 1994), 86–147

H. Herresthal: ‘Norsk kirkemusikk i nyere tid’ [Norwegian music in modern times], Norsk Kirkemusikk 1994, 7–20

H. Herresthal and L. Reznicek: Rhapsodie norvégienne: Norsk musikk i Frankrike på Edvard Griegs tid (Oslo, 1994)

R. Kvideland: Singen als Widerstand in Norwegen während des Zweiten Weltkriegs [Singing as a form of resistance in Norway during the Second World War] (Essen, 1994)

A.J.K. Lysdahl: Sangen har lysning: Studentersang i Norge på 1800–tallet [Songs like lightning: student singing in Norway in the 19th century] (Oslo, 1995)

R. Wallin: ‘Wired for Sound: Electro-Acoustic Music in Norway’, Nordic Sounds, i (1995), 6–10

H. Herresthal: ‘Panorama de la música y de la educación musical en Norway’, Música y educación: revista trimestral de pedagogía musical, ix/1 (1996), 73–80

M. Kelkel: ‘Les héritiers de Grieg’, Grieg et Paris, ed. H. Herresthal and D. Pistone (Caen, 1996), 221–31

A. Vollsnes: ‘L'influence de la musique française sur la musique norvégienne au début du XXe siècle’, ibid., 199–210

Norway