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Programme Note

Epithalamion for hardanger fiddle (2003)

The piece is commissioned by the Osa Festival, Voss in Norway. To begin with I decided that I would not come from abroad and force all possible and impossible tunes and strange urban behaviour on the fiddle. No, fiddlers like to play and I wanted Lars Underlid from Vågslid in Telemark to do exactly that.

Epithalamion begins with a folk-like figure, which, however, displaces itself microscopically in order to recreate what I hear in most folk music: that the music moves all the time while it also stands completely still. Yet, the urban fickle of mind sneaks in from time to time in the form of long enduring notes, and the result is that some refrains come to a stop.

One might sense that the theme from Bach’s Goldberg Variations is the fundament of the folk material in the piece - it has been through my own kntting machine - everything is real ho me made, as one would have said in Telemark.