The rehabilitation of Geirr Tveitt

The ongoing rehabilitation of Geirr Tveitt’s orchestral catalogue represents a victory of aesthetic value over political association. Tveitt’s output, much of it destroyed in a 1970 house fire, is defined by its modal (music based on scales other than major and minor, often derived from folk traditions) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(music)] complexity, which transcends the simple nationalism of his contemporaries. Current revivals of "A Hundred Hardanger Tunes" show a composer who used the Hardanger fiddle’s resonance not as a folk ornament, but as a structural basis for twentieth-century orchestration. The focus is now correctly placed on his harmonic innovation, allowing the music to speak beyond the shadow of his mid-century ideological choices and return to the international repertoire on its own technical merits.