Grieg Now! IGS International Conference and Workshop 2019

With Edvard Grieg as a starting point, the international conference and workshop Grieg Now! aims to bring performers and researchers together and provide an opportunity for sharing knowledge, experiences and reflections on his music and influences on music and culture in our times.  The event will include the following areas: Musicology (key note speakers, paper presentations), Artistic Research (lecture demonstrations) and Performance (workshops, Master classes and concerts) and will combine academic lectures, practical demonstrations, master classes, individual teaching sessions, discussion forums, and performances.

Invited guests: 

Master class with Oslo String Quartet: Geir Inge Lotsberg, Liv Hilde Klokk, Magnus Boye Hansen, Øystein Sonstad

Keynote speaker: Benedict Taylor, Director of Research, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh

Respondent and seminar leader: Kofi Agawu, Professor, City University of New York, Princeton University

Participating staff from the Grieg Academy and Grieg Research Centre:
Ricardo Odriozola (violin), Signe Bakke (piano), Torleif Torgersen (piano), Einar Røttingen (piano), John Ehde (cello), Hilde H. Sveen (voice), Njål Sparbo (voice), Dániel Péter Biró (composition), Arnulf Mattes (musicology). 

26 October 2019, 14.00–16.00, Grieg Academy, Gunnar Sævigs sal
Open research workshop: Crossing agencies? Composition/transcription since Grieg 
Taking Grieg’s 19 Norwegian Folk-songs (1896), Op. 66 and Peasant's dances, Op. 72 (1903) as a point of departure, this workshop focuses on the practice, aesthetics, and ethics of composition drawing on collected and transcribed folk music material. Grieg’s agency as a composer, committed to the retrieval and recognition of native traditions and orally transmitted idioms, has influenced modern, ethnologically informed approaches to collecting and appropriating folk music (such as Bartók’s). A major issue for Grieg was adapting transcribed renditions of folk tunes in a way, which did not violate the ethical integrity of the original voices. Grieg’s legitimation for his ‘arrangements’ was to pay tribute to the beauty and sincerity of his native folk tradition. In the workshop, the aim is to revisit Grieg’s mode of adapting, translating, transforming folk idiom compared with other approaches based on transcription of oral traditions. How could music analysis reflect the ethnomusicological understanding of such musical works? And how could or should processes from transcription to composition being made transparent in new ways for current readers and listeners?  

Opening presentations by 
SiIje Solberg (Hardanger fiddle), 
Dániel Péter Biró (composition),
Kofi Agawu,
and Arnulf Mattes (musicology)

Performance workshops
The performance workshops will be open to a limited number of active participants. Individuals or groups may apply within these instrumental categories: solo piano, violin & piano, cello & piano, piano trio, string quartet, voice & piano. 

Program
See attachment below

Organizers
The International Edvard Grieg Society
a non-profit organisation, aiming to create a worldwide network of scholars, performers and music listeners who cherish the music of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.

The Grieg Academy - Department of Music (UiB)
The Grieg Academy – Department of Music was established at the University of Bergen in 1995, and is now one of three departments at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD). Our profile is modelled on internationally recognised performing arts environments (classical, jazz, folk music), composition, music therapy, musicology and music education.

Grieg Research Centre (UiB)
The Centre for Grieg Research at University of Bergen does research on Edvard Grieg's works, his historical importance and cultural relevance in the past and the present. The centre's goal is further to contribute to international research on the diverse traditions in Norwegian music after Grieg and the close exchanges between regional music and international currents.
  
Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen
Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen, Ole Bull Museum Lysøen and Harald Sæverud Museum Siljustøl, the homes of three of Bergen's greatest composers and artists through the times – Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull and Harald Sæverud – are a part of KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes. KODE is one of the largest museums for art, craft, design and music in the Nordic countries.