Folkeraadet

Parliament

Incidental music to the play by Gunnar Heiberg

(Norwegian Suite)

DCW 7
RT I/5
DCE 7

Composer: Frederick Delius
Author: Gunnar Heiberg

The incidental music to the satirical play Folkeraadet (The Council of the People) by the Norwegian playwright Gunnar Heiberg (1857-1929) was composed for a performance in Christiania (Oslo) in 1897. It consists of a prelude to Act I, three interludes, and two brief passages of melodrama to accompany specific spoken passages. The music caused uproar in Norway because of the satirical presentation of the national anthem, Ja, vi elsker, in the prelude (RL, 61). The unaltered score, without the melodrama passages, was subsequently retitled Norwegian Suite. While it was performed in parts at various times, it was only in 1974 that it was heard as a complete suite.

Composition: 1897.

Instrumentation:

Orchestra: picc.fl., fl., 2 ob., 2 cl., 2 fg., 4 cor., 2 tr. in F, 3 trb., tb., timp., gr.c., cym., s.dr., str.

Sources

Notes

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, short score, sketch, fragment]

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/2/11/3. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Sketch material

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, short score]

Sketches for the two melodramas in ink and pencil, with some dialogue added by Delius in Norwegian.

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/1/39. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Autograph full score

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, autograph, score]

Title page: There is no title page, but the cover bears a label, in erroneous German, in the composer's autograph:
'Folkeraadet'
Suite für Orchester
Zwischen acts Musik zu Gunnar Heiberg's Satirischem Drama/Folkeraadet

The first page of the score is headed:
"Norwegian Suite"
Vorspiel Iste Akt
Frederick Delius 1897

GB-Lbl (British Library, London) MS Mus. 1745/1/13. Link to external resource

British Library source record

Eric Fenby's full score

[Classification: notated music, manuscript, copy, score]

Editor: Thomas Beecham

This is a copy of the complete incidental music in ink in the hand of Eric Fenby, with Beecham's markings in blue (third movement) and those of Eric Fenby throughout in red ink, the latter completed in 1984 at the request of the Delius Trust.

Delius Trust Accession 218.

Collected edition

[Classification: notated music, print, score]

Editors: Eric Fenby, Robert Threlfall

London 1990.

The collected edition draws on the autograph score, incorporating Beecham's editing of the third movement and some markings by Per Winge and Alfred Hertz, conductors of the 1897 première and the 1899 London performance respectively.

Performances

Documents

Last changed 2020-10-26T14:17:07+00:00

18 October 1897	Christiania Theatre, Christiania (conductor: Per Winge).
30 May 1899	St James's Hall , London (conductor: Alfred Hertz).
12 January 1972	London (conductor: Ashley Lawrence). Broadcast 29 January 1974.

22 September 1897	from Gunnar Heiberg to Frederick Delius (LC I , pp. 119-20)
16 October 1897	To Jelka Rosen (LC I, pp. 120-1)
20 October 1897	To Jelka Rosen (LC I , p. 122)
22 October 1897	To Jelka Rosen (LC I , pp. 122-3)