In the Absence of the Avant-Garde - Atonality, Satire and De-Romanticisation in the Musical Life of Norway

Was Oslo too small a city, and the musical life of Norway too provincial in character, to absorb any avant-garde influences before 1950? This is the question triggered by the first performance of Fartein Valen’s Ave Maria in 1923, the Oslo première of the Threepenny Opera in 1930 and the 1948 version of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, with new music by Harald Sæverud. It is also the key question of this essay. It provides new insight into the contemporaneous prospects for radical musical ideas in Norway between 1920 and 1950 by discussing the circumstances and reception of these three events.