In a monastery in Central Jutland, in an old log house in the middle of Oslo, and in the upper storey of a cottage on a family farm, the hardanger fiddle player Anne Hytta has made new, ancient primordial music of light and shadows throughout the day.
Alone with her hardanger fiddles, Hytta has shaped the music, in different rooms and different landscapes, into dreamy tones of meditative and evocative songs. The music is characterized by pulsating rhythms from the old hardingfela tradition, and expansive soundscapes where the hardingfela's unmistakable overtone-rich sound shines. The result can now be heard on her new solo album Gjennom dagen (“Through the Day”), released on OK World.
Intimate and Meditative
“In working with the music on the album, I have tried to be open to the moment, to feel the moods in me and around me, to listen to the sound of the instrument and trust my own intuition. This has led to this album, which is a collection of intimate and meditative pieces for hardanger fiddle,” says fiddle player Anne Hytta, who received the Spellemann Prize for her previous solo album Strimur.
On the album, Hytta uses three fiddles that are tuned in three different voicings, providing different sounds and moods: the bright, dreamy sound of bell-quiet on an old, overtone-rich fiddle from 1860; the powerful, insistent yet understated sound of a fiddle that Hytta’s fiddle teacher, Einar Løndal, built in the 1980s; and the evocative, dark sound of gorrlaus on a 12-string Chinese fiddle, converted into a hardanger fiddle here in Norway (“gorrlaus” is a kind of tuning, originating in Setesdal, notable for the low tuning of the bass string to F instead of the usual A or G).
Power in vulnerability
A musician sitting alone with an instrument of wood, bone, mother of pearl and horsehair playing for an audience and dancers, is not as commonplace as it once was. Among all the possibilities that exist for music practice and music communication today, today’s lone fiddle player is both archaic and hypermodern.
“I experience that my own energy arises when I sit completely alone and play for people, it feels like the vulnerability of the sound waves from a single fiddle string gives the music its own power. It has strength,” says Hytta.
Release concert
The album was recorded a few spring days in Gamle Aker church, accompanied by Oslo's own soundscape of small birds, distant human voices and the faint rustle of endless movement. On Saturday 26 March, she will play a release concert with a performance of Gjennom dagen on the National Stage in Oslo, on which most of the music on the album is based. In the performance, Hytta plays music in different tonal landscapes, with lighting design, video and stories included with the music.
- - - Anne Hytta (b. 1974) is an award-winning hardanger fiddle player and composer from Sauland in Telemark, living in Oslo. The old repertoire for hardanger fiddle is the starting point for her musical work today. She works as a soloist and ensemble musician in various contexts from medieval music to improv and contemporary music. Hytta received the Spellemann Prize in 2015 and 2017 for the albums short stories with the trio Slagr, and the solo album Strimur. In 2018, Hytta was named Folk Musician of the Year during the event Folkelarm. Folk musician and composer Anne Hytta continues to impress, and not least surprisingly, with her determined innovative search for, among other things, the soul of Hardingfela.
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