Nordic Music Days

Nordic Music Days is the oldest ongoing collaboration among the Nordic countries: a festival for new Nordic music that was founded in 1888 and had its origins in existing musical collaboration. It is one of the oldest and best respected festivals for contemporary classical music in the world. The festival is unique in the respect that it is arranged by the composers themselves. Each year one of members, the national societies of composers, arranges the festival on behalf of the Council of Nordic Composers.

From the mid-nineteenth century, at regular intervals, song festivals were arranged where choirs from all over the North met. The repertoire was decidedly ‘national’ – one could say that when the Nordic countries were gathered there was a need to express national distinctiveness. But joint activities were arranged too, for example in 1929 when a choir of 1000 sang the Nordic cantata Song of the North, composed jointly by five composers – one from each Nordic country. The song festivals continued well into the first half of the twentieth century.

The first true “Nordic Music Days” was held in Copenhagen in 1888 and its main emphasis was on instrumental and orchestral music. This was to be a forum where Nordic composers could have their works performed, and the first festival presented works from Denmark, Norway and Sweden – among other ways in seven large-scale choral and orchestral concerts.

The next festivals were held in Stockholm in 1897, and in 1919 – again in Copenhagen, where among others Carl Nielsen, Jean Sibelius, Wilhelm Stenhammer and Johan Halvorsen conducted. The first time the festival was held in Helsinki was 1921, then it was held in Stockholm in 1927, in Helsinki again in 1932, and finally in Oslo in 1934. The Copenhagen 1938 festival was the last one before the outbreak of World War II.

After the war the Nordic composers’ societies joined forces to form the Nordic Council of Composers, which immediately after its establishment in 1946 assumed the main responsibility for Nordic Music Days. Since 1948 the festival has been held in turn in the Nordic capitals every other year. Until the 1970s the repertoire profile was still purely Nordic, but from 1974- 82 composers and works from a ‘guest country’ were invited: Poland in 1974, Canada in 1976, the GDR in 1978, the UK in 1980, and in 1982 France. After this it went back to being a festival exclusively for new Nordic music.

The programme for Nordic Music Days 2002 stuck to this recipe, but was pioneering in terms of its geographical placing. For the first time in the festival’s history the Nordic Music Days moved its venue outside the Nordic countries – to Berlin. Under the name “MAGMA” (the red-hot fluid masses in the interior of the earth) the festival opened a window on Nordic music in the European context.

Nordic Music Days 2016 takes place in Reykjavík, Iceland, from 29 September to 1 October. The festival will take place in Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre. The theme of the festival is INTEGRATION as we see the Nordic Music Days as an open platform for discussion and collaboration across gender, disciplines, cultures and borders. Our goal is to integrate a broader perspective of the new art music field, introducing more theoretical discourse within the NMD Conference and facilitating through the NMD Messe a meeting point between the international new art music industry (publishers, labels and journals) and Nordic composers and performers. The festival opens with an orchestra concert of Iceland Symphony Orchestra featuring works by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Anna Þorvaldsdóttir among others.

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Wikipedia