The starting point for the project is the legendary fiddle tune Graatarslagjet, from Bjerkreim in Rogaland, attributed to the Fuglestad brothers. Gråtaslagjet is the wedding march that became a lament. The story goes that the bridal party was crossing the ice on Ørsdalsvannet when it broke, and the entire party sank beneath the water and drowned. Alone on the water’s surface, the fiddle floated, and from it sprang the mournful tones of Graatarslagjet.

Runesdatter has invited four composers to create new larger works for Song Circus and hardingfele master Britt Pernille Frøholm: Ole Henrik Moe, Tyler Futrell, Therese Birkelund Ulvo, and Nils Henrik Asheim. Graatarslagjet can be performed both as an acoustic concert and as part of a scenic installation, created in collaboration with visual artist Tove Kommedal.

«»Everything that was not. Situations that have been and situations that never were. The opportunities they had but did not take. Everything they wanted but did not manage, and all they were supposed to do but did not accomplish. Times that were, the time they had, and the time they lost. Time. Relationships that did not develop, everything that went unsaid, that which cannot be said, and all that was not done. Everything that exists, everything that could have been learned, everything that was waiting. Everything one could have done, everything one could have said – and everything one should have been. Warm, painful, and wonderful. Suddenly over.» — Therese Birkelund Ulvo

Composer Tyler Futrell has chosen to set Tarjei Vesaas’s poem, Reisa, to music:

Vi dukka endeleg fram att
av natt-skodda.
Ingen kjende einannan no.
Sansen var mist på ferda.
Ingen spurda heller krevjande:
Hven er du?

Svara kunne vi ikkje,
vi hadde mist
namna våre.

Langt borte dundra det
frå eit ubendig hjarte
som stadig var i arbeid.
Vi lydde utan å skjønne.
Vi var komne
lenger enn langt.

English translation:

We finally emerged from the night fog. No one recognized one another now. The senses were lost on the journey. No one asked, either, demanding: Who are you?

We could not answer, we had lost our names.

Far away, it thundered from an untamed heart that was still at work. We listened without understanding. We had come further than far.

Meet Liv Runesdatter and Britt Pernille Frøholm and hear about Graatarslagjet on NRK «Spillerom»!

««a performance that simply beggared belief, impossible to grasp its intricacies, leaving one simply to surrender to its inscrutable marvels, lost in a reverie of bowed, blown, pitched and aspirated friction.’

‘So complete was this impression that it didn’t remotely feel as if Soar II had actually finished, but was simply continuing on, imperceptibly, into eternity.’
http://5against4.com/2021/10/04/ultima-2021-part-3/«

«– the work, including hardanger fiddle performed by Britt Pernille Frøholm, was breathtakingly immediate, creating drama from the most microscopic of sounds and gestures. Soft, close singing was interspersed with articulated breaths and a plethora of tiny vocal tics and twitches, many of which seemed almost involuntary. Although its language was, from one perspective, a broken-up network of minutiae strung together into a loose-woven tapestry, there was at the same time a sense that everything we were hearing had actually begun life as a changeless, eternal drone, which was being modulated and disrupted by the quartet’s vocal actions. At one extreme, Ulvo practically destroyed the fabric of the music later on via an outbreak of stubbornly persistent coughs, while at the other extreme, she united the singers into small concentrations that vaguely resembled chant. Though it was in its own way just as wildly experimental as the rest of the music during the opening weekend at Ultima 2019, Absence had a focus, an intensity and above all an elegance that set it apart.» http://5against4.com