Copyright

Andrea Susanne Opielka, Petri Hoppu, and Elizabeth Svarstad

Published On

2024-04-25

Page Range

pp. 369–386

Language

  • English

Print Length

18 pages

13. Minuet Music in the Nordic Countries

Chapter of: The Nordic Minuet: Royal Fashion and Peasant Tradition(pp. 369–386)
The chapter investigates different musical sources of the minuet in the Nordic countries from the early eighteenth until the twentieth century. The minuet’s popularity and its specific appearance in the North are illustrated in handwritten music books. They contain popular dance forms, and they reveal the rise, wide popularity and decline of the minuet during the long eighteenth century. Many of these books were used over a long time, changed hands several times, and continuously updated with new tunes and dances, and their authors had different backgrounds from professional musicians, for example town and military musicians, to priests and farmers.

Contributors

Andrea Susanne Opielka

(author)
Member at Nordic Association for Folk Dance Research

Andrea Susanne Opielka PhD studied musicology, art history and German literature at the universities of Heidelberg and Bochum. In the winter of 2002-2003, she wrote a M.A. thesis on Faroese dance with Eyðun Andreassen, professor of ethnology at the Faroese university as supervisor. It was followed by the PhD thesis on dance games and singing games Färöische Tanzspiele: Herkunft - Verbreitung - Tradition (Saarbrücken 2009), which was also published in Danish in 2011. Since 2004, Andrea Susanne has been a member of Nordisk forening for folkedansforskning (Nordic Association for Folk Dance Research) and in 2008 was elected to the association's board as the Faroe Islands' representative. She is a member of Nff's writers' group, which among other things published the book Norden i Dans in 2007. Since 2008, Andrea Susanne has also been linked to the Nordic research network for vocal folk music and regularly participated in the network's seminars. She has also examined minuet music and written articles about it. Lectures have taken her, among others to Frankfurt, Kiel, Greifswald, Vienna, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Växjö, Stockholm, Lahtis, Bø and several times to the Faroe Islands. She lives and works on the German island of Fehmarn.

Petri Hoppu

(author)
Principal Lecturer at the Department of Media and Performing Arts at Oulu University of Applied Sciences
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6394-5210

Petri Hoppu PhD studied ethnomusicology at the University of Tampere, Finland, and graduated in 1995. He continued his studies in Tampere and wrote his doctoral thesis (1999) on the minuet in Finland. Today he is a Principal Lecturer at the Oulu University of Applied Sciences and Adjunct Professor (Docent) in dance studies at Tampere University. His areas of expertise include theory and methodology in dance anthropology as well as research of Skolt Saami dances, Finnish-Karelian vernacular dances and Nordic folk dance revitalization. He has been a project manager of several research projects, including Dance in Nordic Spaces (2007–2012) and KanTaMus (developing common pedagogy for folk dance and music, 2021–2023). He has written several peer-reviewed articles and co-edited the book Nordic Dance Spaces: Practicing and Imagining a Region (2014) with professor Karen Vedel and Dance Research Journal 52 (1) Special Issue In and Out of Norden - Dance and the Migratory Condition (2020) with professor Inger Damsholt. He has been the editor of the only annual Nordic folk dance research journal, Folkdansforksning i Norden, since 2002. He has been on boards of international dance scholars’ associations and giving lectures at universities in Europe and the US.

Elizabeth Svarstad

(author)
Assistant Professor in Baroque Dance at Norwegian Academy of Music
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4134-6417

Elizabeth Svarstad PhD is an Assistant Professor in baroque dance at The Norwegian Academy of Music. She holds a Master of Arts and a PhD in dance studies from The Norwegian University for Science and Technology. Educated dancer from The Norwegian Academy of Ballet, she works as a dancer, choreographer and teacher and has participated in and created a vaste number of performances in Norway and abroad. Among her research articles are 'Traces of Dance and Social Life: A Dance Book and its Context' in Relevance and Marginalisation in Scandinavian and European Performing Arts 1770–1860. Questioning Canons, edited by Randi Margrete Selvik, Svein Gladsø and Annabella Skagen. London: Routledge, 2021, and 'Dance and Social Education in Early Nineteenth-Century Christiania' in Performing Arts in Changing Societies edited by Randi Margrete Selvik, Svein Gladsø and Anne Margrete Fiskvik /Taylor and Francis, 2020), 'Kort Udtog: A Danish Translation of Gottfried Taubert’s Kurtzer Entwurff Der Nutzbarkeit Des Künstlichen Tantz-EXERCITII (1727) ' in Tauberts Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister (Leipzig 1717) edited by Hanna Walsdorf, Marie-Thérèse Mourey, and Tilden Russell (Verlag Frank & Timme, 2019), and Svarstad, Elizabeth, and Nygaard, Jon. 'A Caprice – The Summit of Ibsen's Theatrical Career' in Ibsen Studies 16, no. 2 (2016): 168–85.