Icelandic Folk Song Suite
Wind band music has a rich tradition of folk song settings, including early 20th century masterworks by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and a plethora of newer arrangements for ensembles at all levels. Writing in this tradition, Canadian composer Kenley Kristofferson created his Icelandic Folk Song Suite, for advanced wind band. The town of Gimli, Manitoba, where Kristofferson grew up, was founded as an Icelandic colony in the late 19th century, and is still home to the largest Icelandic population in the world, outside of Iceland itself. Kristofferson pays homage to his Icelandic roots by including four well-known Icelandic folk songs in this suite. Unlike the classic folk song suites, however, Kristofferson intermixes the melodic material from all four songs throughout the suite; while each movement takes a different folk song as its primary theme, secondary themes and other contrasting sections are based some or all of the other three songs. This cyclical and self-referential compositional structure gives the suite a remarkable sense of unity.
The first movement focuses on the song "Ólafur Liljurós", which tells the tale of a man who meets an elf-maiden, spurns her, and pays the ultimate price. The second movement is based on "Bí bí og blaka", a lullaby about children sneaking out of their beds at night to play outside. The third movement sets the song "Krummavísur", about a raven who is cursed to never be able to eat a meal. And the finale is based on "Á Sprengisandi", an ever-intensifying song about a rider being chased by elves.
Given the great internal coherence with which Kristofferson has composed this suite, it is unfortunate that it is published in two separate parts: the first two movements as Icelandic Folk Song Suite No. 1, published by Grand Mesa Music at Grade 3, and the final two movements as Icelandic Folk Song Suite No. 2, published by C.L. Barnhouse under the Claude T. Smith Publications label, as a Grade 4 selection. The latter publication was also the winner of the WASBE International Composition Competition (Category I) in 2023.
I had the pleasure of rehearsing and performing the complete suite with the York Wind Symphony as part of our Journeys concert in April 2024. Though there is still some room for refinement in the performance, I think we did well to capture the distinct character of each movement and making the piece sound as a whole. You can listen to the recording of our performance above.