Book Review of Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity, by Chris Goer

Missing FiguresBook Review of Fiddling for Norway revitalization and Identity, by Chris Goertzen.After extensive field research in Norway, Chris Goertzen explores and sorts a tribe genre, which by nature resists tidy taxonomy. Fiddling for Norway Revival and Identity is a successful ethnographic documentation of a musical tradition that is well-educated primarily by insiders through oral/aural channels and by customary example. Implicitly he asks how can a book glossiness audience understand a tradition that does not depend on notation for maintenance or transmission? Likewise, how might we classify a allurement of much(prenominal) music? He begins by describing in level how the revival of Norse fiddling took place in the later nineteenth century and what its dimensions and scope have been up to the present.Goertzens field methods acknowledge participant-observation of local and national fiddle contests in Norway, starting with a year-long stay, musical composition teaching at the University of Trondheim in 1988-1989. He attended the District defraud Contest in 1988, the abundantst national fiddle contest for the normal fiddle, in Rros. There he was able to hear and record players from virtually the country play two contrasting tunes each, which gave Goertzen a large collection to consider. He later returned to Norway during the summers of 1991 and 1993 and conducted interviews, made more field recordings, and mined the largest memorial of music for the fiddle, Rdet for Folkemusikk og Folkdans (the Council for Folk Music and Folk Dance), at the University of Trondheim for recent interviews and field collections. Goertzen points out that the archival holdings privilege the oldest of musicians and repertories, indicating a belief of Norwegian scholars that the pres... ...luable book with appeal for ethnomusicologists, scholars of Scandinavian and European culture, historians, and lay audiences. As Goertzen says, these fiddlers, their large reperto ires, and the holdings in archives comprise a diachronic living museum of considerable size. Chris Goertzen has done the English-reading public a great service by producing such a splendid study of this lively folk institution.Works CitedCowdery, throng R. 1990. The Melodic Tradition of Ireland. Kent, OH Kent State University Press.Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives The Anthropologist as Author, pp. 1-24. Stanford Stanford University Press.Fiddling for Norway Revival and Identity, by Chris Goertzen. University of Chicago Press, 1997. ISBN 0-226-30049-8 (cloth), 0-226-30050-1 (paper), notation, bibliography, index, 16 figures, 17 plates, xv, 347 pp. Cloth $57, paper $22.50