The Norwegian folk music series is a scientific collection of traditional Norwegian dance music, divided into two separate series, a hardanger fiddle series, and a regular fiddle series. The Hardanger fiddle series is already published (Hardingfeleverket), and the fiddle series is in production. Together, the two series are meant to represent most, but not all, of Norwegian fiddle music as collected and written down.

The Hardanger fiddle series

The Hardanger fiddle books were published between 1958 and 1981. The editors were all traditional fiddlers who were well acquainted with the music in question. The three of them, Arne Bjørndal

Arne Bjørndal

Arne Bjørndal was a Norwegian hardingfele fiddler, composer and folklorist.-Personal life:Bjørndal was born in Hosanger as the son of Peder Monsen Bjørndal and Kari Knutsdotter Nordås. He was married to Brita Rongved from 1910 to 1924, and to Anna Strømmen from 1929...

, Truls Ørpen and Eivind Groven

Eivind Groven

Eivind Groven was a Norwegian microtonal composer and music-theorist. He was from Telemark and had his background in the folk music of the area.- Biography :...

, had all collected fiddle tunes in their areas, and were now asked to put their collections into print. As work progressed, Ørpen and Bjørndal both died, and Groven went on alone. Most of the practical edition was carried out by him.

The series consists of seven volumes, with some 2000 tunes all in all, from all the hardanger fiddle areas. The tunes are divided into families, based on musical relation.

The hardanger fiddle series has not been re-published, but is of great value for research on Norwegian dance music. In the USA, folk music fans regard the books in the same way as the jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 real book

Real Book

The Real Book can refer to any of a number of popular compilations of lead sheets for jazz tunes, but is generally used to refer to Volume 1 of an underground series of books transcribed and collated by students at Berklee College of Music during the 1970s....

s. Most of the tunes are now available on the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

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