Fornægtelse og forsoning i Tekla Griebels ”Det bødes der for”

Abstract

Denial and reconciliation in Tekla Griebel’s ”Det bødes der for”
 This article is a close analysis of Tekla Griebel’s song ”Det bødes der for”. The analysis serves three purposes: First, I intend to highlight motivic, tonal, harmonic and other structural remedies with which Griebel underlines a subtle development in J.P. Jacobsen’s poem; she does this by setting the voice as a subject that constantly denies the sorrowful realities – represented by the piano – before the subject finally resigns in painful reconciliation. Second, as the first-ever analytical study of a work by Tekla Griebel, the article serves to give a glimpse of this forgotten Danish composer for whom the narrative aspects of music were at the center throughout her career. Third, the article adds a new perspective to previous studies of historical Danish women’s songs (Jensen 2007) by offering a close reading of a work clearly adhering to the German Lied tradition rather than the strophic, sacred songs or folksong-inspired romances that dominate current scholarship on historical Danish women composers.