Landscaping the Gaze in Norwegian Visual Art and Grieg’s Op. 66 Folksong Piano Arrangements

Abstract

Representations of the Norwegian landscape in nineteenth-century visual culture, paintings, photography and optical illusion devices, were not only part of an emerging lexicon of nationalist iconography but also subverted the boundaries of realism and enfolded the perceiver in a sensory journey through the abstract fabric of space and time. Depictions of the rural, pre-modern landscape often confronted the subjectivity of the gaze through a deflection of an apparent reality and an absence which is revealed obliquely. Using this hermeneutic lens, this article examines the performativity of landscape in Grieg’s Op. 66. These miniatures exemplify a curious dreamlike musical discourse which manifests the landscape as an object of desire hidden from the immediate field of vision and as a distant sound world amenable to imaginative contemplation. By tracing connections between Grieg’s music and its contemporary context, this article places Op. 66 within a broader network of nineteenth-century performative visual culture.