About
The Norwegian Musical Heritage Project and Digital Grieg Catalogue
Norwegian Musical Heritage has been the national initiative to preserve and disseminate the music by Norwegian composers from the 19th and early 20th century. It includes the preservation and digitization of source material, research, editing, and, not least, the dissemination of high-quality sheet music to the music community. From 2012 to 2021, the Norwegian Arts Council provided annual financial support. The Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo became a central hub for the initiative, and the board included representatives from the universities in Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen, and Tromsø, the National Library of Norway, and the Norwegian Academy of Music. Later, the Norwegian Society of Composers and the Norwegian Theatre and Orchestra Association also joined the board.
In its initial phase, the pilot project The Works of Johan Svendsen (JSV) was a main focus, and most of the editions published so far by Norwegian Musical Heritage are of Svendsen’s works. Editions of Norwegian Musical Heritage published by Norsk musikforlag have already been used and tested by orchestras such as the Oslo Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, Tromsø Chamber Orchestra, Oslo Camerata, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.
Digital Composer Catalogues
A core task alongside music editing has been to establish, update, and make available digital catalogues of Norwegian composers. In recent years, the catalogue database MerMEId – Metadata Editor and Repository for MEI Data has been operated by the University Library of Bergen in collaboration with the Centre for Grieg Research at the University of Bergen. In 2023, the databases were transferred to NREC. The merMEId database was developed further by Norwegian Musical Heritage in close collaboration with the Danish musical heritage project at the Royal Library of Denmark. The goal of such a digital work database is to create an innovative infrastructure that allows for continuous updates and expansion to include more Norwegian composers from around 1800 to 2000.
The Grieg Research Centre also developed a digital work catalogue based on the Edvard Grieg Thematisch-Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, edited by Dan Fog, Kirsit Grinde and Oyvind Norheim, and published by Edition Peters. The project is a collaboration between the University Library of Bergen, Bergen Public Library, and the Centre for Grieg Research. The project also received development funding from the National Library of Norway. The Grieg catalogue will be incorporated into Norwegian Musical Heritage as part of a unified site for Norwegian composers.
Catalogue editors: Rune Andersen (Grieg), Bjarte Engeseth (Svendsen, Valen, Tveitt), Asbjørn Eriksen (Grieg), Ulrik Bjørnstad Haug (Ørbeck, Sæverud), Halvor Hosar (Berlin), Audun Sannes Jonassen (Backer-Grøndahl), Astrid Kvalbein (Valen), Arnulf Mattes (Grieg, Valen, Ørbeck), Thomas Erma Møller (Valen), Øyvind Norheim (Grieg), Arvid O. Vollsnes (Grieg).
Collaboration with ZenMEM and CDMD
Since 2022, the Centre for Grieg Research has led the catalogue projects. In 2024, a collaboration was established with Zentrum Musik – Edition – Medien” (ZenMEM) at the University of Paderborn and Centre for Digital Music Documentation (CDMD) at the Academy of Sciences in Mainz, which are responsible for developing the current digital catalogue tool based on merMEId with a user interface. This project is led by Peter Stadler, University of Paderborn (head of ZenMEM), in collaboration with Kristina Richts-Matthaei (head of CDMD) and team members Carlo Licciulli and Annabella Schmitz.
