A Piece of Poetry? Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s “Sérénade”

Abstract

This analytical vignette discusses harmonic aspects of “Sérénade,” Op. 15 No. 1 (1882), a Romantic character piece by the Norwegian composer Agathe Backer Grøndahl (1847‐1907). This piece, the first in the three-part collection Trois morceaux, has remained one of her most popular works. The analysis is framed by a discussion of the double-edged reception of “Sérénade” as “a piece of poetry for piano.” Focusing on voice-leading models, the analysis reveals a subtle interplay between typical eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century models in Backer Grøndahl’s work.

Full text

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A Piece of Poetry? Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s “Sérénade”
Bjørnar Utne-Reitan
The attached manuscript is the POSTPRINT/ACCEPTED VERSION of an article
published in Music Theory and Analysis. You are advised to consult the final printed version
before citing from the text. Full citation:
Utne-Reitan, Bjørnar. 2024. “A Piece of Poetry? Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s ‘Sérénade.’”
Music Theory & Analysis 11, no. 2 (October): 289–300. https://doi.org/10.11116/MTA.11.2.6.
© Bjørnar Utne-Reitan and Leuven University Press
Abstract
This analytical vignette discusses harmonic aspects of “Sérénade,” Op. 15 No. 1 (1882), a
Romantic character piece by the Norwegian composer Agathe Backer Grøndahl (1847–1907).
This piece, the first in the three-part collection Trois morceaux, has remained one of her most
popular works. The analysis is framed by a discussion of the double-edged reception of
“Sérénade” as “a piece of poetry for piano.” Focusing on voice-leading models, the analysis
reveals a subtle interplay between typical eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century models
in Backer Grøndahl’s work.
Keywords Agathe Backer Grøndahl, Poetic Music, Voice-leading Models, Character Pieces,
Salon Music

2
A Piece of Poetry? Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s “Sérénade”
Bjørnar Utne-Reitan*
Introduction
Agathe Backer Grøndahl (1847–1907) is considered one of the foremost Norwegian
composers of Romantic Lieder and piano music, having produced about 250 songs and 150
piano pieces in addition to two orchestral compositions and a few choral works. She was an
internationally renowned concert pianist and the sister of the acclaimed painter Harriet
Backer. Notably, Backer Grøndahl was (unlike so many other women) never “forgotten” in
the writing of Norwegian music history. Nonetheless, although the literature on Backer
Grøndahl is steadily growing,
1
her music (and particularly her piano music) has been only
minimally explored in music-analytical research. This analytical vignette explores harmonic
aspects of her “Sérénade,” Op. 15 No. 1 (1882), focusing on voice-leading models, and thus
represents a small contribution to scholarly critical engagement with her music.
“Sérénade,” published as the first of her Trois morceaux, is one of Backer Grøndahl’s
most popular and widely performed pieces. Like the song “Mot kveld” (Eng. “Eventide”), Op.
42 No. 4, the piece “has attached itself to Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s memory”
2
—for better or
worse, some would argue. Similar to many nineteenth-century character pieces, the relatively
low technical demands of “Sérénade” made it available to a large audience of amateur
musicians. As implied by its title, the piece has a lyrical character. Accordingly, Cecilie Dahm
described it as “a piece of poetry for the piano, perfect melody and form, exquisite in its
* I am grateful to Haakon Støring, Asbjørn Ø. Eriksen, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments on different versions of the manuscript.
1
Substantial book-length studies seem to appear on a strict decennial basis: Cecilie Dahm, Agathe Backer
Grøndahl: Komponisten og pianisten (Oslo: Solum, 1998); Camilla Hambro, “Det ulmer under overflaten:
Agathe Backer Grøndahl (1847–1907); Genus, sjanger og norskhet” (Ph.D. diss., University of Gothenburg,
2008); Lena Haselmann, Agathe Backer Grøndahl – von Norwegen nach Berlin: Profesionelle Musikausbildung
im 19. Jahrhundert (Münster: Waxmann, 2018).
2
Camilla Hambro, “‘Mot Kveld’, ‘en liten komposisjon’ som har klebet seg fast til Agathe Backer Grøndahls
minne,” Studia Musicologica Norvegica 35 (2009), 61–80, https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN1504-2960-2009-01-
05. My translation of the subtitle. Hambro paraphrases Pauline Hall, see below.

3
harmonization.”
3
As a frame for the analysis of “Sérénade,” I will briefly discuss the
implications of the idea of poetic music for Backer Grøndahl’s reception.
Backer Grøndahl’s works have often been labeled “poetic.” For example, the chapter
on her in the current standard reference work on Norwegian music history is titled “Agathe
Backer Grøndahl—with works ‘of pure poetry.’”
4
The quotation in this title comes from an
1893 letter from Edvard Grieg to Backer Grøndahl, tying the use of the label to
contemporaneous discourse.
5
Camilla Hambro also points to a contemporaneous Swedish
reviewer calling her works “poetic-feminine,” explicitly gendering the label.
6
This is further
related to the well-known issue of how smaller forms—considered more “feminine”—have
been less valued than works in larger formal designs in the construction of music history.
7
Such ideas have contributed to diminishing the perceived significance of (and attention
devoted to) more accessible “salon” or “parlor” music, much of which was written by women.
In music scholarship, the label “poetic” is something of a double-edged sword. It has,
in various contexts, been applied with both positive and negative connotations. For instance,
Dahlhaus claims that “the idea of poetic music dominated early-nineteenth-century aesthetics,
particularly the aesthetics of piano music”—associated with the likes of Schumann, Chopin,
and Mendelssohn—but that it “is one of those categories whose historical substance crumbles
the moment we try to capture it in a definition.”
8
One (Schumannian) understanding is that
true poetic music is about “suggesting a characterization rather than telling a story.”
9
3
Dahm, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Komponisten og pianisten, 150. My translation.
4
Camilla Cai, “Agathe Backer Grøndahl – med verker ‘av den rene poesi,’” in Arvid O. Vollsnes (ed.), Norges
musikkhistorie (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1999–2001), vol. 3, 325–31. My translation.
5
Ibid., 330. The letter is quoted at length in O. M. Sandvik, Agathe og O. A. Grøndahl, 1847–1947: Et
minneskrift (Oslo: Grøndahl & Søn, 1948), 109. Backer Grøndahl and Grieg were contemporaries and close
friends who held each other’s works in high esteem; see Dahm, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Komponisten og
pianisten, 214–25 et passim.
6
Hambro, “Det ulmer under overflaten,” 211.
7
Ibid., 508–9. This music-historiographical problem is also much-discussed with regard to Grieg; see, e.g.,
Daniel M. Grimley, Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006),
Introduction.
8
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1989), 142.
9
Ibid., 145.

4
However, Dahlhaus also argues that the idea of poetic music was bastardized in the realms of
what he considers “trivial music” later in the century, becoming “banality masquerading as
poetry.”
10
This “pseudopoetic” music, a result of commercialization and industrialization, “is
the characteristic nonart of the romantic age, partaking of its aesthetic criteria but failing to
satisfy them.”
11
In Dahlhaus’s view, then, much of the popular poetic music of the late
nineteenth century is “nonart.”
In some contexts, early-Romantic poetic musical aesthetics remained an ideal also
later in the century —for instance at the Leipzig Conservatory,
12
where many Norwegian
musicians and composers studied (including Grieg). Backer Grøndahl received her formal
education in Berlin,
13
but was nonetheless immersed in this music. The five composers whose
works she performed the most were herself, Robert Schumann, Fryderyk Chopin, Edvard
Grieg, and Felix Mendelssohn—in that order.
14
The latter four are also the composers she is
closest to stylistically, as her contemporaries acknowledged. In an 1889 review, for example,
George Bernard Shaw recommended that she “impart to him [Grieg] some of her
Mendelssohnic sense of form in composition.”
15
Modern Backer Grøndahl experts seem reluctant to promote “Sérénade” and similar
works as representative of her style. On several occasions, Dahm mentions that its popularity
has contributed to an unfortunately narrow conception of Backer Grøndahl as a composer of
no more than “lyrical-poetical moods.”
16
In this case, the poetic label is clearly used
dismissively. Dahm claims that poetic works such as “Sérénade”—by overshadowing more
10
Ibid., 317.
11
Ibid., 319.
12
Bjørnar Utne-Reitan, “Ernst Friedrich Richter and the Birth of Modern Music Theory Pedagogy,” Music
Theory Online 30/3 (2024), https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.30.3.7.
13
See Haselmann, Agathe Backer Grøndahl – von Norwegen nach Berlin.
14
Hambro, “Det ulmer under overflaten,” 276.
15
Shaw cited in Hambro, “Det ulmer under overflaten,” 199.
16
Dahm, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Komponisten og pianisten, 201. My translation. See also Cecilie Dahm,
Kvinner komponerer: Ni portretter av norske kvinnelige komponister i tiden 1840–1930 (Oslo: Solum Forlag,
1987), 79–80.

5
“substantial” works—stand in the way of a broader appraisal of Backer Grøndahl: “On the
basis of the more lyrical works like the Serenade […] posterity has generally judged Backer
Grøndahl’s music to be graceful and dreamy; but in much of her work, perhaps most of all in
the 19 Concert Etudes, her most substantial piano pieces, she shows a boldness which gives
quite another impression.”
17
Backer Grøndahl’s production does indeed contain both “poetic”
and “bold” works. In this vignette, I attempt to make a case for broader appreciation (also in
the scholarly literature) of the former part of her œuvre. By doing so, I seek to demonstrate
that also this music, as well as similar accessible and popular music by other nineteenth-
century composers, deserves serious consideration.
Analysis
Typical of Romantic character pieces, “Sérénade” (Example 1) is in ternary form
(ABA'Coda). Tonally, Backer Grøndahl structured the F-major piece around diatonic third
(mediant) relations, with a tonicization of A minor in the A sections and a B section centering
on D minor. Section A articulates the strongest sense of closure with a I:PAC (m. 16). In
contrast, its varied repetition (A') is much more open-ended.
[Here Example 1 NB: two pages]
The A' section diverges from the A section by shunning the latter’s strong sense of
stability and closure in favor of a more chromatically infused passage that offers alternatives
to the closure typically associated with a PAC. Instead of the I:PAC expected in m. 50, the
fourth phrase is expanded. A sense of closure is created through several (“secondary”)
parameters—changes in dynamics, texture, harmonic pulse, and a last-minute ritardando—
leading to a Fr+6 functioning as an altered dominant in m. 52. This cadence is successful, but
17
Cecilie Dahm, Liner Notes, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Piano Pieces and Songs, NKFCD 50019-2, 1988,
compact disc.

6
the sense of closure is significantly weaker than in A In addition to the lack of a strong
cadential fifth motion in the bass, the stability of the passage is challenged by heavy reliance
on modal mixture both prior to and following the altered cadence (foreshadowed in mm. 13
and 47). Other parameters, however, secure a sense of closure in the brief coda. The piece’s
first motive (the repeated Fs in m. 1) is here expanded and spread across four octaves.
Although not resolved to the expected subdominant, the presence of V7/IV evokes the so-
called Abschiedsseptime (“Farewell Seventh”) model.
18
I will return to the structural
properties of the chromatically bittersweet ending, which by contrasting the otherwise light
and cheerful character of the piece—including the stability of the A section—adds a
significant layer of emotional depth.
Hambro has claimed that in Trois morceaux, Backer Grøndahl “united the older style’s
beauty of sound with ‘modern’ methods of expression.”
19
A combination of several features,
particularly in the opening, hints at the Classical (or even galant) style. These are central in
securing the aforementioned stability in the opening. The A section has a strict periodic
symmetry and opens with a two-part homophonic texture, with broken chords in the left hand
and a melody in the right hand lightly ornamented with mordents. Adding to this, Backer
Grøndahl employs the galant voice-leading model (or “schema”) that Gjerdingen calls the
“Prinner.”
20
In the eighteenth century, this was “the most common riposte to an opening
thematic gambit, something like an all-purpose rejoinder to the standard thematic assertions
of the galant style.”
21
The first appearance of the Prinner (mm. 3–4) is analyzed in Example 2,
with circled numbers (for scale degrees) and figured bass. In the consequent phrase, Backer
18
See Laura Krämer, “Die ‘Abschiedsseptime’ und ihre Transformation bei Schubert und Brahms,” Musik &
Ästhetik 14/56 (2010), 60–71.
19
Camilla Hambro, Liner Notes, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Complete Piano Music Vol. II, AR 08014, 2008,
compact disc.
20
Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007,
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195313710.001.0001), Chapter 3.
21
Robert O. Gjerdingen, “Gebrauchs-Formulas,” Music Theory Spectrum 33/2 (2011), 194,
https://doi.org/10.1525/mts.2011.33.2.191.

7
Grøndahl uses the Prinner to tonicize A minor (mm. 7–8). Diverging from Gjerdingen’s
Prinner prototype, Grøndahl replaces the harmony of the first stage (normally 5/3) with 4/2.
Thus, the harmonic progression of Grøndahl’s Prinner becomes identical to the descending
Rule of the Octave. What marks it clearly as a variant of the Prinner, however, are the parallel
tenths between the bass and melody in the three last stages of the model.
[Here Example 2]
The backward-looking references at the beginning of the piece are gradually dissolved
in the second half of the A section, but parts of the initial texture and phrasing return briefly in
the opening of the B section (mm. 17–20). The
5
" in the bass on each downbeat and the
emphasized
4
" in the melody recall the galant “Ponte,”
22
realizing a “standing on the
dominant”
23
in D minor. This soon gives way to sequential material (mm. 24–27), more
Romantic in style, leading up to the section’s structurally important vi:HC in m. 30. Starting
and ending as it does with the dominant of D minor, the B section can be considered an
extended dominant prolongation.
24
The interest in eighteenth-century musical style among Norwegian composers of the
1880s is evidenced by the publication of several works exploring this idiom: Grieg’s Holberg
Suite, Op. 40 (1884), Backer Grøndahl’s own Suite, Op. 20 (1887), and Christian Sinding’s
Suite im alten Stil, Op. 10 (1888). However, these works are more thoroughly archaic,
whereas “Sérénade” only gives a taste of the eighteenth century within a nineteenth-century
frame.
22
Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, Chapter 14.
23
Will iam E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998,
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195104806.001.0001), 16 et passim.
24
This is also the case in some of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces; see Bjørnar Utne-Reitan, “Schematic Deformation:
Systematic Linearity in Grieg’s ‘Takk’ and Other Lyric Pieces,” Music Analysis 40/2 (2021), 227–52,
https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12165.

8
The transition from m. 8 to m. 9 (Example 3a) introduces both an important motive in
the piece and a particular voice-leading model: a chromatic progression of parallel (mostly
minor) thirds against a pedal point or central axis producing one or more passing chords.
Much used by Grieg, this model is considered a “Griegian fingerprint” by some scholars.
25
As
a general shorthand, I will call it “pedal+thirds” in the following analysis. Although Backer
Grøndahl quickly abandons the strict chromaticism, I argue that this model is a key structural
principle in the “Sérénade,” and that this small but poignant motive reflects an underlying
principle for chromatic harmonic progressions later in the piece.
Examples 3b–e show analytical reductions of four structurally significant passages:
the preparation of the I:PAC in A (mm. 15–16), the more virtuosic cadenza-like retransition
from B to A' (mm. 31–34), the avoidance of the expected I:PAC in A' (mm. 49–50), and the
coda (mm. 53–56). Pedal points or central axes are written with white noteheads and
chromatic parallel (minor) thirds with black noteheads. As in Example 3a, most of them break
from strict chromaticism in the final stage. In Example 3b, the added tones from the diatonic
melody are included with small noteheads. In Example 3c, a modulating sequence, the added
tones result in chromatically rising major triads; the abandonment of the pedal point (and the
raised chordal fifth) marks the I:HC leading to A'. In Example 3d, the pedal is swiftly
abandoned (to form a viio7/vi), but the reduction demonstrates how the chromatically
descending thirds elegantly mirror the rising thirds of the corresponding passage earlier in the
piece (Example 3b). Here, the added voice creates a diatonic line in contrary motion to the
chromatically descending thirds.
[Here Example 3: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)]
25
Asbjørn Ø. Eriksen, “Griegian Fingerprints in the Music of Frederick Delius (1862–1934),” paper presented at
The International Grieg Society Conference, Bergen, 30 May–2 June 2007, http://griegsociety.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/Asbjorn-Eriksen-paper-2007.pdf (accessed 10 May 2023).

9
As the reductions show, several brief but structurally significant passages employ
pedal+thirds. One could also argue that the chord progression Bo–B<flat> minor–F (mm. 13–
14) is derived from this principle. This can help us comprehend the last measures of the piece
(Example 3e). A vertical reading of the coda could be I–iv–V7/IV–CTo–I (with a tonic pedal).
Although this progression accurately represents the typical final lean toward the subdominant
(including the Abschiedsseptime), it fails to provide a particularly insightful functional
reading of the final chords, nor does it reflect the underlying systematicity of the final
measures. From a linear perspective, however, it becomes clear that the tonic is prolonged by
combining a pedal (doubled in the top voice) with parallel minor thirds in chromatic—in this
case, neighboring—motion. The E<flat> (another minor third) in m. 54 and its implied
resolution effectively expand the progression.
In the B section, a fragment of another well-known chromatic voice-leading model is
found in m. 29. Leading up to the Phrygian half cadence in the next measure, Backer
Grøndahl prolongs the subdominant chord through a nested (or embedded) voice exchange.
The larger diatonic voice exchange (Example 4a) is elegantly expanded through a chromatic
“small omnibus”
26
(Example 4b). The resulting progression is thus a product of two voice
exchanges: a larger diatonic exchange and a smaller chromatic one (Example 4c).
[Here Example 4: (a) (b) (c)]
Although occasionally found in earlier music, these chromatic models (pedal+thirds
and omnibus) are typical of nineteenth-century music, and Backer Grøndahl employed them
regularly in her works. The first phrase of “Blaaveis” (“Blue Flowers”), Op. 42 No. 3, is
26
Paula J. Telesco, “Enharmonicism and the Omnibus Progression in Classical-Era Music,” Music Theory
Spectrum 40/2 (1998), 259, https://doi.org/10.2307/746049.

10
reproduced as Example 5. This piece, in G major, opens with a “classical omnibus”
27
prolonging V7 (mm. 1–3), continuing with pedal+thirds (mm. 4–6) leading to a V:PAC (m. 7).
[Here Example 5]
Conclusion
Through the above analysis, I have attempted to show that “Sérénade” is a refined—yet
accessible—character piece. I do not claim that it is stylistically radical; “radicalness” and
“boldness” should not be the only gauge for musical quality. The analysis indicates a delicate
interplay between typical eighteenth- and nineteenth-century models. The light melody and
texture of the main theme are contrasted by sections with subtle chromatic harmony and a
tonally bittersweet ending that contrasts with the opening’s stability and strong closure. One
could convincingly argue that this creates a “suggestion of a characterization” and thus
position the work among what Dahlhaus considers true poetic music. However, the idea of
poetic music has also been used to downplay the significance of this very central type of
piano music in Backer Grøndahl’s production. Rather than attempting to put Backer Grøndahl
on the “right” side of the serious/trivial divide—the side with the most famous (male)
composers—it is worth questioning the very nature of this division. By looking beyond such
distinctions and devoting serious music-analytical attention to such works, we will be better
prepared to understand the qualities that secured the immense popularity of this music in the
nineteenth century.
Dahl and Hambro frequently quote the statements made by the composer Pauline Hall
about Backer Grøndahl on the occasion of her centenary in 1947. As a defense of music in
smaller formats, she claimed that “the intensity, the passion can smoulder under the silent
27
Victo r F ell Yell in, The Omnibus Idea (Warren: Harmonie Park Press, 1998).

11
surface” of Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s music.
28
Hall discouraged the measurement of musical
quality based on the number of notes or the size of the orchestra, asserting that even Backer
Grøndahl’s popular works could be of high artistic quality.
29
Elsewhere, she claimed to find
no “banal progression” nor “tasteless handling of melodies” in Backer Grøndahl’s output:
“Seldom does one encounter a composer who has kept their style so pure of all cheap
effects.”
30
The above reading of “Sérénade” demonstrates that there can be profound layers to
a simple “lyrical” and “poetic” piece. That said, this analytical vignette presents but one
reading of a single work by Backer Grøndahl and cannot claim to represent the stylistic
breadth of her diverse œuvre.
As paraphrased in the introduction, Hall claimed (regarding “Mot kveld”) that “it is
not uncommon for outstanding composers to be punished for their gifts in the sense that some
small composition […] becomes so popular that it attaches itself to the composer’s memory
and gives many people only a weak image of the composer.”
31
It has, indeed, been common to
paint a narrow and one-sided picture of Backer Grøndahl by focusing on her simple (yet
beautiful) melodies.
32
Although we should, of course, also look beyond her most typically
“lyrical-poetic” works, I think it is crucial to accept that popular pieces such as “Sérénade”
and “Mot kveld” need not stand in the way of a wider appraisal of—and critical engagement
with—Backer Grøndahl’s music. Rather, such works can serve as the starting point for an
exploration of her diverse and substantial body of work.
28
Hall cited in Camilla Hambro, “‘The Intensity, the Passion Can Smoulder beneath the Surface’ – Te xt m eets
context in Agathe Backer Grøndahl’s romance To t he Qu ee n o f my H ea rt ,” Studia Musicologica Norvegica 43
(2017), 10, https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1504-2960-2017-01-03. Hambro paraphrases this quote in the title of
her dissertation.
29
Astrid Kvalbein, “Musikalsk modernisering: Pauline Hall (1890–1969) som komponist, teatermenneske og Ny
Musikk-leiar,” (Ph.D. diss., Norwegian Academy of Music, 2013), 110, http://hdl.handle.net/11250/172448
(accessed 11 May 2023).
30
Hall cited in Dahm, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Komponisten og pianisten, 200. My translation.
31
Pauline Hall, “Agathe Backer Grøndahl,” Dagbladet, 1 December 1947. My translation. Hall’s statement is
used as an epigraph in Dahm, Agathe Backer Grøndahl: Komponisten og pianisten, and Hambro, “‘Mot kveld.’”
32
Hambro, “Det ulmer under overflaten,” 502–3.; Cf. Nils Grinde, Norsk musikkhistorie, 4th ed. (Oslo: Musikk-
Husets Forlag, 1993), 161–62.

12
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14
Example 2: Prinner in Backer Grøndahl, “Sérénade,” mm. 1–4
Example 3: (a) Backer Grøndahl, “Sérénade,” mm. 8–9; (b) Analytical Reduction, mm. 15–
16; (c) Analytical Reduction, mm. 31–34; (d) Analytical Reduction, mm. 49–50; (e)
Analytical Reduction, mm. 53–56
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15
Example 4: (a) Diatonic Voice Exchange Model; (b) Chromatic Voice Exchange Model
(“Small Omnibus”); (c) Models a and b in Backer Grøndahl, “Sérénade,” mm. 33–34
Example 5: Agathe Backer Grøndahl, “Blaaveis,” Op. 42 No. 3, mm. 1–7
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