Geirr Tveitt

Nils Tveitt, who adopted the Old Norse name Geirr, was born on October 19, 1908, in Bergen and spent his boyhood in Kvam, Hardanger. He studied piano and composition in Leipzig, Vienna, and Paris under Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger.

Tveitt rooted his unique musical aesthetic in archaic modal scales (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian) and the rhythms of the Hardanger fiddle. He transcribed hundreds of traditional tunes, orchestrating suites of Hundrad hardingtonar (A Hundred Hardanger Tunes) and composing virtuosic piano concertos. In 1970, tragedy struck when his ancestral home at Bjølve farm burned to the ground, destroying approximately four-fifths of his life's manuscripts in a heartbreaking cultural loss.