Farvergade – plays dance tunes from Søren Christensen & Niels Aage Andersens tunebook.
Clara Tesch, Mads Kjøller Henningsen and Julian Svejgaard are all involved in some of the most active bands and projects at the forefront of the Danish folk music scene; Floating Sofa Quartet, Stundom, Mads Hansens Kapel, Vesselil, Trolska Polska, Lars Lilholt Band etc. On their debut album - as the trio Farvergade - they present a selection of dance tunes from an old Danish tunebook written and collected by the fiddlers/farmers Søren Christensen & Niels Aage Andersen in the mid/late 19th/early 20th century – some of which might have been heard on the nightclubs of Copenhagen at that time.
The Story about the tunebooks started the 8th of March, 1853, in the Danish small village of Karise where Søren Christensen had his 18th birthday. He was a farmer’s boy, but on this day he got himself a tunebook full of empty staves. He immediately started writing down dance tunes - a few of which he composed himself, but the rest probably came from elsewhere. Søren had learned to play the fiddle in the nearby village of Hellested, and soon he began playing at parties and other social gatherings in his area. For a while he was even working as a musician at a public dance parlour (basically a nightclub) in Copenhagen. Maybe some of the tunes in his tunebook were the hottest new dance hits from the big city?
In 1860 Søren married the farmer’s daughter Sidse Marie Andersen from the village of Jyderup near the city of Faxe, and became a tenant farmer himself, maintaining the farm Hyldekærgård During the war against Prussia in 1864, Søren was drafted as a trumpeter but he never saw any battle. He spent the years before and after the war renovating and expanding Hyldekærgård with his own two hands - the farm is still there today! He was held in such high regard by his peers that when he died in 1913, twenty-five horse-drawn carriages followed his coffin from Hyldekærdgård up to the church in Faxe.
Music seems to have followed Søren throughout his life, but a few years before his death he passed his fiddle and his tunebook on to his oldest grandson; Niels Aage Andersen, (1896-1975) who would eventually also inherit the farm. The young Niels Aage started practising writing (or rather; copying) sheet music onto the remaining empty pages of his grandfather’s tunebook, and in that way a handful of newer melodies were added to the collection in the early 20th century. Niels Aage grew up to become an accomplished trumpet player at weddings, fairs, dances and other social gatherings throughout the county. But he left the final pages of his grandfather’s old tunebook empty.
With a few exceptions we perform all these tunes as traditional Danish dance music…as we like to play it!
Photo Credits:
(1)-(2) Farvergade
(unknown/website).
