Music post: Garmarna

Today I'm listening to music by a group called Garmarna. I know, I should feel bad that I'm not introducing you folks to more classical music. I promise to remedy that sometime soon. But for some reason I was into listening to this group today and so I thought I'd write about them.

I was actually introduced to this group through a random search I did a couple years ago. I was teaching my Masterpieces of Music class and had decided to base the entire class around pieces of music that had made their way into popular music somehow. The basis for this idea began with Procul Harem's A Whiter Shade of Pale (which uses a bit of Bach's famous "Air on a G String" from his suite in D) and then Evanescence's use of Mozart's Lacrymosa (from his Requiem) in their song of the same name. And so I had a bit of a challenge set up: Who on earth had used something from the Middle Ages? A google search brought up an album called Hildegard von Bingen by this group. Hildegard, for those who don't know, was a 12th century Nun who wrote a great number of Gregorian chants for her convent. She's a pretty famous figure of Middle Ages classical music and so imagine my surprise when I found an entire album of Swedish folk rock based around her music!

I immediately bought the album and fell in love with it. The sound is unique and really quite interesting. Some time later, I went looking for a recording of an old Swedish ballad called Herr Mannelig, which I was going to base a Phantom of the Opera fanfic around, and imagine my surprise when I found the name Garmarna come up again. Today I decided to dig up some more albums by them and am enjoying listening to it.

Garmarna is a folk rock band from Sweden that was formed in 1990. I'm not sure they're still together. It appears their last album was the Hildegard one in 2001.

Here's the music video to Euchari from the Hildegard von Bingen album. This isn't exactly how it sounds on the album. I like it much better on the album, but it gives you a general idea. I tried to find the one I actually used in class, which is the second track on the album called Viridissima Virga, but with no luck.

Here's Herr Mannelig off their album Guds spelemän (The Fiddlers of God).

Enjoy!