"Drømdæ mik æn drøm" is the oldest fragment of notated music in the Nordic countries. It is found on the bottom of one of the pages of Codex Runicus - a transcript from around 1300containing mainly legal stuff, e.g. Skånske Lov. The scriptor seems to have felt tempted to use the empty space of the page for something more important than law paragraphs...!

There was only place enough to write out the first phrase with both notes and text (in Runes), The second phrase is left as a compressed scetch. The opening phrase was used for many years as a pause signal in the Danish Radio.

The rhytm of the original melody is uncertain, and so is of course the rest of the text. This set of variations takes the tune through a lot of different musical moods. I was fascinated by the idea of bringing a piece of ancient Nordic folk music together with the wonderful sound a Chinese folk instrument.

Ziling Xu, erhu

Scandinavian Guitar Duo

(Per Pålsson & Jesper Sivebæk)