Theodora Cormontan

Early life

Theodora Nicoline Meldal Cormontan was born June 9, 1840 in Beitstad in North Trøndelag, Norway, the second youngest of seven children of Lutheran minister Even Meldal Schjelderup Cormontan and Louise Augusta Hirsch Cormontan. In 1847 her family moved to Arendal, where her father was appointed to the Trinity Church. She studied music there with F. W. Thoschlag, the town organist and proprietor of a music lending library. In 1863 she moved to Copenhagen to study music. The death of her mother in 1865 forced her return to Arendal to run the household of her father, who had taken on additional church duties as provst (in English, dean), a senior official in the diocese.

Early career and publishing business

In 1869 Theodora Cormontan concertized as a soprano soloist in a tour that included the Norwegian coastal towns of Grimstad, Kristiansand, Stavanger, and Bergen. The March 6, 1869 Kristiansand newspaper announced that her program would include Charles Gounod’s Jewel Song from the opera Faust and Tacea la note placida from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore. A review in the March 9th edition of the newspaper included the following: “The concert featured a singer in possession of a full, rich and sonorous soprano voice of a rare and pleasant character. Her singing reflected favorably upon her training; we would particularly note her beautiful and correct intonation . . . All the numbers were received with lively applause that was so powerful that the singer visibly shuddered, and at the end of the concert was moved to tears.”

Subsequently, Cormontan established a music lending library. Because of the expense of publication, music lending libraries were a common feature of 19th-century musical culture. From 1875–1879 several of her compositions were published by Warmuth, the leading Scandinavian music publisher of the era. In addition to her vocal and piano concerts, and composing classical piano pieces and songs in Arendal, Cormontan ran a music publishing business from 1879–1886. Her publishing house specialized in the work of other women composers. This includes Sophie Dedekam, a composer of hymns and popular songs, and Caroline Schytte Jensen, who went on to become a well-known composer of children's songs — she was also the mother of Gabriel Scott, a Norwegian poet. Cormontan was the first to publish, in 1885, the first five of what would later become Schytte Jensen's famous collection of children's songs, as well as the highly regarded Katharina Månsdotters vaggvisa fôr konung Erik XIV (music set to the poem by Zachris Topelius).

From the 1870s through 1884, Cormontan's sheet music publications were distributed throughout Norway, Sweden, Denmark. Germany and Russia. Among the pieces she published was a song she dedicated to a younger pianist and composer, Agathe Backer Grøndahl (her cousin, Nils Backer, was postmaster of Arendal), proclaimed by George Bernard Shaw in 1889 “one of the greatest pianists in Europe.”

Emigration, career in the United States

As a result of a major bank failure, as well as a fire that destroyed the family home, the now-retired Reverend Cormontan, along with Theodora and her sister Eivinda, emigrated to America in 1887 to live first with his daughter and then two sons, all of whom had previously emigrated. Upon her arrival Cormontan continued her musical career in Sacred Heart, Minnesota, giving a series of recitals, both piano and voice, and advertising as a music instructor throughout the region. On December 3, 1887, she was injured in a train accident in Granite Falls, Minnesota. She suffered trauma to her spine, and for the remainder of her life she was unable to walk unaided.

In 1889, Cormontan brought a civil suit against the railroad involved in her accident. The company, after offering a $500 settlement, contested the suit over a period of several months, to the point where Cormontan's family incurred over $300 in legal fees and related expenses. The legal counsel for the railroad deposed Theodora and her sister Eivinda each for a full day of testimony, in addition to bringing witnesses to cast doubt on the extent of her injury. The jury awarded Cormontan $5,000, and the railroad was also ordered to pay all of her legal expenses.

In 1888, Cormontan, her father, and her sister Eivinda moved to Franklin, Minnesota, to live with her older brother, C. G. V. (Gottfred Christian Vogelsang). He held a degree in chemistry from Norway and opened a drug store in Franklin with his brother-in-law, Edward Lyders. The family joined the local Norwegian Synod Church and Cormontan was employed as organist for both that church and another in the area. Rev. Cormontan died in 1893 and was buried in a place of honor next to the Fort Ridgely & Dale Church.

Cormontan's train injury compelled her to cease giving voice recitals (which would have required her to stand for extended periods of time), but she continued her career as a music teacher, organist, pianist, choir director, and composer. As a performer in the 1890s, she received highly favorable reviews from numerous local newspapers for her recitals throughout southern Minnesota: her concerts were characterized as a "rare treat," with some attendees gathered outside the town hall entrance and listening from open windows.

As late as 1910, at age 69, Cormontan was performing at public gatherings such as conventions and public information sessions for the Red Cross and Farmer's Institute, being described as "a pianist of rare ability." Cormontan was composing and copyrighting works for piano as late as December 1911.

Lutheran Synod Dispute

From 1890–1912, Cormontan was involved in a dispute between the Norwegian Synod and the Hauge Synod. The Hauge Synod was pro-temperance and revivalist in nature, and published "spirituals" in Norwegian as an alternative to the traditional Lutheran hymns of the Norwegian Synod. Cormontan was a member of the Norwegian Synod, and her father had been a long-serving minister and official in the Norwegian Church, parent church of the Norwegian Synod.

Cormontan contributed several hymns to the Hauge Synod magazine, Ungdommens Ven, including one she dedicated to Rev. Bernt Haugan, a Hauge Synod minister and temperance advocate. He published, in partnership with Nils Nilsen Rønning, a journalist and author, the song book Frydetoner (Joyful Tunes), a collection of songs from the magazine which included Cormontan's contributions.

In response, the Norwegian Synod passed resolutions of disapproval in 1896 and 1901, the 1896 resolution declaring "Books such as Harpen, by Hoyme and Lund, and Frydetoner, by B. B. Haugan, ought not to be distributed by the Lutheran Publishing House in Decorah."

In the period from 1890–1917, while maintaining her membership first in the Norwegian Synod and then the United Synod, Cormontan's hymns continued to be included in each subsequent edition of Frydetoner, a hymn book that was, despite official disapproval, enormously popular in Norwegian-American communities, going through at least 25 printings. This dispute was not fully resolved until 1917, when the synods agreed to merge (along with a third), forming the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America, although some progress was made in 1913 when the three synods collaborated in producing their first unified hymnal in English, The Lutheran Hymnary. Cormontan's best-known hymn, Høgt frå den himmelske klåra (“High from the Clearing Heavens”), remained in the Church of Norway's hymnal, and is still included in current editions.

Changes in family fortunes, retirement

As an unmarried woman in the 19th century, Cormontan's financial fortunes were closely tied to that of her family. She lived with siblings her entire time in the U.S., first with her married youngest sister Maria and Maria's husband Edward Lyders (a pharmacist in Sacred Heart), then with her older brother in Franklin. While C.G.V. Cormontan (her brother) ran a drugstore in Franklin, the family fortunes were relatively stable. In 1891, after the $5,000 settlement from the railroad lawsuit, the Cormontan family purchased and donated a Packard organ to the Fort Ridgely & Dale Church.

After Rev. Cormontan's death in 1893, C.G.V. Cormontan became the head of the household. As he aged, the fortunes of C.G.V. declined until he was forced to close his Madelia, Minnesota drugstore and move to Hanska, Minnesota in 1901 to work for a druggist there. In 1910, the Cormontan household consisted of four siblings, of which Theodora was the youngest at age 70. As was common for the childless elderly in that era, the family slid into poverty and became dependent on county and church assistance to survive. The Cormontan household was listed on county relief records for disbursements to the poor in 1915. Shortly after C.G.V. Cormontan died in 1917, Theodora and her sister Eivinda entered the Aase Haugen "Sunset Home for Old People" near Decorah, Iowa, a home that had recently opened and was operated by the United Norwegian Lutheran Church. Cormontan died at the Home in 1922 at age 82; her sister Eivinda died there two years later. Both were buried in the Home cemetery. Cormontan's compositions and publications were put in boxes and stored by Mollie Helgerson Schmidt, wife of Rev. Otto Schmidt, the superintendent and founder of the Home.

Composing legacy

Except for one hymn and one song, Cormontan's musical legacy disappeared from view for the next 80 years. The hymn, Høgt frå den himmelske klåra (“High from the Clearing Heavens”) remained a standard in the hymnal of the Church of Norway and was covered and released as an MP3 by a Norwegian jazz vocalist in 2011.

In 1988 one of Cormontan's songs, "Aftendæmring" ("Twilight"), was sung by the actor and musical theater performer Christian Steffensen as part of an album of Hans Christian Andersen poems set to music. The song was singled out for special praise in a review of the album in Fanfare magazine, and Steffensen continued to include it in his repertoire, releasing recordings of it in both Danish and English over the next 35 years, most recently re-releasing it in 2012 on the album In Denmark I Was Born (the album includes music by two Norwegian composers, Edvard Grieg and Cormontan).

Library and publishing legacy

Music that Cormontan published in the period 1879–1886 can be found in the archives of the Aust-Agder kulturhistoriske senter, Arendal, and in the collection of Michael and Bonnie Jorgensen, a Professor of Music at Gustavus Adolphus College, and a professional pianist, respectively.

The granddaughter of Mollie Schmidt (wife of the superintendent of the nursing home where Cormontan spent her final years) gifted Cormontan's musical library to the Jorgensens in May, 2011 after a chance meeting in a grocery store in St. Peter, Minnesota. Bonnie and Michael Jorgensen have presented lectures and concerts throughout southern Minnesota and northern Iowa, recorded a number of Cormontan's compositions, and created a website to document Cormontan's story and legacy.

On May 28, 2015 the Jorgensens donated Theodora Cormontan's published and manuscript scores to the National Library of Norway in Oslo and performed her music there with a group of musician friends, including Mollie Schmidt's granddaughter. On May 31, 2015 they gave a concert in Cormontan's hometown of Arendal at the Aust-Agder kulturhistoriske senter (KUBEN).

List of works

Published in Norway:

Published in the United States (all piano solo):