Nocturne: The Almost-Instrumental That Won

MAY 15 1995 · 12:05

Secret Garden · "Nocturne" · Norway · 1995 Placement: 1st · Score: 148 · Language: Norwegian · Composers: Rolf Løvland, Petter Skavlan · Venue: Point Theatre · Host: Dublin, Ireland · Type: winner · Broadcast: color crt On May 13, 1995, at the Point Theatre in Dublin, an unusual Eurovision entry was performed by a Norwegian-Irish duo called Secret Garden: a composition titled 'Nocturne,' which comprised roughly three minutes of violin-led instrumental chamber-pop bookended by twenty-four sung words in Norwegian. The fiddler was Fionnuala Sherry, a classically-trained Irish violinist; the composer and pianist was Rolf Løvland, who had already won Eurovision ten years earlier as the author of Bobbysocks!' 'La det swinge.' The vocalist was Norwegian singer Gunnhild Tvinnereim, who delivered the brief vocal sections with a restrained, almost liturgical quality that blended into the instrumental rather than dominating it. The performance was still, the staging was minimal, and the overall effect was the closest thing to a classical-music entry Eurovision had produced in decades. At the end of voting, 'Nocturne' had received 148 points, placing first in a field of twenty-three. The win made Rolf Løvland one of only a handful of composers in Eurovision history with two winning entries, and made Norway's 1995 victory exactly ten years after the country's first — a symmetrical repeat made more pointed by being delivered through Norwegian-Irish musical collaboration during the Point Theatre's second consecutive host year. Context Eurovision 1995 was held in Ireland following Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan's 1994 victory — the third consecutive Irish host edition within four years. The mid-1990s Eurovision was still structured around the pre-televote jury era, with national juries controlling all scoring. Secret Garden had formed in the early 1990s specifically as a Norwegian-Irish musical project around Løvland's compositional interest in Celtic-influenced chamber music; 'Nocturne' had won the Norwegian Melodi Grand Prix selection in early 1995 explicitly as an entry prepared for Eurovision. The contest was still operating under the then-current language rule requiring entries to be performed in one of the national languages of the competing country — a rule that was soon to be loosened for the late 1990s and ultimately abolished in 1999. Legacy 'Nocturne' remains the most instrumentally-dominant winner in Eurovision history — no subsequent winning entry has approached its level of near-instrumental composition. The victory established Secret Garden as a globally-successful new-age chamber-pop act, whose albums sold in substantial quantities across the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rolf Løvland's two-win composer record (1985, 1995) tied him with a small group of Eurovision's most successful writer-producers. The 1995 win also sharpened a long-running debate within Eurovision fan culture about whether the contest's rules should explicitly require a vocal element or whether instrumental-led entries should remain viable — 'Nocturne' passed the language rule only because it technically included some sung Norwegian. The debate has recurred periodically since. Mythology 'Nocturne' is often described as a fully instrumental winner; it technically contained twenty-four words of sung Norwegian, which satisfied the contest's then-current language rule. Secret Garden is sometimes described as a solo project; it was an ongoing duo of Løvland and Sherry, with Tvinnereim appearing specifically on the Eurovision entry. Fionnuala Sherry is occasionally described as Norwegian; she is Irish.