Edvard Grieg

Norwegian composer

• Born: June 15, 1843
• Birthplace: Bergen, Norway
• Died: September 4, 1907
• Place of death: Bergen, Norway

Drawing on Norwegian folk culture for inspiration, Grieg created an original, distinctive music of Romantic nationalism that made him the foremost composer in Norway and the first Scandinavian composer to achieve world renown.

Early Life

Edvard Grieg (greeg) was the fourth of five children born to Gesine Hagerup Grieg and Alexander Grieg. His mother was musically gifted and, having been reared in a prominent and prosperous family, had received the best musical training available in Bergen and Hamburg. She was in great demand as a pianist and throughout her life played an important role in the musical life of Bergen. She gave Edvard his first piano lessons when he was six. His father, Alexander, the son of a prosperous merchant, also took an active interest in music, playing piano duets with his wife and invariably attending concerts on his many business trips abroad. Even when his own financial position deteriorated, he selflessly supported Edvard’s lengthy and expensive musical education.

Grieg was undoubtedly fortunate to be born into a home in which music was a part of everyday life, and to have cultivated, sympathetic, and even indulgent parents. In an autobiographical reminiscence, “My First Success” (1903), Grieg states that his early childhood years were deeply formative and that his later creativity would have been stifled if constraints had been placed too early upon his sensitive and imaginative nature. Not surprisingly, his temperament resulted in an increasing dislike of school:

School life was to me deeply unsympathetic; its materialism, harshness, and coldness were so contrary to my nature that I would think out the most incredible things to be quit of it even if only for a little while.

Although Grieg was fond of composing and improvising at the piano, he never thought of becoming an artist; he was certain that he would follow the path of numerous ancestors and become a minister. Yet, in the summer of 1858, the famous Norwegian violinist Ole Bull visited the Griegs and after hearing Edvard play persuaded Grieg’s parents to send Edvard to the Leipzig Conservatory. Thus began for Grieg at the age of fifteen an experience that he always remembered with distaste.

After overcoming his initial homesickness, Grieg found the pedantic methods at the conservatory dry and uninspiring, even occasionally absurd, as when he was required to write a string quartet although he had received no instruction in the form and knew nothing of the technique of string instruments. He applied himself diligently to what he considered sterile exercises, but he was at best a mediocre student and left the conservatory nearly as ignorant as when he had entered it (an account of himself as a student that is curiously contradicted by the records that survive).

At the bottom of Grieg’s always-bitter reflections on his student days in Leipzig (1858-1862) was the conflict between his inherently lyrical-romantic nature and the German classicism that the conservatory required. He acknowledged that the quantity of music he was able to hear performed in Leipzig was important to his development, particularly the works of the Romantics Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Frédéric Chopin—compensation, he said, “for the instruction in the technique of composition which I did not get at the Conservatory.”

In 1862, Grieg received his certificate and returned to Bergen, where he gave his first concert. In 1863, he took up residence in Copenhagen—then the cultural center of Denmark and Norway—where he met a number of musicians and artists: Hans Christian Andersen, some of whose poems he had already set to music; author Benjamin Feddersen; singer Julius Stenberg; and Niels Gade, the leader of the Scandinavian Romantic school of music. He also met his cousin Nina Hagerup, a gifted singer who would, a few years later, become his wife. He had, however, not yet discovered his own distinctive musical personality.

Life’s Work

In 1864, Grieg met the charismatic young composer and fiery champion of Norwegian nationalism Rikard Nordraak. While still a student in Berlin, Nordraak abandoned German music and literature and turned for inspiration to Norwegian sagas, folk tales, ballads, folk music, anecdotes, and history. He saw clearly what Grieg had only dimly felt: not only the sterility of German classicism but also the impossibility of using German Romanticism to create a new, distinctly Norwegian music.

Prior to meeting Nordraak, Grieg had known little of Norway’s folk culture. He had heard Ole Bull praise Norwegian folk music and had heard him play a few folk tunes, but Norwegian music had not been played in Grieg’s home. In Copenhagen, he had met Gade, supposedly the leader of a new school of northern music, but whose compositions were actually heavily derivative of German Romanticism. Grieg’s discovery of a rich native heritage was liberating and transforming. He at last felt able to link the best that was within him (his lyric-romantic nature) with the best that was in his native land—the untainted peasant culture with its long memory of an ancient past, its uninhibited expressions of both joy and sorrow, and its intense awareness of Norway’s spectacular mountains, waterfalls, and fjords.

In 1865, Grieg, Nordraak, and Danish musicians C. F. E. Horneman and Gottfred Matthison-Hansen founded Euterpe, an organization to promote contemporary Scandinavian music. Although Euterpe flourished for only a brief time, it was one indication of Grieg’s orientation toward northern music. The early death of Nordraak from pulmonary tuberculosis in 1866 only strengthened Grieg’s resolve to champion and create a truly national music, and Nordraak’s death became the occasion for one of Grieg’s most original and powerful compositions, Sörgemarsch over Rikard Nordraak (1866; funeral march in memory of Rikard Nordraak). In 1866, Grieg gave an overwhelmingly successful concert of Norwegian music in Christiania (modern Oslo), which established him as one of his country’s foremost young musicians.

Grieg became a popular teacher and collaborated with critic Otto Winter-Hjelm to establish a Norwegian Academy of Music. In 1867, Grieg and Nina Hagerup were married, the same year Grieg’s first book of Lyriske smaastykker , Op. 12 (lyric pieces) for piano appeared, some of whose titles reflect a growing nationalism: Norsk (Norwegian), Folkevise (folktune), and Faedrelandssang (national song). In 1868, Grieg composed his famous Piano Concerto in A Minor, the same year his only child, Alexandra, was born; she died thirteen months later. His discovery in 1869 of Ludvig Lindeman’s collection of folk music was a further important impetus in his evolution toward a distinctively Norwegian style; it became a rich source of inspiration for the numerous tone poems he composed.

Partly because of the enthusiastic support Grieg received from the famed Franz Liszt, he obtained a government grant to further his musical education by travel and study abroad. In 1870, he went to Rome, where he was gratified by Liszt’s appreciation of his work, particularly of the recently completed Piano Concerto in A Minor. Grieg’s prestige was further enhanced by his close association during the 1870’s with Norway’s most prominent dramatist-poets, Henrik Ibsen and Bj rnstjerne Bj rnson.

Grieg set many of Bj rnson’s poems to music and collaborated with him to produce an opera, Olav Trygvason (a project that was never completed and that occasioned a long period of estrangement between the two artists). In 1874, Ibsen invited Grieg to compose music for a stage production of Peer Gynt (1867; English translation, 1892), which resulted in some of Grieg’s best-known and most-loved compositions. Additionally, some of Ibsens’s poems provided the inspiration for Grieg’s highest achievements in song, his Sex digte , Op. 25 (six songs).

A government pension given to Grieg in 1874 freed him from his teaching responsibilities and allowed him to devote himself to composition. Nevertheless, Grieg continued to the end of his life to give substantial amounts of time and energy to conducting and to concert tours (both at home and abroad), possibly as an escape from periods of nonproductivity as a composer but additionally to renew himself by contact with the centers of creative life abroad. Grieg’s best remedy for artistic sterility, however, was to seek regeneration through contact with nature, particularly through Norway’s spectacular scenery.

In 1877, Grieg moved to Lofthus in the Hardanger district, where he composed Den bergtekne , Op. 32 (the mountain thrall); the String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 27; Albumblade , Op. 28 (album leaves); and Improvisata over to norske folkeviser , Op. 29 (improvisations on two Norwegian folk songs). His love of “the great, melancholy Westland nature” caused him eventually to build a villa at Troldhaugen, overlooking the fjord a short distance from Bergen, even though the damp climate was not the best for the health problems that increasingly beset him in later life.

When the Griegs moved to Troldhaugen in 1885, they were moving into their first settled home, such had been the roving nature of their lives. Nevertheless, the final two decades of Grieg’s life reveal the same restless lifestyle. As an internationally known composer-conductor-pianist, Grieg undertook numerous concert tours to England, Paris, Brussels, Germany, Sweden, Vienna, the Netherlands, and Warsaw. He met other famous musicians such as Johannes Brahms, Max Reger, Frederick Delius, and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. The German ruler Kaiser William II invited Grieg aboard his yacht (moored in Bergen Harbor) to hear a program of Grieg’s works performed by his private orchestra.

Despite increasing complaints about his failing powers and health, Grieg continued to be productive in composition, revising earlier compositions and creating new ones, including the important works for the piano, Norske folkeviser , Op. 66 (1896; nineteen Norwegian folk tunes), and seven books of Lyrische Stücke (1901; lyric pieces). He also composed the last of his Norwegian songs and one of his most original works, Haugtussa , Op. 67 (1895). Sl†tter , Op. 72 (1902-1903), published as a work for piano, was inspired by Hardanger violin tunes. His final composition was a choral work, Four Psalms, Op. 74.

Many years earlier, while a student at Leipzig, Grieg had suffered an attack of pleurisy so severe that it had interrupted his studies and left him with a permanent health liability—a collapsed lung. Although his active life seemed to belie it (frequent walking trips through the mountains, exhausting concert tours, and great bursts of creativity), Grieg’s health was always frail. During his last years, it deteriorated significantly. Nevertheless, in the last year of his life, he made a tour to Copenhagen, Munich, Berlin, and Kiel, sustaining himself largely through nervous energy and sheer will. Characteristically, Grieg was preparing to leave Norway for a concert tour of England when his doctor, realizing the gravity of Grieg’s condition, insisted that he go instead to the hospital in Bergen. He died there the next day. His funeral in Bergen, on September 9, 1907, was an important national and international event, a final tribute to the eminence that Grieg attained as conductor, performer, and composer.

Significance

In assessing Edvard Grieg’s contribution to music, typically two questions have been raised: How original an artist was he? and How major? Much that is attractive and uniquely expressive of the northern spirit in Grieg’s mature style derives from Norwegian folk songs and dances: a bold use of dissonance reminiscent of the Hardanger fiddle; frequent use of second, seventh, and perfect as well as augmented fourth and fifth intervals; irregularities of rhythm and accent. However, his music is far from being a transcription or adaptation of sources. Comparisons of Grieg’s works with the sources of his inspiration reveal how thoroughly he assimilated their color and spirit and how he transformed them by his own romantic imagination. The result is a fresh, original music that is uniquely expressive of his country’s spirit but that invariably bears the deep impress of Grieg’s own musical gifts: his ability to express a wide range of emotions and ideas, and particularly his genius for idiosyncratic and impressionistic use of harmony.

The second question about Grieg’s ranking among composers is more problematic. Although he attained a popularity such as few artists experience during their lifetimes and achieved numerous distinctions (among them membership in the French Legion of Honor and honorary doctorates from Cambridge and Oxford), Grieg himself was ambivalent about his popularity and unimpressed by his many honors and awards. He was aware that his very popularity caused critics to view him with suspicion, lamenting that his “standing as an artist suffers thereby.… More fortunate are those artists who do not win so-called popularity while they are still living.”

Undoubtedly influenced by the prevailing critical standards that confounded greatness with bigness, Grieg was also dismayed by his inability to handle the so-called larger forms, such as oratorios, operas, and symphonies. However, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a great master of the larger forms, observed: “Our taste in Germany is for long things; BUT SHORT AND GOOD IS BETTER.” Qualified critics today tend to view Grieg’s songs and piano compositions as his most substantial and distinctive achievements.

Bibliography

Abraham, Gerald, ed. Grieg: A Symposium. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1948. A collection of specialized critical essays that examines every aspect of Grieg’s music. A bibliography (focused on the music rather than the man) contains few entries in English. Includes a chronological list of compositions and forty pages of musical examples.

Benestad, Finn, and Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe. Edvard Grieg: The Man and the Artist. Translated by William H. Halverson and Leland B. Sateren. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. This English translation of a book first published in Norway in 1980 has been called the definitive biography of Grieg. The two authors spent decades conducting research, and their book presents a lively and objective discussion of the composer’s life and music. The English translators added material after a cache of Grieg’s manuscripts and letters was uncovered during the 1980’s.

Finck, Henry T. Grieg and His Music. New York: John Lane, 1929. Includes the author’s visit with Grieg a few years before his death. An ardent supporter of Grieg, Finck offers an uncritical appraisal of Grieg’s music and a warmly sympathetic account of his life. Contains numerous photographs, a bibliography, and a catalog of Grieg’s compositions.

Grieg, Edvard. Diaries, Articles Speeches. Edited and translated by Finn Benestad and William H. Halverson. Columbus, Ohio: Peer Gynt Press, 2001.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Letters to Colleagues and Friends. Edited by Finn Benestad, translated by William H. Halverson. Columbus, Ohio: Peer Gynt Press, 2001. These two collections, including material unearthed during the 1980’s, provide insights into Grieg’s personality, life, and compositions. The volume of letters contains more than five hundred of Grieg’s letters, arranged alphabetically by the name of the person with whom he corresponded. The collection of manuscripts is arranged chronologically by document type and contains annotations and footnotes.

Horton, John. Grieg. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1974. A succinct overview of Grieg’s life and works. The survey of Grieg’s life is concise and authoritative; the discussion of Grieg’s music is scholarly but eminently readable. Contains an illuminating calendar of Grieg’s life (correlated with the birth/death dates of contemporary musicians), an index identifying names important in any study of Grieg, a complete catalog of works, and an extensive bibliography.

Layton, Robert. Grieg. London: Omnibus Press, 1998. A concise overview of Grieg’s life and music. Part of the Illustrated Lives of Great Composers series.

Monrad-Johansen, David. Edvard Grieg. Translated by Madge Robertson. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1938. A full-length biography of Grieg by a well-known Norwegian composer who had access to documents and letters unavailable to other writers. A balanced and objective but enthusiastic appreciation of Grieg’s work and life, especially of his significance for Norway. Contains a few photographs.