Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)

Grieg lived in Copenhagen after graduating from the Leipzig Conservatory at 19. The Danish capital was, at the time, the cultural capital of Scandinavia, and the aspiring young composer made a living in the city by teaching and giving piano recitals. It was there that he met the young singer Nina Hagerup. They began to perform together, fell in love, and married in 1867. Grieg’s parents disapproved—Nina was Grieg’s first cousin—but the marriage was long, happy, and creative. Their performances, especially of Norwegian songs, helped to establish Grieg as a leading figure in the music of his own country.

In Copenhagen, Grieg met and befriended the Danish romantic composer Niels Gade (1817–1890). Gade encouraged Grieg to write his First Symphony in 1864. The work was performed several times, but Grieg later disowned it, believing it was without merit. “Never to be performed,” he wrote on the score. However, in recent years, the symphony has been revived and recorded and is acknowledged to demonstrate considerable technical skill, even if it lacks the emotional depth of his mature work.

Grieg was becoming increasingly committed to the idea of an authentically Norwegian style of music. Until 1814, Norway had been subject to Denmark, with Copenhagen as its cultural center. From 1814 to 1905 it was forced into a union with Sweden, a union that was increasingly seen by Norwegians as cruel and exploitative. Norway was beginning to assert its national identity, and Grieg found himself becoming part of the rising tide of Norwegian nationalism. In 1864, he met and befriended the Norwegian patriot and composer Rikard Nordraak (1842–1866) in Copenhagen. (Nordraak would later create the triumphant choral setting of Norway’s national anthem.) Grieg’s earlier music had been heavily influenced by the German romantic tradition, but his Humoresker Piano Sonata from 1865 reflect his changing sensibility.

Grieg settled in the Norwegian capital Christiania (now Oslo) in 1866. He became friends with the composer Otto Winter-Hjelm (1837–1931) who was exploring Norwegian folk music and integrating it into his own vision of a national musical style. Grieg was also powerfully influenced by Ludvig Mathias Lindeman (1812–1887) who collected Norwegian folk melodies. Grieg began to travel in rural Norway, seeking more folk songs and melodies in their native environment, and hearing the rhythms and harmonies that could only be produced by local musicians playing their own instruments.

During these first few years in Christiania, Grieg had to make a living by teaching and performing. His composing was largely confined to summer vacations. He worked hard and enthusiastically, and it was largely due to Grieg’s efforts that a concert society, with both choir and orchestra, was established in the city. Working with the concert society gave Grieg valuable experience in the art of orchestration, and in the fall of 1868 he produced his first masterpiece: the Piano Concerto in A minor. Here, for the first time, Grieg fully and successfully integrated Norwegian folk music into a classical European form, and created something that was new and astonishing. This passionate and luminously beautiful concerto remains as one of the most popular among pianists and listeners alike.

Grieg did much composing in Ullensvang, overlooking the spectacular Hardanger Fjord, on Norway’s west coast. The peace and tranquility afforded at this cottage were conducive to his work. He returned every summer, and sometimes in winter, too. Here, he said, he found nature at its most sublime, accompanied by the sound of the Ullensvang fiddle. Assisted with funds from the Norwegian state, he traveled to Italy, where he met and received encouragement from Franz Liszt (1811–1886) and others, who recognized him as a significant new talent.

He returned to Christiania in 1870, fired with new enthusiasm, and immediately began a fruitful collaboration with the Norwegian poet and dramatist, Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1832–1910). Bjornson had searched for years for a composer who could write Norwegian music as settings for his work. In 1871, they produced Before a Southern Convent, for soprano, contralto, women’s choir and orchestra, and the same year Bjornson’s ruggedly realistic dramatic poem Bergliot inspired Grieg to experiment with a daring new musical language. The scenic drama Sigurd Jorsalfar followed in 1872, and the unfinished Olav Tryggvason, for soloists, chorus and orchestra, explored Nordic history and myth. The pair aimed eventually to create out of this work a national epic musical drama, but Bjornson never completed more than three acts. The project was abandoned, but brilliant fragments of Grieg’s music survive to give some idea of what it might have been like.

Grieg’s dramatic gifts were most triumphantly put to work in his collaboration with Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) when the great Norwegian dramatist asked him to write the incidental music to his drama Peer Gynt. The play tells the story of a boastful dreamer from Norwegian folklore who travels the world having amazing adventures. The project was an immense challenge to Grieg, but in 1875 the production of the play, with Grieg’s music, was one of his greatest successes. The two suites have remained favorites in the international orchestral repertoire.

In 1874, Grieg was awarded an annual artist’s grant by the state, which meant that he could support himself as a composer without having to teach, perform, or conduct. But illness deprived him of the opportunity to enjoy his new-found freedom. In the mid-1870s he fell into a profound depression, a condition that was to afflict him intermittently for the rest of his life. His physical health began to fail, and he returned with Nina to his hometown of Bergen. As the years went by, he found the effort of composition increasingly difficult. However, he conducted the Harmonien Orchestra of Bergen from 1880 to 1882, and went on several concert tours of Europe, which stimulated him artistically and added to his international fame, but did severe damage to his health. In 1882 he gave up all his official posts, and in 1885 he and Nina moved to the quiet and solitude of Troldhaugen, outside Bergen. It was to be their home for the rest of their lives.

Though Grieg’s health continued to deteriorate, the quality of his music was undiminished. The String Quartet in G minor (1878), as well as the piano suite From Holberg’s Time (1884), and the Haugtussa song cycle (1895) are among his finest works.

Grieg’s greatest gift was his lyricism. His music encompasses a wide range of emotional expression and deeply-nuanced atmospheric effects. He was also in many respects a musical pioneer. He used dissonance and fragmentation to great effect, particularly in the Norwegian Peasant Dances of 1902–1903, arranged for piano. His impressionistic uses of harmony and piano sonority, in his late songs particularly, are highly original and uniquely his own. (Recent research has suggested that his use of tonal color influenced French Impressionist art.) His life’s ambition was to create a national form of music which would give the Norwegian people a sense of identity. In this, he was entirely successful, and his work was an inspiration to future generations of Norwegian composers and musicians. But his continuing international popularity demonstrates that his music transcends national identity, and expresses thoughts, impressions, and emotions that are universal.