Edvard Grieg - His Life and Music

 

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born on June 15, 1843 and passed away on September 4, 1907 in Bergen/Norway. His mother became his first music teacher. The Norwegian violinist O. Bull advised him to study music in Leipzig/Germany. Nevertheless Grieg couldn't develop a good relationship to German classical music.

He was more impressed with Danish music, especially when he moved to Copenhagen at the age of 20.

Grieg loved Norwegian folksongs and took plenty themes and variations into his compositions. With the "Holberg Suite", composed in 1884, Grieg made his contribution with which Scandinavians commemorated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig Holberg, the Norwegian writer, who with his 32 brilliant comedies had earned the name of a "Moliere of the North". For the commemorative address delivered on December 3 in Bergen, his birthplace, and the unveiling of a statue on the market place, Grieg composed an (unpublished) cantata for male chorus and conducted this "in furs and furlined boots, with a cap of the same", so Grieg.

Subsequently he wrote a "Suite in the olden style" for piano, and, in the following year, arranged it for string orchestra (with multiple division of the single instrument parts). With this "wigged piece", as Grieg described it. he took on the light-hearted pre-classical style of the French rococo, combined old dances types with a Scandinavian accent, so to speak, and thereby created a conscious anachronism of special charm.

The "Peer Gynt Suites" made Grieg wellknown all over the world. I really love them too. Many piano virtuosos have appreciated his piano concerto a-minor opus 16 up tp now. Grieg succeeded in squaring the musical circle. He took the elements of Norwegian music with its minor dominant, pentatonic scale or falling lead-note, as well as its dance rhythms, and would thereby really be counted merely among the little-valued "dialect artists". But over and above his Scandinavian accent grieg showed a mastery of refined orchestral timbres and so became one of the forerunners of impressionism.

Of his 144 songs in all, 124 are on texts by Scandinavian poets; the others are composed by German poems. To a great extent, his wife, Nina Hagerup, who, as a trained singer, propagated her husband's art with impressive creative power, inspired Grieg very much.