~ Grieg, Edvard Hagerup ~
 
Born: 1843 in Bergen (Norway)
Died: 1907 in Bergen (Norway)
Grieg's musical abilities seems to have descended through the maternal side; his mother was a skilful pianist who performed at concerts in their home town of Bergen. It was she who gave him his first music lessons when he was no more than six years old, and within three years he was composing little sets of variations. In 1858, at the age of 15, he was accepted into Leipzig Conservatorium, where the shadows of the recently deceased Mendelssohn and Schumann still lay heavily on the musical activities.
Leipzig remained Grieg's base until 1862. When it came to writing his own piano concerto in 1868, Grieg's vivid memories of his Leipzig years gave him the necessary impetus to create a Schumannesque extended work which nonetheless retains his caracteristic and rhythmic verve. If the four years in Leipzig gave Grieg the necessary technical and theoretical framework from which he could strike out on his own, it did not release him from the thrall of German stylistic ideas. This liberation had to wait until he moved to Copenhagen in 1863, where for the first time he came into contact with artists from every discipline who were attempting to formulate a specifically Scandinavian aesthetic. Thus while he was being tutored in conventional theory by the famous Danish composer Niels Gade, his interest in his own country's musical legacy was being awakened for the first time.
Grieg was constantly on the move, shuffling between Norway and Denmark. He spent the summer of 1865 in Rungsted, Denmark, where he wrote his First Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 8, with its mysterious two opening chords. He even travelled as far as Rome, where he met the great playwright and Peer Gynt author, Henrik Ibsen. Another friendly influence on Grieg was the sadly short-lived Richard Nordraak, whose interest in establishing a Nordic artistic tradition helped Grieg set his mind to forming a musical union which became the Norwegian Music Association, established in Christiana (now Oslo).
His ties in Norway were strengthened in a more personal way: in 1867 he married his cousin, Nina Hagerup, and the majority of his large output of songs were written with her in mind since she was a highly distinctive singer. As early as his Op. 5 songs, set to text by the Dane Hans Christian Andersen, she was the object of his emotions and his ideal interpreter. Her own vocal career had been curtailed by damage done to her vocal cords when recovering from an illness; after her marriage they mounted tours throughout Europe where his songs, sung by her, were the focal point of the recitals. Grieg wrote in 1900:
'Why do songs play such a prominent role in my production? Quiet simply because I too, like other mortals, was (to use Goethe's phrase) once in my life touched with genius. The genius was Love. I loved a young girl with a marvellous voice and an equally marvellous gift as an interpreter. This girl has been my wife and my life's companion until this day'.
It is true to say that Grieg first found his true compositional voice in his songs, and that it was Norwegian in inspiration, although he did not 'lift' folk melodies and used them in his own works, preferring instead to utilize their general shape and accents to bring a folk inflection to his music. Only 'Solveig's Song', from Peer Gynt is a conscious borrowing.
The marriage was a true love match, both partners enjoying an unusually serene existance. Grieg's one weakness was his health, which was never good after an attack of pleurisy in his youth. From 1868 onwards Grieg's major works flowed without interruption: his piano concerto (mentioned above) was written in 1868, while his long-running series of piano pieces called Lyric Pieces began to appear at the year of his marriage. They would eventually number 10 volumes in all, and cover a period of some 34 years, from 1867 to 1901. These charming and wide-ranging miniatures almost took the form of a notebook delineating the composer's constant and changing reactions to the countryside around him, as well as his delight in using Norwegian folk sources for his characteristic dance rhythms and lilting melodies. The earlier books present few technical difficulties to a pianist and take a simple, but for the most part optimistic, viewpoint on life, while as Grieg enters middle age (he completed his last Lyric Piece when he was 58) the music becomes more introspective and nostalgic. As with so many of Grieg's orchestral works, the Lyric Suite, Op. 54 and Two Lyric Pieces, Op. 68 were arranged for string orchestra by Grieg from the piano originals.
Grieg made a second visit to Rome in the winter of 1870, meeting up with Liszt so that he could play to the maestro his recent piano concerto. True to form, Liszt expressed admiration for the work, pointing out his favourite small turns and felicities to highlight his points. Grieg's international reputation was largely launched by this concerto, reaching Leipzig by 1879 and Britain by 1883, after which it was rarely been off concert programmes. Meanwhile Grieg had formed creatively rewarding partnerships with two key Norwegian writers, Bjornstjerne Bjornson and Henrik Ibsen. Between 1871 and 1874, he collaborated with Bjornson on a series of settings of dramatic poems, including Before a Southern Convent, Op. 20, The Mountain Thrall, Op. 32 and Bergloit, Op. 42, the last being a melodrama with music which Grieg did not complete until 1885. These works generally used Nordic subjects or passages from Norwegian history, and are consistent with the direction Grieg and his artistic colleagues wanted to pursue. They are also fine pieces in their own right and unjustly neglected. Equally rarely heard is Grieg's incidental music to Bjornson's 1872 play Sigurd Jorsalfar. The music written in 1876 for Ibsen's youthful theatrical setting of his poem Peer Gynt, is an altogether in a different matter; Grieg originally wrote 26 separate incidental music items to accompany the play's wild, satirical and fantastical action, which extends as far as Africa and Arabia. Only later did Grizg form the best pieces into two orchestral suites, which today are regarded as quintessential musical depictions of Norwegian life, but originally accompanied outlandish cavortings in Bedouin tribes and darkest Africa.
By the mid-seventies Grieg was established as Norway's greatest living composer - indeed, the greatest composer the country had ever produced. His services as a conductor were often required, especially by the Norwegian Music Society, and it was only natural that during the 1884 bicentenary celebrations of the birth of the dramatist Ludvig Holberg, who was born in Bergen, Grieg was asked to write some music for the occasion. The composer wrote a suite for piano, From Holdberg's Time, commonly called the Holdberg Suite, in which he shows himself entirely capable of using old musical forms in a fresh and stimulating way, just as Tchaikovsky had done with his Rococo Variations.
By the time Grieg and his wife had settled in a country house he had built near Bergen, and it was there that he composed his Third Violin and Piano Sonanta, Op. 45 in response to a visit from the beautiful and sparkling young Italian violonist Teresina Tua, who played them dazzling virtuoso pieces and inspired Grieg to write something specially for her. There is a rare drama and tension in the work, and it is Grieg's masterpiece in the field. Grieg and his wife continued their concert tours, albeit at a more modest pace, but in 1907 Grieg died suddenly while journeying from his house in Bergen to Christiana. His most popular works remain at the core of the modern concert repertoire, but his greatest and most characteristic achievements are perhaps to be found in his 100 or so songs, his piano music and his orchestral and choral settings of Nordic texts.
 
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