The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In the 29-volume second edition. Grove Music Online /General Editor – Stanley Sadie. Oxford University Press. 2001.

Grieg, Edvard (Hagerup)

(b Bergen, 15 June 1843; d Bergen, 4 Sept 1907). Norwegian composer, pianist and conductor. He was the foremost Scandinavian composer of his generation and the principal promoter of Norwegian music. His genius was for lyric pieces – songs and piano miniatures – in which he drew on both folktunes and the Romantic tradition, but his Piano Concerto found a place in the central repertory, and his String Quartet foreshadows Debussy.

1. Early years and apprenticeship, 1843–64.

2. Nationalism and fame, 1864–79.

3. Maturity, 1880–1907.

4. Style.

5. Songs.

6. Piano music.

7. Chamber music.

8. Other works.

9. Influence and reputation.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

JOHN HORTON/NILS GRINDE (1–3), NILS GRINDE (4–9)

Grieg, Edvard

1. Early years and apprenticeship, 1843–64.

His mother, Gesine Judith Grieg, was a daughter of a provincial governor named Hagerup, whose father had heen adopted in boyhood by Bishop Hagerup of Trondheim and had assumed the name of his patron. Gesine’s father provided her with an excellent musical training under Albert Methfessel at Hamburg, with the result that she was much in demand at Bergen as a pianist. In 1836 she had married Alexander Grieg, merchant and British consul at Bergen. His father, John Grieg, had held the same appointment before him, and had also interested himself as an amateur in the musical life of the city, playing in the orchestra of the Bergen Harmonic Society under his father-in-law, Niels Haslund (b 1747). John’s father, Alexander Grieg (originally spelt Greig), was of Scottish extraction, but left his native country around 1770, probably as the result of economic rather than political pressure.

Edvard was the fourth of the five children born to John and Gesine Grieg. The story of his childhood and student years is told in his autobiographical sketch Min første succes. From the age of six he had piano lessons from his mother, was present at the regular musical gatherings held in the house and gained special affection for the works of Mozart, Weber and Chopin; his earliest extant compositions date from about 1858. From 1853 the family took up residence at the mother’s estate at Landås, 2 km or so outside Bergen, and Edvard and his elder brother John walked daily to the city to attend school there.

The first turning-point in Grieg’s career occurred in the summer of 1858, when Ole Bull visited the Griegs, heard Edvard play and persuaded the parents to send him to the Leipzig Conservatory. Thus the boy of 15 came to be enrolled at the institution of which he was always afterwards to speak with distaste. His first piano teacher there was Louis Plaidy, but Grieg found his pedantic methods of instruction so irksome and his teaching repertory of Czerny, Kuhlau and Clementi so sterile that he applied to be transferred to another teacher. He was then placed under E.F. Wenzel, who had been a close friend of Schumann and succeeded in arousing in his pupil an enthusiasm for Schumann’s music that never left him. Later still Grieg had piano instruction from Moscheles. His teachers for harmony and counterpoint were E.F. Richter, Robert Papperitz and Moritz Hauptmann.

In his last year at the conservatory Grieg studied composition with Carl Reinecke, who gave him the tasks of writing a string quartet and an overture, although he had learnt little about either instrumental style or formal construction. More valuable were the opportunities of hearing public music-making at Leipzig; at the Gewandhaus concerts, for example, Grieg heard Clara Schumann play her husband’s Piano Concerto, and he was present at several performances of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. He fell ill in 1860 with an attack of pleurisy that laid the foundations of the respiratory troubles which were to hamper him for the rest of his life. After a summer in Norway to recuperate he was able to return to the conservatory, which he finally left in the spring of 1862; at the students’ examination in the Gewandhaus his Vier Stücke (for piano, dedicated to Wenzel) had been played. These, with the four songs for alto to German texts, were soon afterwards published in Leipzig as his opp.1 and 2; they are well-made student works, showing little of his artistic individuality.

By May 1862 Grieg was back in his native city and lost no time in bringing himself before the public with a successful concert at which he played his piano pieces op.1 and took part in Schumann’s Piano Quartet. Later in the same season (March 1863) he played Beethoven’s C minor Concerto with Maezewski, the Polish conductor of the Harmoniske Selskab, and a month later his Rückblick, a short piece for chorus and piano, was performed by the society. In May 1863, not feeling satisfied with his musical training and having been refused a government stipend, he sought wider experience in Copenhagen, then the main cultural centre of Norwegian as well as Danish life. Among the Danish musicians who gave him encouragement and advice was Niels Gade. Gade’s reputation already shone with a double lustre: he was the recognized leader of the Scandinavian Romantic school, and he had been the friend and trusted colleague of Schumann and Mendelssohn. His reception of Grieg, though kindly, was tempered by some disdain of the Norwegian's meagre output of published work, and he soon sent him away to compose a symphony. Neither by temperament nor by training did Grieg feel himself fitted for such a task. The manuscript of the completed exercise is dated a year later (2 May 1864), and is docketed with a direction from the composer that it is not to be performed. Evidently Grieg made this decision some years later, since a number of performances of the immature symphony undoubtedly took place up to 1867. The two middle movements were published as Deux pièces symphoniques for piano duet op.14.

Other outstanding figures in the cultural life of Copenhagen were the musicians Emil Hartmann, C.F.E. Horneman, Gottfred Matthison-Hansen, Julius Steinberg (the singer) and the authors Benjamin Feddersen and Hans Christian Andersen. It was at this time also that Grieg met his cousin, Nina Hagerup, a talented singer; her engagement to Grieg took place in July of the following year (1864). The Poetiske tonebilleder (‘Poetic Tone-Pictures’) for piano op.3 and a number of songs were written at this period, of which Hjertets melodier (‘The Heart’s Melodies’) op.5, to Danish poems by Andersen, was the first of Grieg's works to exhibit a more personal style.

Grieg, Edvard