Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist widely considered one of the leading northern Romantic era composers and his music is a mainstay of the classical repertoire. He was born in Bergen, Norway on 15th June 1843 and died there on 4th September 1907 aged 64.  

Piano Concerto (1869)
“Peer Gynt Suite” (1875)
“Holberg Suite” (1884)

1843: Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born on 15th June in Bergen, Norway (then part of of the Swedish-Norwegian Union). His father was Alexander Grieg a merchant and British Vice-Consul in Bergen and his mother was Gesine Judith Hagerup, a music teacher and daughter of the politician Edvard Hagerup. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Grieg’s great-grandfather, Alexander left Scotland and eventually settled in Norway around 1770. His mother taught Grieg the piano from the age of six and he studied in several schools, including Tanks Upper Secondary School. 

1858: He enters the Leipzig Conservatory on the recommendation of Ole Bull, the violin virtuoso who was a family friend. He studied piano under Ignaz Moscheles but was not keen on the strictures placed on students. 

1860: In the spring, Grieg contracts two life-threatening lung diseases, pleurisy, and tuberculosis and he was left with only one functioning lung which left him weakened throughout his life. On top of this he suffered from a deformity of his thoracic spine and would spend much time seeking medical attention in later years.

1861: He makes his debut as a concert pianist at the premiere of his first work, the String Quartet in D minor, in Karlshamn, Sweden.

1862: He graduates from the Leipzig Conservatory.

1863: He moves to Copenhagen, Denmark where he studies with Niels Gade. He makes his debut in Bergen by playing Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata.

1864: He meets the young Norwegian nationalist composer Rikard Nordraak (composer of the Norwegian National Anthem) and begins to learn traditional folk tunes. In the winter he founds the Copenhagen Concert Society, Euterpe to produce works by young Scandinavian composers.

1866: He moves to Christiana (now called Oslo).

1867: He marries his cousin Nina Hagerup on 11th June, despite his family’s objections. She is a talented pianist herself as well as an accomplished singer. Both Grieg and Nina were Unitarians. After the wedding the couple move to Christiania in Norway (now called Oslo) and he works as a conductor and a piano teacher. He starts to write the first of his ten collections of Lyric Pieces (Lyriske Stykker) for piano.

1868: The couples only child, Alexandra, is born. Franz Liszt writes a testimonial to the Norwegian Ministry of Education which leads to him obtaining a travel grant. During the summer whilst on holiday in Denmark Grieg begins composing his Piano Concerto A minor.

1869: Alexandra dies from meningitis. The Piano Concerto is given its premiere on 3rd April by Edmund Neupert in the Casino Theatre in Copenhagen. Grieg is not able to attend due to conducting commitments in Oslo. During the winter he meets the playwright Henrik Ibsen.

1870: He meets Franz Liszt in Rome. They discuss the Violin Sonata No. 1. On his second visit in April, Grieg shows him the Piano Concerto, and Liszt is greatly impressed, playing it through by sight. 

1874: He had become friends with the poet Bjornstjerne Blornson and shared his interests in Norwegian self-government. Grieg set several of his poems to music, including “Landkjenning” and Sigurd Jorsalfar” and so they decided to work on an opera together based on King Olav Trygvason. The two couldn’t decide on how to proceed and so Grieg starts writing incidental music for Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” instead (at the request of Ibsen). They both fell out only to resume their friendship later. Ironically the section “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, which has now become world famous, was loathed by Grieg himself for its pastiche of exaggerated Norwegian nationalism which he meant to be ironic. He is granted an annual stipend of 1,600 crowns by the Norwegian government so that he can dedicate himself to composition.

1880: He becomes Music Director of Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Harmonien) which he continues until 1882. 

1885: He builds his home, “Troldhaugen,” near Bergen. 

1888: He meets Pyotr Tchaikovsky in Leipzig and is very impressed. Tchaikovsky praises Greig’s music. “Peer Gynt” is premiered to an enthusiastic reception and he scores it into Suites 1 and later 2. In spite of poor health Grieg makes several tours in Scandinavia and Europe and plays his Piano Concerto himself in London.

1893: “Peer Gynt Suite 2” is fully scored. 

1894: He is awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cambridge.

1897: On 6th December he and his wife perform some of his music at a Windsor Castle, England for Queen Victoria. 

1899: He cancels his concerts in France in protest at the Dreyfus Affair, an anti-semitic scandal in French politics. He becomes the target of hate mail from many French people.

1903: During the spring Grieg makes nine 78-rpm gramophone recordings of his piano music in Paris and also records music rolls for the Hupfeld Phonola and Welte-Mignon systems, which survive to this day.

1906: He receives a pension from the Norwegian government. He meets musician Percy Grainger at a concert in London who adopts Grieg’s music and plays the Piano Concerto several times throughout the world. Grieg is awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.

1907: Grieg, when interviewed, said “I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that no one in my country can play, and here comes this Australian (Grainger) who plays them as they ought to be played! He is a genius that we Scandinavians cannot do other than love.”

Edvard Grieg died on 4 September 1907 at the Municipal Hospital in Bergen, Norway from heart failure after a long period of illness. Over thirty thousand people lined the streets of his home town for the funeral. He was cremated and his ashes were placed in a mountain crypt near his home Troldhaugen. His wife’s ashes would also be placed there later. 

Edvard Grieg’s early style was influenced by German and Danish composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Niels Gade. From the age of six his mother, a talented musician herself, introduced him to the music of Mozart, Carl Maria von Weber and Frederic Chopin and taught to play their pieces on the piano.

He had met the violin virtuoso Ole Bull when he was fifteen who convinced his parents to send the budding composer to Leipzig Conservatory. When he reached his twenties however, he realised that he was paying homage to many other countries other than his own and in 1863 when he met Rikard Nordraak in Copenhagen, who was very interested in Norwegian music and literature, he was inspired to consider to composing music that represented Norway. 

He loved the rhythms, harmonies, and style of traditional Norwegian folk music and incorporated it into his much of his classical music repertoire. He also used church music from the medieval period as an inspiration for his work to create a unique Norwegian sound and was one of a number of musicians at the time who could be described as Nationalistic. His music helped the nation keep their identity at a time when they were ruled by Sweden and was regarded as a local hero. Besides his more formal pieces he arranged many Norwegian dances and songs, particularly “Slåtter, Norwegian Peasant Dances”, Opus 72.

In the winter of 1864–65 he became one of the founders of the Copenhagen concert society created to give a platform for young Scandinavian composers. In the following winters he met Henrik Ibsen in Rome and Franz Liszt who was extremely complimentary about his Piano Concerto. Grieg was fascinated by Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” and wrote a good deal of incidental music to accompany the work in 1874–76, at the request of Ibsen himself. Much of it owes a great deal to Richard Wagner who was someone he had also become enthusiastic about. “Morning” from the piece as well as “In the Hall of the Mountain King” have become staples of the concert repertoire and even been used in television advertisements as they became so recognisable.

He was never rich, however the Norwegian government rewarded him with a pension of 1,600 crowns in 1874 so he could continue with his work. In spite of his poor health he made several tours in Europe and played his Piano Concerto in England in 1888. He was one of the first composers to record his own music for the new gramophone.

After his death his music quickly came to be seen as old-fashioned but nevertheless, he influenced many other and in particular the French composers of the early twentieth century including Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Others who were influenced include the Australian composer and pianist Percy Grainger and English composer Frederick Delius who were once mentored by Grieg. Others who owe him a debt of gratitude include the Fin Jean Sibelius, the Hungarian Bela Bartok and the Romanian George Enescu.

List of compositions by Grieg.