Norway's Folk Song Heritage

In a life of only sixy-four years, the Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), was enabled to draw to his native land the sympathetic attention of the outer world by a worthy example of political and artistic nationalixm. For his own Norway he had broadened and refined those rich musical elements which were there inherent. Up to the present, beyond the great masters that are for all men there have been few great enough to seize upon the national idiom and to translate it into terms comprehensible to those for whom that idion has no meaning. And herein lies the greatness of Grieg, who has implanted upon the melodies of Norway the impress of his own genius, so that through him all nations have grown to love and delight in a new world of music, vivid, picturesque and entrancing. But Grieg did not merely take the sade and somber songs or the lively dances of the North and present them to civilization in exquisite form, for quite the largest part of his work is original, although influenced by the style which he set himself to develop and copy.

Grieg's first studies had been in the conventional school, yet he pursued the style but a little way. He went out into his own fertile by-way, leaving the broad valley for the narrower region which he explored for the first time. It was in the small forms that Grieg was at his best. It was not for him to grapple with the larger forces as did Beethoven, to work out psychological problems, like Schumann and Strauss, or to trace the passions of love and despair to the vary springs as did Wagner and Tschaikowsky. His line fell in easier places; to paint the sunrise, to gaze upon the tiniest petals of beautiful flowers and to create the sweet sounds of he evening wind in the trees. All that is delicate, exquisite and tender can be found in his music, while here and there a touch of the wild barbarity of the Viking warrior, makes itself felt. There is passion, too, though never very deep or fierce. He could nat have written an Eroica symphony, nor characterized the heroes of Wagner or Strauss. For this reason one questions his place among the immortals. There is none of that patient study requisite that rewards the persisten follower of Bach or Brahms. Of course it is not contended that the beauties of Grieg's music lie all on the surface, buy they are scattered so thickly there that no one averse to diving beneath need do so.

The main part of Grieg's popularity among amateurs is due to this immediate perception of the attractive element in his music, and his fine miniatures are indeed worthy of every tribute of admiration. It is only when the mind demands greater things that itis to an extent unsatisfied, and herein lies the difference between Grieg, who excelled in small forms, and the greater masters, who set the seal of their genius on works of every stamp, from the smallest instrumental piece to the mass, the chamber work or the symphony. We have then in Grieg an artist of conusmmate power in the miniature. He wrote works of greater caliber, but they are not numbered among his more fascinating compositions. Thus there are some lvoer of music to whom he mkes little appeal.

To him whose delight is in the symphony, or its more modern counterpart, the symphonic poem, Grieg has little to offer, for he painted his orchestral colors in the most fagile of tints rather than with the flaming vividness which the lvoer of contemporary orchestral work looks for. Also the devotee of sacred music, the organ fugue and the mass, finds nothing in Grieg, yet Grieg is strong in his appeal in quarters where appeals are most readily met. The short piano piece, the love song or the national air, the rustic dance - of these there are many. It is a somewhat slender list of compositions that composes his life work, slender in caliber rather than in amount or quality. Like the man himself, the qualities were gentle, tender, frail. Whether such qualities are sufficient to hand his name down to posterity as a genius for future ages is doubtful. But we must remember that Chopin's appeal is chiefly to the class who hear or play music for the piano, and Chopin is everywhere recognized as a true genius, whose conceptions have an imperishable beauty. So it may be with Grieg, who opened up a new train of thought. He is entitled to great praise for melodic freshness, harmonic power, and the rare ability to ingraft a really individual style upon the material offered by his country's dances and songs.

A few simle details of Griegs' early life and study may include the fact of his birth from a musical mother, who occasionally appeared as a pianist in her native city of Bergen. When the child was but six years old this mother began his musical training, and his nature was further molded well by the influence of cultured friends and the musical surroundings which characterized the home life from the start. No serious idea of embarking upon music as a profession seems to have occurred to Grieg, whose early leanings were toward the church and the art of painting, until the momentous time when Ole Bull visited his parents. Grieg was about fifteen years of age, and Bull was a fascinating person of about fifty years, who had led a Bohemian life, touring the world and performing mad freaks, such as playing his violin on the top of the Great Pyramid, or throwing himself and his instrument into the river when in danger of a vessel catching fire. He had visited America several times, once with Adelina Patti, and his audiences had been always aroused to intense enthusiasm. One can imagine the influence such a visitor to the house would have upon an impressionable youth, and when Ole Bull took an interest in the boy's compositions, which had dated from his twelfth year, and advised the parents to send the youth to Leipsic Conservatory, the parents gladly complied, and henceforward music was the object of the boy's life. Upon going to Leipsic he was for a time out of sympathy with the teaching there, but finally he made the public examinations which were then ,as now analogous to graduations from other academic institutions. Then it was that he decided upon a residence in Copenhagen, and this moved prove a fateful and guiding influence for his later life. He came under the influence of Niels Gade, the greatest Danish composer, who was much more largely in the world's eye then than now. Grieg profited much from Gade's adivce as to his compositions, but it was not in his steps that Grieg was destined to follow. Far greater influences were upon him in the romantic and inspiring froms of Ole Bull and Richard Nordraak, the latter a Norwegian composer of great originiality, who died at the age of twenty-three. To accompany Bull, ardent prophet of all the potentialities of Norse song, to converse and discuss with Nordraak, the patriot composer, was to join their camp and push the cause of Norwegian music to the utmost. Grieg and NOrdraak started in Copenhagen a society to produce works of young Northern composers. This was useful service, giving Grieg an idea of the best music of the rising school and enlarging his mind so that he grasped the possibilities of modes of thought other than the classic and romantic examples common to the time.

As to the chronology of Grieg's composing, it will be observed that he was twenty-one years old when, inspired by love of the cousin who became his wife, he wrote the find song "Ich liebe dich". The three years that elapsed before his marriage, in 1867, also brought the first violin sonata and the overture, "In Autumn". The next nine years, to the production of his very important music to Ibsen's "Peer Gynt", further included the second violoin concerto. These years, principally spent as a resident of Christiania, had so greatly enlarged his artistic position as first to bring from the Norwegian government a stipendium for the express purpose of permitting him to visit Liszt in Rome. In 1874, two years before the first public presentation of the "Peer Gynt" drama to his incidental music, the government granted an annual stipend of 1,600 kroner, a little more than $400.

Henceforth Grieg variously changed his place of residence, from Christiania to Bergen, and to Hardanger Fiord, from which latter house, called "Lofthus" he journeyed to Bergen to conduct concert series in 1880, 1881 and 1882. It was in 1885 that he finally erected the residence "Troldhaugen" at a picturesque location near Bergen, and here he remained until his death on September 4, 1907. His later years had been marked by activity, such as the concert visits to Vienna, 1896, and Vienna and Paris in 1897. He had appeared in England a searly as 1888, amid conditions of great artistic triumph, and these visits continued to May, 1906, when he conducted an orchestraal concert of his works, then participated as pianist in another concert which included his sonata with cello and the third sonata with violin. His death occurred at Bergen, whither he had gone to embark for a visit to Christiania. His illness had developed so suddenly as not to permit his removal to "Troldhaugen", and he died in the hospital to which he had been transferred from his hotel. The funeral was held at Bergen, September 9, in the presence of some 40,000 people. Many thousands had earlier passed before the coffin as it lay in the Art and Industrial Museum, and all Norway did honor to the memory of her gifted son. Wreaths from foreign rulers and native institutions were strewn on the grave and regret was everywhere noticeable. Much of Grieg's own music was played by orchestras during the ceremony, and it included the march which he had composed forty years before for his friend Nordraak. He had intended to visit festivals in Leeds and London and now those programs partook largely of the nature of memorials. Evidencing the love of home and country to the end, Grieg left his estate of $75,000 to muscial and dramatic institutions in Bergen.

For an epitaph let the artist again speak, as he did in the following lines which appeared in the "Svensk Musik Tidning" of Stockholm:

"Tone poets like Bach and Beethoven have erected temples and churches upon high hills. I hve built abodes where people can feel at home and happy. In style and form I belong to the German Romantic School of Schumann. But I have also imbibed much from the source of national music. That is, I have made use of the rich treasures of Norwegian folk melodies, and it is from that hitherto little used emanation of the soul of the people that I have created a national musical art.