Edvard Grieg

Norway's most famous composer, whose name is associated with the stage musical Peer Gynt, is also the author of a highly acclaimed Piano Concerto, Lyric Pieces for Piano and other works inspired by local folklore. Born in Bergen on June 15, 1843, the son of a Scottish merchant, Edvard Hagerup Grieg learned to play the piano from his mother, who taught him from the age of five and introduced him to the Romantic classics. Advised by the violinist Ole Bull, none other than his mother's brother-in-law, he entered the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858, where he studied with the great masters of the time, Ignaz Moscheles (piano) and Carl Reinecke (composition), and attended a concert by Clara Schumann performing her recently deceased husband's Piano Concerto. The young Grieg was in poor health, suffering from pleurisy for the rest of his life. After graduating in 1862, he gave his first recital in his hometown, before moving to Copenhagen the following year for three years. There, he met Danish composers Niels Gade and Johann Peter Emilius Hartmann, and the author of the Norwegian national anthem, Rikard Nordraak, who introduced him to the folklore of his homeland, peasant dances such as halling, ganger and springar, and Nordic legends. On his death in 1866, Grieg composed a Funeral March in his honor. In 1867, he married his cousin Nina Hagerup, a soprano who was to perform his lieder, including the Dig elsker jeg (1865) linked to their meeting, and later the Haugtussa cycle (1895). Their only child, Alexandra, died at the age of eighteen months. In order to build up a national musical collection, Grieg founded the Norwegian Academy of Music in Christiania, where he had settled before the capital was renamed Oslo, including the songs collected over the years by the organist and folklorist Ludvig Mathias Lindeman. His investment in the rediscovery of this heritage had a profound influence on his compositions. After the publication of his four Humoresques, a Sonata for piano and a first Sonata for violin and piano in 1865, the first book of Lyric Pieces was published in 1867 (nine others followed until 1901), followed by the Piano Concerto in A minor (1868), destined to become a classic of the Romantic piano repertoire. Held back in Christiania, Grieg was unable to attend the premiere in April 1869 by Edmund Neupert at Copenhagen's Casino Theater, before an audience that included Niels Gade and Anton Rubinstein. At the end of the year, the composer stayed in Rome, where he met Franz Liszt, who advised him to make some changes to his Concerto, which Grieg adopted before changing his mind. A composer of many melodies, Grieg had until then drawn his texts from renowned authors such as Heine and Andersen. In 1867, he began a regular collaboration with the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, notably for the music of the play Sigurd Jorsalfar (1872), but in 1874, it was another great Norwegian author, Henrik Ibsen, who commissioned him to write a composition for his fantasy drama Peer Gynt, which he intended for the stage. The story recounts the adventures of a wanderer in search of his identity, traveling from troll country to Africa, before reuniting with his childhood sweetheart and finally finding peace. Grieg's greatest work in the popular vein, Peer Gynt includes memorable passages such as In the Mountain King's Lair, In the Morning and Solveig's Song, which have been the subject of various revivals. As for the work as a whole, it has been adapted for film and television. After its premiere on February 24, 1876 in Christiania, Grieg wrote two symphonic suites, in 1888 and 1891. Meanwhile, in 1871, together with Johan Svendsen, he founded the Christiania Music Society, which later became the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Grieg's activities were threefold: he was a composer who received a pension from the Norwegian state; he was a conductor, although he often left the baton to his partner; and he toured as a pianist. This excessive activity led to periods of fatigue and depression. In 1873, he began writing an opera with Bjørnson, Olav Trygvason, which he resumed in 1888 but never completed. He composed numerous vocal pieces, a high-quality Ballade op. 24 (1876), a String Quartet (1878), Deux mélodies élégiaques for string orchestra (1880), Norwegian Dances (1881), a Sonata for cello and piano (1883) and the Suite Holberg (1884), a five-movement orchestral score celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Danish playwright Ludvig Holberg. In search of time to compose, Grieg isolated himself in Ullensvang, before taking over as director of the Bergen Music Society (Musikkselskabet Harmonien), from 1880 to 1882. He abandoned the composition of a second Piano Concerto in B minor and distanced himself from his wife in search of a woman who had painted his portrait, Leis Schjelderup, giving concerts en route in the Netherlands and Germany, but not as far as Paris, where the artist had settled. In 1884, he bought a house called Troldhaugen in Hop, south of Bergen, which became his museum. In 1887, he completed his third Sonata for violin and piano (the second was published in 1867) and spent some time in Leipzig, where he met Brahms and Tchaikovsky, before resuming tours with his wife Nina. In 1898, between two volumes of his Lyric Pieces, he completed the Symphonic Dances, based on tunes collected by Lindeman. Despite stays in spas, his health declined and his respiratory problems worsened. In 1904, Grieg, a pioneer of musical nationalism, was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olaf, Norway's highest honor, for his contribution to the country's culture, which he had ardently defended. He also received honorary doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge universities. On September 4, 1907, Edvard Grieg died of pulmonary emphysema in Bergen hospital, aged 64.

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