Grieg, EDVARD

Grieg, EDVARD, a Norwegian composer, born at Bergen, 15th June 1843. He was of Scotch descent, his ancestors, Greigs, having emigrated from Fraserburgh during the Jacobite troubles. Grieg received instruction in music from his mother, till at the age of fifteen, on the recommendation of Ole Bull, he was sent to the Conservatorium at Leipzig. Thence, in 1863, after a severe illness, he went to Copenhagen, and afterwards to Christiania, where he was settled as a teacher for about eight years, and enjoyed the intimate friendship of Björnson and Ibsen. He visited Liszt in Rome in 1869. For a while a wanderer, he occupied for some years a romantic hut on the Hardangerfjord, and subsequently settled near Bergen. The Norwegian parliament conferred a pension on him to enable him to devote himself to composition. His works are mainly for the pianoforte, and in small forms, but embrace a sonata and a concerto for pianoforte, three violin and pianoforte sonatas, numerous songs, and a few orchestral and small choral pieces. Beyond that of any other composer, his music is characterised by the strongest national peculiarities, extreme gloom and brilliance alternating like the Norwegian summer and winter; its merriment is often wildly elfish in its freaks, and its pathos sometimes has a ghostly weirdness. He is as far removed from the commonplace as Chopin. He is of course immensely popular with his countrymen, and the great and growing favour with which he is regarded in England was strongly expressed on his visits in 1888, 1889, and 1897.