Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( / ɡ r iː ɡ / GREEG , Norwegian: [ˈɛdvaʁd ˈhɑ̀ːɡəʁʉp ˈɡʁɪgː] ; 15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He was one of the most important composers during the Romantic era, and his music is widely performed in classical music around the world. He used Norwegian folk music in his compositions, which helped make Norwegian music famous and contributed to the country’s national identity, similar to how Jean Sibelius and Bedřich Smetana did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively.

Grieg is the most well-known person from the city of Bergen. Many statues of him are located there, and several cultural places are named after him, including the city’s largest concert hall (Grieg Hall), its most advanced music school (Grieg Academy), and its professional choir (Edvard Grieg Kor). The Edvard Grieg Museum, located at his former home, Troldhaugen, honors his life and work.

Background

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway. His father was Alexander Grieg (1806–1875), a merchant and the British Vice-Consul in Bergen. His mother was Gesine Judithe Hagerup (1814–1875), a music teacher and the daughter of Edvard Hagerup, a solicitor and politician. The family name, originally spelled Greig, is connected to the Scottish Clann Ghriogair (Clan Gregor). After the Battle of Culloden in Scotland in 1746, Grieg’s great-grandfather, Alexander Greig (1739–1803), traveled widely before settling in Norway around 1770 and starting businesses in Bergen. Grieg’s paternal great-great-grandparents, John (1702–1774) and Anne (1704–1784), are buried in the abandoned churchyard of the ruined Church of St Ethernan in Rathen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Edvard Grieg grew up in a musical family. His mother taught him to play the piano when he was six years old. He attended several schools, including Tanks Upper Secondary School.

In the summer of 1858, Grieg met Ole Bull, a famous Norwegian violinist who was a family friend. Bull’s brother was married to Grieg’s aunt. Bull noticed Grieg’s talent when he was 15 years old and encouraged his parents to send him to the Leipzig Conservatory, where the piano department was led by Ignaz Moscheles.

Grieg joined the conservatory, focusing on piano. He enjoyed the many concerts and recitals in Leipzig. He disliked the strict rules of the conservatory’s program, except for the organ, which was required for piano students. In a letter to his biographer, Aimar Grønvold, in 1881, Grieg wrote: “I must admit, unlike Svendsen, that I left Leipzig Conservatory just as stupid as I entered it. Naturally, I did learn something there, but my individuality was still a closed book to me.”

In the spring of 1860, Grieg survived two serious lung diseases, pleurisy and tuberculosis. Throughout his life, Grieg’s health was affected by a destroyed left lung and severe deformity of his thoracic spine. He suffered from many respiratory infections and eventually developed combined lung and heart failure. Grieg was admitted to spas and sanatoria in Norway and abroad many times. Several of his doctors became his friends.

Pianist

In 1861, Grieg gave his first performance as a concert pianist in Karlshamn, Sweden. In 1862, he completed his studies in Leipzig and performed his first concert in his hometown. His program included a piece called Beethoven's Pathétique sonata.

In 1863, Grieg traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, and remained there for three years. During this time, he met Danish composers J. P. E. Hartmann and Niels Gade. He also met Rikard Nordraak, a Norwegian composer who wrote the Norwegian national anthem. Nordraak became a close friend and influenced Grieg's work. Nordraak passed away in 1866, and Grieg wrote a funeral march to honor him.

Marriage

On June 11, 1867, Grieg married his first cousin, Nina Hagerup (1845–1935), who was a lyric soprano. The next year, the couple had a daughter named Alexandra. She died in 1869 from meningitis. Grieg and Nina did not have any other children.

Composer

In the summer of 1868, Grieg wrote his Piano Concerto in A minor while on vacation in Denmark. Edmund Neupert performed the concerto for the first time on 3 April 1869 at the Casino Theatre in Copenhagen. Grieg could not attend because he was working as a conductor in Christiania (now Oslo).

In 1868, Franz Liszt, who had not yet met Grieg, wrote a letter for Grieg to the Norwegian Ministry of Education. This helped Grieg receive a travel grant. The two men met in Rome in 1870. During Grieg’s first visit, Liszt looked at Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 1, which Liszt liked very much. On Grieg’s second visit in April, he brought the manuscript of his Piano Concerto to Liszt. Liszt read through the music without preparation, including the orchestral parts. Liszt’s performance impressed the audience, though Grieg gently told him he played the first movement too quickly. Liszt also gave Grieg advice about how to write music for an orchestra, such as giving the melody of the second theme in the first movement to a solo trumpet, which Grieg decided not to use.

In the 1870s, Grieg became friends with poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who shared his interest in Norwegian self-government. Grieg set several of Bjørnson’s poems to music, including Landkjenning and Sigurd Jorsalfar. They planned an opera based on King Olav Trygvason, but a disagreement about whether the music or lyrics should come first led Grieg to work on incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, which upset Bjørnson. Eventually, their friendship was repaired.

The incidental music Grieg wrote for Peer Gynt helped make the play famous and became some of his most well-known music, later arranged as orchestral suites.

Grieg had a close relationship with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Harmonien) and later became its music director from 1880 to 1882. In 1888, Grieg met Tchaikovsky in Leipzig. Grieg admired Tchaikovsky, who praised Grieg’s music for its beauty, originality, and warmth.

On 6 December 1897, Grieg and his wife performed some of his music at a private concert at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria and her court.

Grieg received two honorary doctorates: one from the University of Cambridge in 1894 and another from the University of Oxford in 1906.

The Norwegian government gave Grieg a pension when he reached retirement age. In the spring of 1903, Grieg recorded nine pieces of his piano music on 78-rpm gramophone records in Paris. These recordings have been reissued on LPs and CDs, even though the sound quality is not perfect. Grieg also made piano roll recordings for the Hupfeld Phonola and Welte-Mignon systems, which still exist and can be heard today. He worked with the Aeolian Company to create piano rolls for its Autograph Metrostyle series, where he marked the tempo for many of his pieces.

In 1899, Grieg canceled his concerts in France to protest the Dreyfus affair, an antisemitic scandal in French politics. Grieg wrote that he hoped the French would return to the spirit of 1789, when the French republic promised to protect basic human rights. Because of his comments, Grieg received many angry letters from people in France.

In 1906, Grieg met the composer and pianist Percy Grainger in London. Grainger greatly admired Grieg’s music, and a strong connection quickly formed. In a 1907 interview, Grieg said, “I have written Norwegian Peasant Dances that no one in my country can play, and here comes this Australian who plays them as they ought to be played! He is a genius that we Scandinavians cannot do other than love.”

Edvard Grieg died at the Municipal Hospital in Bergen, Norway, on 4 September 1907 at age 64 from heart failure. He had been ill for a long time. His last words were, “Well, if it must be so.”

His funeral was attended by between 30,000 and 40,000 people in his hometown. As Grieg wished, his own Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordraak was played by his friend Johan Halvorsen, who had married Grieg’s niece. Also, the Funeral March from Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 was performed. Grieg was cremated in the first Norwegian crematorium in Bergen, which opened the same year. His ashes were placed in a mountain crypt near his home, Troldhaugen. After his wife’s death, her ashes were placed next to his.

Edvard Grieg and his wife were Unitarians. After Grieg’s death, Nina attended the Unitarian church in Copenhagen.

A century after his death, Grieg’s influence continues beyond music. A large sculpture of Grieg stands in Seattle, a hotel in Bergen is named Quality Hotel Edvard Grieg, and a large crater on Mercury is named after him.

Music

Edvard Grieg's early works include a symphony, which he later discarded, and a piano sonata. He also composed three violin sonatas and one cello sonata.

Grieg created the incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, which includes the pieces "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and "Morning Mood." In a letter from 1874 to his friend Frants Beyer, Grieg described his dissatisfaction with "In the Hall of the Mountain King," writing, "I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the mountain king—something that I literally can't bear listening to because it absolutely reeks of cow-pies, exaggerated Norwegian nationalism, and trollish self-satisfaction! But I have a hunch that the irony will be discernible."

Grieg's Holberg Suite was first written for the piano and later adapted by him for string orchestra. He composed songs using lyrics from poets such as Heinrich Heine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Rudyard Kipling, and others. Russian composer Nikolai Myaskovsky used a theme from Grieg in the variations that ended his Third String Quartet. Norwegian pianist Eva Knardahl recorded Grieg's complete piano music on 13 LPs for BIS Records between 1977 and 1980. These recordings were reissued in 2006 as 12 compact discs, also on BIS Records. Grieg himself recorded many of these piano works before his death in 1907. Pianist Bertha Tapper helped publish Grieg's piano works in America through Oliver Ditson.

List of selected works

• Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 7
• Violin Sonata No. 1 in F major, Op. 8
• Concert Overture In Autumn, Op. 11
• Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major, Op. 13
• Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
• Music written for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s play Sigurd Jorsalfar, Op. 22
• Music written for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, Op. 23
• Ballade in the Form of Variations on a Norwegian Folk Song in G minor, Op. 24
• String Quartet in G minor, Op. 27
• Two Elegiac Melodies for strings or piano, Op. 34
• Four Norwegian Dances for piano four hands, Op. 35 (more famous in versions arranged for orchestra by other musicians)
• Cello Sonata in A minor, Op. 36
• Holberg Suite for piano, later arranged for string orchestra, Op. 40
• Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45
• Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46
• Lyric Suite for orchestra, Op. 54 (arranged from four Lyric Pieces for piano)
• Peer Gynt Suite No. 2, Op. 55
• Four Symphonic Dances for piano, later arranged for orchestra, Op. 64
• Haugtussa Song Cycle based on poems by Arne Garborg, Op. 67
• Sixty-six Lyric Pieces for piano in ten books, Opp. 12, 38, 43, 47, 54, 57, 62, 65, 68, and 71, which includes: Arietta, To the Spring, Little Bird, Butterfly, Notturno, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, At Your Feet, Longing For Home, March of the Dwarfs, Poème érotique, and Gone.