Edvard Grieg: Biography
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in Bergen 15. June 1843. Like many
of the citizens of this city Edvard Grieg had ancestors from
abroad. His great-grandfather, Alexander Greig (later changed to
Grieg), came from Cairnbulg in Scotland in the 1770's. Grieg also
had Danish and Norwegian blood. The Grieg family was a successful
merchant family, where the main income came from lobster and fish
export to the British isles. Edvard Grieg's mother, Gesine, was
probably the best piano teacher in Bergen, and the combination of
money and musical talent mad the way to a future as musician open
to Grieg.
He showed his musical talent quit early. Around the age of six he
could sit at the piano for hours, improvising and even composing
small pieces. The great idol for the young Edvard was the
violinist Ole Bull. Ole Bull was a good friend of Grieg's parents,
and has got the honour of discovering Edvard Grieg's talent. It
was during a visit at Grieg's home in 1858 that took him aside
and said "You are going to Leipzig to become an artist".
With his strong interest in Norwegian folk music Ole Bull
influenced Grieg to choose a Norwegian style when composing. Ole
Bull was to remain a close friend of Edvard Grieg until Bull's
death in 1880.
The conservatory in Leipzig was founded by Felix Mendelsohn in
1843 , and was reckoned to be the best and most modern
conservatory in Europe. As teachers in Leipzig Grieg had some of
the best pedagogues in Europe: Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Reinecke and
Moritz Hauptmann. During his stay in Leipzig Edvard Grieg came in
contact with the European music-tradition, first of all he
studied the works of Mozart and Beethoven, but also the
compositions of more modern composers like Mendelsohn, Schumann
and Wagner. He graduated in 1862 with outstanding grades.
He gave his first concert 18th of August 1861 in the Swedish city
of Karlshamn. Grieg settled down in Copenhagen, the only
Scandinavian city with a rich cultural life on an international
level. In Copenhagen lived other composers like Niels W. Gade,
Emil Hornemann, Winding and Mathison-Hansen. Especially Gade had
a prominent position as the most important composer in
Scandinavia, and was Grieg's first great idol. In Copenhagen
Edvard Grieg met an other Norwegian composer, who should have a
great impact on Grieg's evolution towards becoming a composer of
Norwegian music, namely Rikard Nordraak. Nordraak's enthusiasm
for everything Norwegian was transferred to Edvard Grieg. Even
though Grieg was the one with the most solid background from a
conservatory, he looked upon Nordraak as his idol. Grieg later
said this about Nordraak: "He opened my eyes for the
important in music that isn't music".
In Copenhagen he also met his cousin Nina Hagerup. they had grown
up together in Bergen, but Nina moved together with her parents
to Copenhagen when she was 8. She was an excellent pianist, but
first of all it was her beautiful voice that fascinated Grieg.
Edvard was so charmed by his cousin, that they were secretly
engaged in 1864. The engagement was not well received by the two
families. Grieg's father warned his son against the commitments
by starting a family. He meant that he couldn't support a wife
and a family when his income came from conducting, piano-playing
and composing. Nina's mother's criticism was much harsher. She
said about her coming son-in-law: "He has nothing, he cannot
do anything, and he makes music nobody cares to listen to".
In the spring of 1865 they made their engagement known, and Grieg
gave a present for the occasion to Nina, in the form of four
songs with texts by their good friend, Hans Christian Andersen (Melodies
of the Heart, op. 5). In spite of the true love between Edvard
and Nina, none of their parents were present at the couple's
wedding on the 11th June 1867.
The Griegs went from Copenhagen to Kristiania (Oslo) in order to
participate in the founding of a Norwegian environment for music
in the Norwegian capital. It became a period of hard labour, both
concerning the establishing of a Norwegian musical-life and
concerning their daily income. The family's income came from the
various jobs Edvard took as a conductor and piano-teacher. Their
daughter Alexandra was born on the 10th April 1868. The same year
Edvard Grieg composed his brilliant piano-concerto in a-minor,
during a stay at Søllerød in Denmark. This masterpiece became
his final breakthrough as a composer, and after this he was
reckoned as one of the greatest composers in his time.
The joy of the success as a composer was to be short; on the 21st
May 1869 their daughter Alexandra dies from meningitis while
visiting their family in Bergen.
On the beginning of the 1870's Edvard Grieg co-operated
extensively with the Norwegian author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson,
which led to Grieg composing music to Bjørnson's poems. In
addition to the songs came the music for the melodrama Bergljot,
the choral-work Landkjenning (Land-sighting) and the music for
the play Sigurd Jorsalfar from this period. Grieg and Bjørnson's
most ambitious project was a national opera based on the history
of the Norwegian king Olav Trygvason. In the beginning the work
went forward quickly, but after a while they both lost some of
the inspiration and a conflict raised between the two. The
conflict concerned what had to be done first; the music or the
libretto. When there came to a halt in the work with the opera,
Grieg found time to compose music for the Norwegian playwright
and poet Henrik Ibsen's dramatic poem Peer Gynt. To work with
Ibsen, before the opera was finished, made Bjørnson so
dissatisfied that a conflict raised between Grieg and Bjørnson,
a conflict that lasted for almost 16 years.
Edvard Grieg met Henrik Ibsen for the first time in Rome in 1866.
Ibsen immediately felt that Edvard Grieg was an artist with
unusual musical and intellectual capacities. He and Grieg had the
same views on Ibsen's famous drama Brand. This is one of the
reasons why Edvard Grieg was chosen when Ibsen in 1874 planned a
staging of Peer Gynt with music. Grieg accepted the task, and
started immediately with the greatest enthusiasm. But setting
music to Peer Gynt wasn't as easy as he had thought it would be,
but on the 24th February 1876, the play was performed for the
first time on Christiania Theater in Oslo, and was an immediate
success. Alongside the work with Peer Gynt, Grieg also set music
to six poems by Ibsen (op. 25). In 1888 and in 1893 Grieg
published respectively the Peer Gynt Suite I and II, which
contained the most popular melodies from the play Peer Gynt.
These two suites are among the most played orchestral pieces in
our time.
As a composer Edvard Grieg was fortunate to be a success while
still alive. First of all it was because of his piano-concerto in
a-minor and the music for Peer Gynt, but also as a composer of
Lieds and of small piano-pieces Grieg became famous and
relatively wealthy. He spent much time on travels, and received
impressions from the big musical metropolis like Leipzig, Prague,
Berlin, London and Paris, as well as the Norwegian mountains.
Edvard Griegs good friend, Frants Beyer, convinced the Grieg's
that they needed a real home to come back to after touring abroad.
Beyer helped Grieg buying a place at Hop in Bergen, and in April
1885 Edvard and Nina moved in at their new home at Troldhaugen.
Edvard Grieg found new ways of approach to the Norwegian folk
music, with the result that in the late 19th century France they
spoke about two main stiles in music; the Russian school and the
Norwegian School. On his many journeys in Europe he met, and
became a good friend of, other composers like Peter Tchaikowsky,
Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Frederic Delius, Camille Saint-Saens,
Julius Röntgen and more. He influenced other composers, first of
all Bela Bartok, but also Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy are
influenced by Edvard Grieg.
Even though Edvard Grieg was well paid by Peters Verlag in
Leipzig for his compositions, it was said that they flagged at
the publishers every time they received a new collection of Lyric Pieces, it was through his tours
that Grieg received his main income. He was indefatigable on his
concert tours. Luckily he was able to return to Norway and
Troldhaugen for the summers, and through walks in the nature get
his energy back before he left for Europe in the autumn. The
extensive touring with innumerable concerts, combined with a weak
health condition was to put an end to his life. His body couldn't
take more, even though his will to continue absolutely was
present. In September 1907 he and Nina planned to participate on
the music-festival in Leeds, England. They had left Troldhaugen
for the season and lodged at Hotel Norge in Bergen, waiting for
the boat that should take them to England via Oslo. Grieg became
seriously ill and was hospitalised in Bergen, where he died on
September 4th 1907 of chronic exhaustion.
© Troldhaugen Museum, 2000