Edvard Grieg in miscellaneous, article nr. 37809

Biography

Family background

On the paternal side had Grieg Scottish dates back to the MacGregor clan (Gael Mac Griogair) who had lost their lands and, at times, were outlawed. In 1603 King James VI instituted the death penalty for carrying MacGregor-name , and clan members took names Grig, Greig and the like.

Edward's great-grandfather, Alexander Greig (1739-1803) came to Bergen in 1770 , where he quickly built up a successful business with dried fish and lobster exports. He got Norwegian citizenship in 1779 and modified in the connection name to Grieg, apparently because the Norwegian pronunciation was closer to the Scottish pronunciation of Greig. Alexander was a time the British vice-consul in Bergen, and his son and grandson, that Edward's grandfather and father were both British consuls while they ran Alexander's trading.

Edvard Grieg's grandfather John married Marie Regine Haslund, daughter of the Danish violinist Nils Haslund who in 1770 became head of Musikkselskabet harmony. John was a musician in the orchestra and the first of a long series of family members who made themselves felt in the Bergen music scene.

Also on maternal Edward had Danish ancestors, but far back via the famous Kjeld Stub (1607 to 1663).

Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup grandfather (who was also grandfather of Edvard Grieg's wife Nina) was a staple and man in Bergen, a wealthy and influential person in Bergen. Ole Bull married a third of the children of Edvard Hagerup and thus became a member of the family intermarried.

Gesine Hagerup, Edvard Grieg's mother, was musical, and the wealthy parents sent her to Altona, which was then the Danish, to study with the German composer Albert Methfessel. Back in Bergen, she appeared as a pianist and accompanist, and was the city's highest paid piano teacher. She also wrote poems and plays and organized a weekly musical where the instrumental works and parts of the operas was performed.

Childhood and youth

Edward was born in 1843 as the fourth of Alexander and Gesines five children. He grew up in Strand Street 152 near the fish market and German Bryggen. The house was destroyed in an explosion 20 April 1944 and the area rebuilt, but it's set up a memorial plate in which the house stood.

From his sixth year of life gained Grieg regular piano lessons from his mother. Nine years old, he wrote his first attempt compositions, all ended in the trash. Of youth work, there are several extant piano pieces which sometimes included in his collected works.

After primary school he entered in 1853 on Tanks school. He was not a typical diligent student, but took himself sometimes together and claimed himself as well in most subjects. His interest in music and composition teacher met with cynicism and scorn once he had with him a few compositions in school:

"The teacher [...] grabbed me in hair so it sortnet for eyes, and snarl brusquely:" Another time he takes the German lexicon of which he will, and allow such misconduct to be home. "
In the summer of 1858 Edward went on a trip to the east with his father, and thoughts of becoming a musician began in earnest to make itself felt. The last he pushed during his first meeting with "fill uncle" Ole Bull in the same year. After that Ole Bull had heard Edward playing some of his own compositions on the piano was Ole Bull and his parents immediately agreed that the boy had to go to Leipzig to study music.

Leipzig

In autumn 1858, 15 years old, began Grieg in music conservatory in Leipzig. The students were from a variety of nations, Dane CFE Horneman was a good friend who later described Grieg as "a brilliant study of trap, a wild, uncontrollable fellow with a bright head and a warm heart."

Konservatoriestudentene had free access to the famous Gewandhaus orchestra rehearsal, and Grieg himself said that all the music he heard here, particularly orchestral and chamber music, compensated for lack of knowledge of compositional technique at the conservatory. Mendelssohn and Schumann had been important people in town, and Grieg was especially the sense of Schumann who work for the new musical currents to win acceptance in the traditional music scene in the city. Schumann's poetry-packed music defendant also Grieg, especially romances and piano pieces.

Grieg admitted that he initially was a lazy student, but this has improved as he saw that the other students began to be better technically than him. Then woke competitive nature and he worked so hard that he contracted a severe pneumonia, or actually an incipient tuberculosis. This led to permanent damage of the lung and breathing problems throughout life. After a recovery-stay in Bergen, he returned to the doctor's advice to Leipzig together with his brother John was to study the cello, and Edward now worked very diligently. 18 years old, he graduated with a highly laudatory review of their teachers.

Grieg was later a strained relationship with the music scene in Leipzig. Among other things, he thought his works were not well received here. It is possible that Grieg in the first (and maybe only) time aimed at the infamous critic Erich Bernsdorf who not only managed to rake down Grieg's G minor string quartet, but also wrote disparagingly of Brahms's second symphony. One is on the other hand, do not forget that both the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 op. 46 and even Grieg's unfinished opera about Olav Tryggvason op. 50 was met with jubilation in Leipzig.
Later in life, "said Grieg also often disparaging about the conservatory and its teachers. Recent research has however shown that with this he gives a rather simplistic picture of the artistic conditions in Leipzig.

After graduating

On the way home he held his debut concert as a pianist, in Karlshamn. In the spring of 1862 Grieg was back in Bergen, and held its first public concert in Norway on 21 May. The reception was positive and Grieg wanted to study more, but his father was no longer afford to fund more studies. A bold application for statsstipend was rejected and Grieg had to commit self-study at home in Bergen for a year. But Bergen environment had little impetus to offer the aspiring composer, and he wanted out intensely. The result was that his father gave him a loan, and that Edward himself writes, "an indefinable longing drove me to Copenhagen...�.

Copenhagen

In the spring of 1863 he arrived in Copenhagen at that time had a relatively large arts scene. He also had contacts here - his old friend Emil Horneman and relatives in the family Hagerup lived in Copenhagen. The sense of folk music was awakened in the Nordic countries at this time in Denmark was Niels W. Gade and JPE Hartmann central. Gade asked Grieg to write a symphony, and he could not ask twice.

In Copenhagen, he received important musical influences through acquaintance with the confident Richard Nordraak that despite little music education had already found their own national style. The Nordic drift and contact with Nordraak got Grieg on the idea of combining folk musical moves with classic techniques.

In 1864 founded the Grieg with including Hartmann and Horneman the music company "Euterpe", which had the objective to promote the new Nordic music. Grieg wrote the now four "Humoresker" op.6 which was his first compositions inspired by Norwegian fiddle tunes, and with this major work he stood out as a renew of the Nordic music.

Roving years

In October 1866 he went to Christiania, where he received a two-year commitment as the leader of the Philharmonic Society. Despite opposition from the families he married in 1867 with his cousin, Nina Hagerup. The years 1869/70 he sojourned in Rome and was familiar with his idol Franz Liszt as to Grieg's great delight, spoke glowing about Grieg music. 1871/72 was Grieg helped to win the capital a permanent institution Orchestra, Music Society, which was a step in the evolution towards the Oslo Philharmonic. This was a productive period of collaboration with Bjorn Bjornson - Grieg wrote the music to Sigurd the Crusader, Bergliot and other Bjornson-texts.

From 1874 lived Grieg as independent artist on the Parliament's artist salary. Cooperation with Bjornson cut around the work of the planned national opera Olav Tryggvason, partly because Bjornson lost interest, and despite many requests from Grieg stopped sending more text material. When Ibsen turned to Grieg to get him to write music for a performance of Peer Gynt Grieg to beat even though he described the play "as the most carry a tune of all sujetter" , probably because the payment of 200 specie tempted. Peer Gynt was around the turn of the century an outstanding success worldwide, in Germany to play have been listed over 5000 times before the First World War.

In autumn 1875 his parents died in just three weeks apart, a kind of compositional processed Grieg Ballade for Piano op.24 for piano, his greatest piano composition. Edvard and Nina's only child, Alexandra, had only one year old died of brain inflammation (encephalitis) a few years earlier, and the relationship to Nina was sometimes not the best. Grieg wanted to get away from the hectic live life, also to be able to compose more. He chose to spend the summer at the remote farm B�rve in Odda. During the winter was rather easy, and Edvard and Nina moved down to Lofthus, where Edward had built a house composer of witty people who gave the name "Komposten". It was here he began the String Quartet in G minor op. 27 and Album for Male Choir op. 30. But it soon became too small in Hardanger, and the restless Grieg went out again.

The next year the pair made a series of artists' concert travels throughout Europe. From 1880 to 1882 he was conductor of Musikkselskabet harmony in Bergen. The work wore on health, and after a kuropphold in Carlsbad they stayed back a summer in Lofthus, where he began work on the Cello Sonata in A minor op.36, which he dedicated to his brother John.

Grieg was in the early 1880s came in a mid-life crisis, he felt that he composed for small and had stagnated artists. Cello Sonata, for example, was characterized by the fact that he stepped in the old track, and an attempt at a new piano concerto in B Minor ran into the sand. Relationship to Nina guilty too, and in 1883 Edward went his way to visit the charming young painter Leis Schjelderup that he had become acquainted with the Hardanger. She lived in Paris, but there he was not, for the journey through the Netherlands and Germany, he held a major concert tour, and the way his friend Frants Beyer was able to achieve a reconciliation between Edward and Nina. Back in Lofthus wrote Grieg From Holberg's time op.40.

Troldhaugen to and from the

Grieg wanted now a fixed point in life and in 1884 he purchased a plot of hop south of Bergen. Here he built Troldhaugen. But Grieg was still restless, and it was not long before he began to long for air under the wings again. Moreover, the construction cost of money and the economy was not the best. A long and successful concert tour in the autumn of 1885 restored the economy. In autumn 1887 they went out again, and in Leipzig he met Grieg Brahms and Tchaikovsky as both spoke warmly of Grieg's music.

The next years were Edvard and Nina on several long solo concert, and celebrated great successes. But it went beyond health, and Grieg sought increasingly spa and new doctors in a vain hope of getting better. Journeys, however, did not end. In 1904 he received the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav. He was also honorary doctor of Oxford and Cambridge. But from 1905 he was increasing respiratory problems, and during the spring 1907 health deteriorated considerably. After a more than ordinary wet summer on the west coast, he was critically ill and died 4 September. He had a magnificent funeral with tens of thousands of people make the procession. Edvard Grieg's urn is placed in a cave at Troldhaugen.

Music

Grieg's opus list includes 74 plants. In addition, there are a number of works without opus number. Poor health and an active turn�liv must take part of the blame for the relatively low production, but was also dependent on the optimal conditions for composing and was also severely self-critical of their own achievements.

Grieg is considered to be a national romantic composer, with the Norwegian folk music as their main source of inspiration. Just as the mighty handful, Russia Mussorgskia spearheaded Grieg made a synthesis of elements from the homely folk music based on kvintharmonikk, sharply accented dance rhythms (for Grieg inspired by the music switched) and an exchange between the functional and modal tonality - processed with batch techniques from Romanticism.

His many short piano pieces did that many regarded him as "Nordic Chopin," a nickname that goes back to the German conductor Hans von B�low.

Influence

Grieg's harmony pointed at all towards impressionism. Already in his lifetime, revealed some compositions by Emil Sj�gren and Hungarians shoulder �rp�d Doppler Grieg's popularity. Ernő Dohn�nyis early piano music shows the moves by Brahms and Grieg. Quite clearly, one can notice the influence of Carl Nielsen as a quartet dedicated to Grieg, and Claude Debussy's String Quartet, although Debussy himself would not acknowledge it. In all Debussy had an ambivalent relationship with the Grieg. Debussy criticized a program of music by Grieg and Wagner daheng�ende that one could not eat roast beef (Wagner) for petit fours (Grieg). On the other hand, praised Debussy Grieg male choir op. 30 and had only praise for the Grieg as a conductor. Here he agrees with a bit rate and music critic George Bernard Shaw who in turn wanted Grieg conducting the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Grieg's influence on the subsequent generations composer turns out in various ways. Among the composers who can be linked to Grieg, either explicitly or through the music, you find Frederick Delius, Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Nicolai Medtner and B�la Bart�k.

Grieg companies and research institutions

In Norway there are the International Edvard Grieg company. There are also a number of Grieg Company abroad. In 1995, founded a research group at the Edvard Grieg at the Westf�lische Wilhelms-Universit�t M�nster, since 2007 the institution is located at the University of the K�nste Berlin.