IV
Norway, as it seems, has always been a nation of great individuals. In her early history she was as isolated socially as she was geographically. Though nominally a part of the Swedish Empire, she always maintained a large measure of independence, and strengthened the barrier of high mountains with a more impassable barrier of neighborhood jealousy. Life was difficult among the mountains and fjords, and each man was obliged to depend upon his own courage and energy. Luxury was unknown. Even civilization was primitive. Hence, when Norway began to attain artistic expression in the nineteenth century she was as provincial as a little village in the middle west of America. But her life, while simple, was intense, and the narrowness of the spiritual environment fostered a broad culture of the soul. Norway became a nation of laborers, of poets, of thinkers, and of religious seers. The very friction that opposed the current made it give out more light.
Ibsen, the first supreme genius of Norway in the arts, wrote equally from Norway's traditional past and from Norway's circumscribed present. Out of the combination of the two he created 'Brand,' one of the noblest poetic tragedies of modern times. His later social dramas, as we know, altered the theatre of the whole world. Beside Ibsen was Björnson, only second to him in poetry and drama. And it was during Ibsen's early years that Norway began to attain self-expression in music. The first composer of national significance was Waldemar Thrane (1790-1828), composer of overtures, cantatas, and dances, and of the music to Bjerragaard's 'Adventure in the Mountains.' But the fame of Norway was first carried outside the peninsula by Ole Bull (1810-1880), the virtuoso violinist who, after touring through all the capitals of Europe, settled down in Pennsylvania as the founder of a Norwegian colony. His compositions for the violin had an influence out of all proportion to their inherent value. He was a romantic voice out of the north to thousands who had never thought of music except in terms of Mendelssohn and Händel. His Fantasies and Caprices for the violin were filled with national melodies and national color. He was an ardent patriot, and through his national theatre in Bergen, no less than through his music and playing, awakened his countrymen to artistic self-consciousness.
Of far wider power as a composer was Halfdan Kjerulf (1815-1863), a composer of songs which stand among the best in spontaneity and delicate charm. His charming piano pieces in the small forms were filled with romantic color. In his many songs, simple, yet varied and original, he showed a power of evoking emotional response that forces one to compare his talent with that of Schubert. With him we should mention E. Neupert (1842-1888), who carried the romanticism of Weber and Mendelssohn into Norway, in a long and varied list of chamber and orchestral music; M. A. Udbye (1820-1889), composer of Norway's first opera Fredkulla; and O. Winter-Hjelm (born 1837), who was a generous composer of songs, choral and orchestral pieces in the conservative romantic style of Germany. Johann D. Behrens (1820-1890) proved himself a valuable conductor and composer for Norway's unbelievably numerous male singing societies.
But the greatest composer of the older romantic period was Johan Svendsen (born 1840). He was solidly grounded in the methods and ideals of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gade and even Brahms, and remained always true to their vision. A specific national composer he was not, but with discreet coloring he treated national subjects in such works as the 'Norwegian Rhapsody,' the 'Northern Carnival,' the legend for orchestra Zorahayde, and the prelude to Björnson's Sigurd Slembe. In the classical forms he wrote two symphonies and a number of string quartets of marked value. As a colorist he must be highly ranked. But his color is not so much that of nationality as that of romanticism in the conventional sense. His virtues were the romantic virtues of sensuous beauty, discreet eloquence, and somewhat self-conscious emotion. But Norway found her true national propagandist in Richard Nordraak (1842-1866). This man, who died at the age of twenty-four, was a remarkably talented musician, and an unrestrained enthusiast for the integrity of his native land, both in politics and in art. It is said that his meeting with Grieg in Copenhagen in 1864, and their later friendly intercourse, determined the latter to the strenuously national aspirations which he later carried to such brilliant fruition. The funeral march which Grieg inscribed to him after his death is one of his deepest and most moving works. Nordraak's few compositions—incidental music to two of Björnson's plays, piano pieces and songs—show his effort after purely national coloring, but have otherwise no very high value.
The great apostle of Norwegian nationalism was of course Grieg. His place among the composers of whom we are now speaking was partly that of good angel and partly that of press agent. The other Scandinavian composers have basked to a great extent in the light which he shed, have taken their inspiration from him, and have learned invaluable lessons in the art of musical picture painting. He was by no means merely a nationalist. Besides acquainting the world with the beautiful peculiarities of Norwegian folk-song and with the fancied beauties of northern scenery, he showed composers in every part of the world how to use the melodic peculiarities of these songs to build up a strange and enchanting harmony, capable of calling forth mysterious pictures of the earth and sea and their superhuman inhabitants. Grieg was the first popular impressionist. He helped to shift the emphasis from the technical and emotional aspects of music to its specific pictorial and sensuous aspects. And he prepared the world at large for the idea of musical nationalism, which has become one of the two most striking facts of present-day music.
When we say that Grieg was the first popular impressionist we do not mean that he was more able or original than certain others who were working with the same tendencies at the same time. His popularity resulted to a great extent from the form and manner in which he worked. His piano music was admirably suited to making a popular appeal. It was often short and easy; it was nearly always melodious and clear. Its picturesque titles suggested a reason for its unusual turns of harmony and phrase. It was never so radical in its originality as to leave the mind bewildered. Hence Grieg became extremely popular among amateurs and casual music-lovers. His piano pieces became Hausmusik as those of Mendelssohn had been a generation before. The 'impressionistic' effect was usually produced by simple means—a slight alteration of the familiar form of cadence, a gentle blurring of the major and minor modes, an extended use of secondary sevenths and other orthodox dissonances. These interested the musical amateur without repelling him, and, when listened to in association with the picturesque titles, suggested all sorts of delightful sensuous things, such as the mist on the mountains, the sunlight over the fjords, or the heavy green of the seaside pines. This musical style of Grieg's was expertly managed; it was unquestionably individual and was matured to a point where it showed no relapses to the style out of which it had developed. As an orchestral colorist Grieg was talented and original, but by no means revolutionary. He chose timbres with a nice sense of their picturesque values, but in orchestration he is not a long step ahead of the Mendelssohn of the overtures.
Edvard Grieg at the Piano
After a photograph from life
Edvard Hagerup Grieg, the son of Alexander Grieg, was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1843. He was descended from Alexander Greig (the spelling of the name was changed later to accommodate the Norwegian pronunciation), a merchant of Aberdeen, who emigrated from Scotland to Norway soon after the battle of Culloden, in 1746. His father and his grandfather before him served as British consul at Bergen. His mother was a daughter of Edvard Hagerup, for many years the mayor of Bergen, the second city of Norway. It was from her that Grieg inherited both his predisposition for music and his intensely patriotic nature. She was a loyal daughter of Norway and was possessed of no small musical talent, which her family was glad to cultivate, sending her to Hamburg in her girlhood for lessons in singing and pianoforte playing. These she supplemented later by further musical studies in London, and she acquired sufficient skill to enable her to appear acceptably as a soloist at orchestral concerts in Bergen. It was a home surcharged with a musical atmosphere into which Edvard Grieg was born; and his mother must have dreamed of making him a musician, for she began to give him pianoforte lessons when he was only six years old.
Though he disliked school (he appears to have been a typical youngster in his predilection for truancy), the boy made commendable progress in his music and even tried his hand at little compositions of his own; but before his fifteenth year there was no serious thought of a musical career for him. In that year Ole Bull, the celebrated violinist, visited his father's house, and, having heard the lad play some of his youthful pieces, prevailed upon his parents to send him to Leipzig that he might become a professional musician. It was all arranged very quickly one summer afternoon; the fond parents needed little coaxing, and to the boy 'it seemed the most natural thing in the world.' Matriculated at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858, young Grieg at first made slow progress. He studied harmony and counterpoint under Hauptmann and Richter, composition under Rietz and Reinecke, and pianoforte playing under Wenzel and Moscheles. At the conservatory at that time were five English students, among them Arthur Sullivan, J. F. Barnett, and Edward Dannreuther, who subsequently became leaders in the musical life of London; and their unstinting toil and patience in drudgery inspired the young Norwegian to greater concentration of effort than his frail physique could stand. Under the strain he broke down completely. An attack of pleurisy destroyed his left lung and thus his health was permanently impaired. He was taken home to Norway, where it was necessary for him to remain the greater part of a year to recuperate. But as soon as he was able he returned to Leipzig; he was graduated with honors in 1862.
At Leipzig Grieg came strongly under the sway of Mendelssohn and Schumann. He did not escape from that influence when he went to Copenhagen in 1863 to study composition informally with Niels Gade. While Grieg always held Gade in high esteem, the two musicians really had little in common, and the slight influence of the Dane was speedily superseded by that of Nordraak, with whom Grieg now came in contact. Nordraak was ambitious to produce a genuinely national Norwegian music, and, brief as their friendship was, it served to set Grieg, whose talents lay in the same direction, on the right path. Now fairly launched upon the career of a piano virtuoso and composer, he became a 'determined adversary of the effeminate Scandinavianism which was a mixture of Gade and Mendelssohn,' and with enthusiasm entered upon the work of developing independently in artistic forms the musical idioms of his people. In 1867 Grieg was married to Nina Hagerup, his cousin, who had inspired and who continued to inspire many of his best songs, and whose singing of them helped to spread her husband's fame in many European cities. In 1867 also he founded in Christiania a musical union of the followers of the new Norse school, which he continued to conduct for thirteen years.
Besides the giving of concerts in the chief Scandinavian and German cities and making an artistic pilgrimage to Italy Grieg at this period was increasingly industrious in composition. He was remarkably active for a semi-invalid. He had found himself; and he continued to develop his creative powers in the production of music that was not only nationally idiomatic, but thoroughly suffused with the real spirit of his land and his people. In 1868 Liszt happened upon his first violin sonata (opus 8) and forthwith sent him a cordial letter of commendation and encouragement, inviting him to Weimar. This letter was instrumental in inducing the Norwegian government to grant him a sum of money that enabled him to go again to Rome in 1870. There he met Liszt and the two musicians at once became firm friends. At their second meeting Liszt played from the manuscript Grieg's piano concerto (opus 16), and when he had finished said: 'Keep steadily on; I tell you you have the capability, and—do not let them intimidate you!' The big, great-hearted Liszt feared that the frail little man from the far north might be in danger of intimidation; but his spirit was brave enough at all times—though he wrote to his parents: 'This final admonition was of tremendous importance to me; there was something in it that seemed to give it an air of sanctification.' Thenceforward the recognition of his genius steadily increased. In 1872 he was appointed a member of the Swedish Academy of Music; in 1883 a corresponding member of the Musical Academy at Leyden; in 1890 of the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 1893 the University of Cambridge conferred on him the doctorate in music, at the same time that it honored by the bestowal of this degree Tschaikowsky, Saint-Saëns, Boito, and Max Bruch. Except when on concert tours his later years were spent chiefly at his beautiful country home, the villa Troldhaugen near Bergen, and there he died on September 4, 1907, after an almost constant fight with death for more than forty-five years.
Hans von Bülow called Grieg the Chopin of the North, and the convenience of the sobriquet helped to give it a wider popular acceptance than it deserved, for in truth the basis for such a comparison is rather slight. Undoubtedly Chopin's bold new harmony was one of the sub-conscious forces that helped to shape Grieg's musical genius. His mother had appreciated and delighted in Chopin's music at a time when it was little understood and much underrated; and from childhood Chopin was Grieg's best-loved composer. In his student days he was deeply moved by the 'intense minor mood of the Slavic folk-music in Chopin's harmonies and the sadness over the unhappy fate of his native land in his melodies.' It is certain that there is a certain kinship in the musical styles of the two men, in their refinement, in the kind and even the degree of originality with which each has enriched his art, in many of their aims and methods. While Grieg never attained to the heights of Chopin in his pianoforte music, he surpassed his Polish predecessor in the ability to handle other instruments as well as in his songs, of which he published no fewer than one hundred and twenty-five.
These songs we hold to constitute Grieg's loftiest achievement; and in all his music he is first of all the singer—amazingly fertile in easily comprehensible and alluring melodies. He patterned these original melodies after the folk-songs of that Northland he loved so ardently, just as he often employed the rhythms of its folk-dances; and by these means he imparted to his work a fascinating touch of strangeness and succeeded in evoking as if by magic the moods of the land and the people from which he sprang. On the wings of his music we are carried to the land of the fjords; we breathe its inspiriting air, and our blood dances and sings with its lusty yet often melancholy sons and daughters. Much as there is of Norway in his compositions, there is still more of Grieg. His melodies are his own and more enchanting than the folk-songs which provided their patterns; and as a harmonist he is both bold and skillful.
Grieg's place, as may be gathered from what has already been said, is in the small group of the world's greatest lyricists. He wrote no operas and he composed no great symphonies. His physical infirmity militated against the sustained effort necessary for the creation of works in these kinds; but it is also plain from the work he did when at his best that his inclination and his powers led him into other fields. He possessed the dramatic qualities and ability only slightly, the epic still less, though it cannot be denied that in moments of rare exaltation he was 'a poet of the tragic, of the largely passionate and elemental.' His nearest approach to symphonic breadth is to be found in his pianoforte concerto, which Dr. Niemann pronounces the most beautiful work of its kind since Schumann, his sonatas for violin and pianoforte, his string quartet and his 'Peer Gynt' music. Yet these beautiful and stirring compositions are, after all, only lyrics of a larger growth. Grieg himself knew well his powers and his limitations, and he was as modest as he was candid when he wrote: 'Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last dramas, to build dwellings for men in which they might feel at home and happy. In other words, I have recorded the folk-music of my land. In style and form I have remained a German romanticist of the Schumann school; but at the same time I have dipped from the rich treasures of native folk-song and sought to create a national art out of this hitherto unexploited expression of the folk-soul of Norway.' The spirit of the man recalls the pretty little quatrain of Thomas Bailey Aldrich:
'I would be the lyric,
Ever on the lip,
Rather than the epic
Memory lets slip.'
And this is not to disparage pure and simple song. It is enough for Edvard Grieg's lasting fame that he did have in rare abundance the pure lyric quality—that close and delicate touch upon the heart strings which makes them vibrate in sympathy with all the little importances and importunities of individual human life.