V
The one Norwegian composer, besides Grieg, who has attained an international position, is Christian Sinding (born 1856). He is consciously and genuinely national, but in almost every other way is a complement and contrast to the other northern master. Where Grieg is best in the idyllic, Sinding is best in the heroic. Sinding is apt to be trivial where Grieg is at his best—namely, in the smaller forms. On the other hand, Sinding is noble and inspiring in works too long for Grieg to sustain. In Sinding the Wagnerian influence is marked and inescapable. He, like Grieg, is most at home when working with native material—the sharp rhythms, short periods and angular line of the Norwegian folk-song—but he develops it objectively where Grieg developed it intensively. Sinding need not work from the pictorial; Grieg was obliged to. Sinding's speech is much more cosmopolitan, his harmony less pronounced, his form more conventional. At times he attains a high level of emotional expression. On the other hand, he has written much, and his reputation has suffered thereby. Frequently he is uninspired. But the sustained magnificence of his orchestral and chamber music has done much to offset the prevailing idea that the northern composers could work only in the parlor or genre style. He sounds the epic and heroic note too often and with too much inspiration to permit us to question the greatness of his art.
He has worked in most of the established forms. His D minor symphony, opus 21, is one of the noblest in all Scandinavian music. His symphonic poem, 'Perpetual Motion,' with its inexhaustible energy and its glittering orchestral color, takes a high rank in modern orchestral music. His chamber music—quartets, quintets, trios, violin sonatas, etc.—is distinguished by melodic inspiration, vigorous counterpoint, and sustained structural power. His piano concerto and two violin concertos, and his grandiose E-flat minor variations for two pianos, have taken a firm place in concert programmes. As a piano composer in the smaller forms he is of course less personal, less distinguished, than Grieg. But every piano student knows his Frühlingsrauschen and Marche Grotesque. As a song composer he may justly be ranked second to Grieg in all the Scandinavian lands. His power and sincerity in the shorter strophic song is astonishing; his strophes have the cogency and finish of the Swedish folk-song combined with the intensity and sincerity of the Norwegian. In his longer songs he is noble and dramatic; he is a master of poignant emotional expression and of sustained and mounting energy. Two of his familiar songs—'The Mother' and 'A Bird Cried'—are masterpieces of the first rank. Sinding's harmony is vigorous. An 'impressionist' in the modern sense of the term he is not. He loves the use of marked dissonance for specific effect; his harmonic style is broad, solidly based, square-cornered. It is regrettable, perhaps, that he did not work more in opera; his only dramatic work, 'The Holy Mountain,' was performed in Germany early in 1914. But this fact doubtless furnishes us the reason, for Norway does not offer a career for an opera composer, who must depend for his success on great wealth and large cities. As it is, Sinding has made a high, perhaps a permanent, place for himself in chamber and orchestral music.
Johan Selmer (born 1844) has taken a place as the most radical of the 'new romanticists' in Norway. His work is extensive and varied, and is most impressive in the larger forms. He has written a series of symphonic poems, several large choral works, many part songs and ballads, and the usual quota of Lieder. His chief influences were Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. He can hardly be called a nationalist in music, for his work shows little northern feeling except where he makes use of specific Norwegian tunes; indeed he seems equally willing to get his local color from Turkey or Italy. His work is thoroughly disappointing; modelling himself on the giants, he has been obliged to make himself a gigantic mask of paper. Neither his melodic inspiration, his structural power, nor his technical learning was equal to the task he set himself. His chief orchestral work, 'Prometheus,' opus 50, is ridiculously inadequate to its grandiose subject. His Finnländischer Festklang is the most ordinary sort of rhapsody on borrowed material. Of his other works we need only say that they reveal abundantly the effect of large ambitions on a little man. Along with Selmer we may mention three opera composers of Norway, none sufficiently distinguished to carry his name beyond the national border: Johannes Haarklou (born 1847), Cath. Elling (born 1858) and Ole Olsen (born 1850). The last, though yet 'unproduced' as a dramatic composer, deserves to be better known than he is. His symphonic and piano music is pleasing without being distinguished; but the operas Lajla and Hans Unversagt are charmingly colorful and melodic, revealing musical scholarship and fine emotional expression. Finally we may mention Johann Halvorsen (born 1864), a follower of Grieg and an able composer for violin and male chorus.
One of the most promising of the younger Norwegians was Sigurd Lie (1871-1904), whose early death cut off a career which bade fair to be internationally distinguished. Surely he would have been one of the most national of Norwegian composers. His list of works, brief because of ill health, includes a symphony in A minor, a symphonic march, an oriental suite for orchestra, a piano quintet, a goodly list of short piano pieces, and many songs and choral works. He used the Norwegian folk-song intensively, combining its spirit with that of the old ecclesiastical tone. He was a true poet of music; his moods were usually mystic, gray and religious, and his effects, even in simple piano pieces, were obtained with astonishing sureness. His harmony, though not radical, was personal and highly expressive. His songs, much sung in his native land, reveal a genius for precise and poignant expression.
One of the most popular of Norway's living composers for the piano is Halfdan Cleve (born 1879), writer of numerous works of which those in the large forms are most important. Cleve is cosmopolitan, enamored of large effects, and of dazzling virtuosity. His technique is varied and exceedingly sure, but he lacks the appealing loveliness which has brought reputation to the works of so many of his countrymen. More popular is Agathe Backer-Gröndahl (born 1847), industrious writer of piano pieces in the smaller forms. Outwardly a classicist, she has drunk of the lore of Grieg and has achieved charming and able works, distinguished by delicate feeling and care for detail. Her children's songs are altogether delightful. But when she attempts longer works her inspiration is apt to fail her.
Perhaps the most original and personal composer after Grieg and Sinding is Gerhard Schjelderup (born 1859), a tone poet of much technical ability and genuine national feeling. His songs and ballads are very fine, striking the heroic note with sincerity and conviction. In his simple songs and piano pieces, Schjelderup's innate feeling for the folk-tone makes him utterly successful. In his operas, 'Norwegian Wedding,' 'Beyond Sun and Moon,' 'A People in Distress,' and his incidental music, he lacks the dramatic and structural power for long sustained passages; but his genius for expressive simplicity has filled these works with beauties. Schjelderup's symphonies and chamber music have made a place for themselves in European concert halls equally by their freshness of feeling and by their excellence of technique.