HENRY T. FINCK
Edward Hargarup Grieg, "the Chopin of the North," was a unique personality, as well as an exceptional musician and composer. While not a "wonder child," in the sense that Mozart, Chopin and Liszt were, he early showed his love for music and his rapt enjoyment of the music of the home circle. Fortunately he lived and breathed in a musical atmosphere from his earliest babyhood. His mother was a fine musician and singer herself, and with loving care she fostered the desire for it and the early studies of it in her son. She was his first teacher, for she kept up her own musical studies after her marriage, and continued to appear in concerts in Bergen, where the family lived. Little Edward, one of five children, seemed to inherit the mother's musical talent and had vivid recollections of the rhythmic animation and spirit with which she played the works of Weber, who was one of her favorite composers.
The piano was a world of mystery to the sensitive musical child. His baby fingers explored the white keys to see what they sounded like. When he found two notes together, forming an interval of a third, they pleased him better than one alone. Afterwards three keys as a triad, were better yet, and when he could grasp a chord of four or five tones with both hands, he was overjoyed. Meanwhile there was much music to hear. His mother practised daily herself, and entertained her musical friends in weekly soirées. Here the best classics were performed with zeal and true feeling, while little Edward listened and absorbed music in every pore.
When he was six years old piano lessons began. Mme. Grieg proved a strict teacher, who did not allow any trifling; the dreamy child found he could not idle away his time. As he wrote later: "Only too soon it became clear to me I had to practise just what was unpleasant. Had I not inherited my mother's irrepressible energy as well as her musical capacity, I should never have succeeded in passing from dreams to deeds."
But dreams were turned into deeds before long, for the child tried to set down on paper the little melodies that haunted him. It is said he began to do this at the age of nine. A really serious attempt was made when he was twelve or thirteen. This was a set of variations for piano, on a German melody. He brought it to school one day to show one of the boys. The teacher caught sight of it and reprimanded the young composer soundly, for thus idling his time. It seems that in school he was fond of dreaming away the hours, just as he did at the piano.
The truth was that school life was very unsympathetic to him, very narrow and mechanical, and it is no wonder that he took every opportunity to escape and play truant. He loved poetry and knew all the poems in the reading books by heart; he was fond, too, of declaiming them in season and out of season.
With the home atmosphere he enjoyed, the boy Grieg early became familiar with names of the great composers and their works. One of his idols was Chopin, whose strangely beautiful harmonies were just beginning to be heard, though not yet appreciated. His music must have had an influence over the lad's own efforts, for he always remained true to this ideal.
Another of his admirations was for Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist. One day in summer, probably in 1858, when Edward was about fifteen, this "idol of his dreams" rode up to the Grieg home on horseback. The family had lived for the past five years at the fine estate of Landaas, near Bergen. The great violinist had just returned from America and was visiting his native town, for he too was born in Bergen. That summer he came often to the Griegs' and soon discovered the great desire of young Edward for a musical career. He got the boy to improvise at the piano, and also to show him the little pieces he had already composed. There were consultations with father and mother, and then, finally, the violinist came to the boy, stroked his cheek and announced; "You are to go to Leipsic and become a musician."
Edward was overjoyed. To think of gaining his heart's desire so easily and naturally; it all seemed like a fairy tale, too good to be true.
The Leipsic Conservatory, which had been founded by Mendelssohn, and later directed for a short time by Schumann, was now in the hands of Moscheles, distinguished pianist and conductor. Richter and Hauptmann, also Papperitz, taught theory; Wenzel, Carl Reinecke and Plaidy, piano.