Music
Grieg is renowned as a nationalist composer, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk music. Early works include a symphony (which he later suppressed) and a piano sonata. He also wrote three sonatas for violin and piano and a cello sonata. His many short pieces for piano – often based on Norwegian folk tunes and dances – led some to call him the "Chopin of the North".
The Piano Concerto is his most popular work. Its champions have included the pianist and composer Percy Grainger, a personal friend of Grieg who played the concerto frequently during his long career. An arrangement of part of the work made an iconic television comedy appearance in the Christmas 1971 Morecambe and Wise Show, conducted by André Previn.
Grieg also composed "Peer Gynt Suite- 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'". It was used as incidental music for the play "Peer Gynt".In this piece of music, Peer steals the bride at a wedding. The angry guests chase him and Peer falls, hitting his head on a rock. He wakes up in a mountain surrounded by trolls. The music represents the angry trolls taunting Peer, and gets louder each time the theme repeats. The music ends with Peer escaping from the mountain. https://s3.amazonaws.com/engrade-myfiles/4055174248588539/03-Grieg.pdf
Some of the Lyric Pieces (for piano) are also well-known, as is the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, a play that Grieg found to be an arduous work to score properly. In a 1874 letter to his friend Frants Beyer, Grieg expressed his unhappiness with what is now considered one of his most popular compositions from Peer Gynt, In the Hall of the Mountain King: "I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the mountain King – something that I literally can't bear listening to because it absolutely reeks of cow-pies, exaggerated Norwegian nationalism, and trollish self-satisfaction! But I have a hunch that the irony will be discernible."
Grieg's popular Holberg Suite was originally written for the piano, and later arranged by the composer for string orchestra. Grieg wrote songs, in which he set lyrics by poets Heinrich Heine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Rudyard Kipling and others. Russian composer Nikolai Myaskovsky used a theme by Grieg for the variations with which he closed his Third String Quartet. Norwegian pianist Eva Knardahl recorded the composer's complete piano music during 1978 and 1980. The recordings were reissued in 2006 on 12 compact discs by BIS Records.
Read more about this topic: Edvard Grieg
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
“Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
“Our beauties are not ours”:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)