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In The Hall Of The Mountain King
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Browse piano sheets by Edvard Grieg on Zen Virtual Piano. Edvard Grieg’s father’s side hails from Scotland: after emigrating to Norway around 1770 from the Scottish town of Cairnbulg, his great-grandfather settled in Bergen as a shipping merchant. His mother, Gesine, was his first piano teacher: capable and stern, but loving. Scottish paternal ancestry in a Norwegian harbour town and a mother who taught the piano give his beginnings two different roots. At fifteen Grieg traveled to Leipzig to study music at the conservatory there, then Europe’s foremost, where he found the strict discipline oppressive and the conservative instruction hardly inspiring. During his time in Copenhagen he associated with some of the leading ideologues of a Norwegian national music, including Rikard Nordraak, who encouraged him to draw on traditional music after his return to Norway. A conservatory that left him uninspired and a circle in Copenhagen that encouraged him toward folk music set two kinds of education against each other. The violinist Ole Bull was the one who first encouraged him to compose in a characteristically Norwegian style. Although Grieg received a formal musical education in Leipzig, Norwegian folk music remained central to his work, and the distinctive flavour of his music can be attributed to his desire to reconcile classical and folk influences. A composer trained in Leipzig and drawn to folk music wrote on both sides of the line between concert and country. Working on “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” he confessed, “I can’t stand to listen to it because it absolutely reeks of cow pies… and trollish self-sufficiency!” In the 1890s came major international recognition and a sustained period of creativity, giving rise to works such as Norske folkeviser for piano, Op. 66 (1896–97), the Haugtussa song cycle, Op. 67, on poems by Arne Garborg (1895), and the Slåtter for piano, Op. 72 (1902–03), inspired by Hardanger fiddle music. In 1906 he produced his last important work, the choral composition Four Psalms, in a free adaptation of Lindeman’s folk songs. Folk song settings in 1896–97 and again in 1906 show a national theme running through the later part of his career.
Browse piano sheets by Edvard Grieg on Zen Virtual Piano.
Edvard Grieg’s father’s side hails from Scotland: after emigrating to Norway around 1770 from the Scottish town of Cairnbulg, his great-grandfather settled in Bergen as a shipping merchant. His mother, Gesine, was his first piano teacher: capable and stern, but loving. Scottish paternal ancestry in a Norwegian harbour town and a mother who taught the piano give his beginnings two different roots.
At fifteen Grieg traveled to Leipzig to study music at the conservatory there, then Europe’s foremost, where he found the strict discipline oppressive and the conservative instruction hardly inspiring. During his time in Copenhagen he associated with some of the leading ideologues of a Norwegian national music, including Rikard Nordraak, who encouraged him to draw on traditional music after his return to Norway. A conservatory that left him uninspired and a circle in Copenhagen that encouraged him toward folk music set two kinds of education against each other.
The violinist Ole Bull was the one who first encouraged him to compose in a characteristically Norwegian style. Although Grieg received a formal musical education in Leipzig, Norwegian folk music remained central to his work, and the distinctive flavour of his music can be attributed to his desire to reconcile classical and folk influences. A composer trained in Leipzig and drawn to folk music wrote on both sides of the line between concert and country. Working on “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” he confessed, “I can’t stand to listen to it because it absolutely reeks of cow pies… and trollish self-sufficiency!”
In the 1890s came major international recognition and a sustained period of creativity, giving rise to works such as Norske folkeviser for piano, Op. 66 (1896–97), the Haugtussa song cycle, Op. 67, on poems by Arne Garborg (1895), and the Slåtter for piano, Op. 72 (1902–03), inspired by Hardanger fiddle music. In 1906 he produced his last important work, the choral composition Four Psalms, in a free adaptation of Lindeman’s folk songs. Folk song settings in 1896–97 and again in 1906 show a national theme running through the later part of his career.
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At the conservatory in Leipzig, to which he traveled at fifteen; he found the strict discipline oppressive and the conservative instruction hardly inspiring.
Rikard Nordraak encouraged him to draw on traditional music, and the violinist Ole Bull first encouraged him to compose in a characteristically Norwegian style.
Works such as Norske folkeviser for piano, Op. 66, the Haugtussa song cycle, Op. 67, and the Slåtter for piano, Op. 72, inspired by Hardanger fiddle music.