IIEDVARD GRIEG
To the musical amateur no contemporary composer is better known than Grieg. Every school-girl plays his piano pieces, young violinists study his delightfully melodious sonatas, and few concert pieces are more widely loved than the Peer Gynt Suite. Yet from professional musicians Grieg does not meet with such favor. Many speak of him patronizingly, some scornfully. «Grieg?» they say. «Oh, yes, very charming, but—» and the sentence ends with a shrug. The reason for this discrepancy of estimate seems to be that the layman, fascinated by Grieg's lovely melodies, unusual and piquant harmonic treatment, and contagious rhythm, looks for no further quality; but the musician, unconsciously referring allmusic to a standard based on works of greater solidity, greater breadth and force and passion as well as wider learning and superior skill, is too conscious of the shortcomings of this Norwegian minstrelsy to do justice to its qualities. It is, of a truth, music in which merit and failing are curiously mingled; its delicate beauty is unique, its limitation extreme. It is as fair as a flower, and as fragile. It is, in short, the effluence of a personality graceful without strength, romantic without the sense of tragedy, highly gifted with all gentle qualities of nature, but lacking in the more virile powers, in broad vision, epic magnanimity, and massive force.
Of this personality, as it appears in the flesh, we get an interesting glimpse in Tschaïkowsky's Diary.[B]«During the rehearsal of Brahms's new trio,» writes Tschaïkowsky, «as I was taking the liberty of making some remarks as to the skill and execution of the relativetempo2-3—remarks which were very good-naturedly received by the composer—there entered the room a very short, middle-aged man, exceedinglyfragile in appearance, with shoulders of unequal height, fair hair brushed back from his forehead, and a very slight, almost boyish beard and mustache. There was nothing very striking about the features of this man, whose exterior at once attracted my sympathy, for it would be impossible to call them handsome or regular; but he had an uncommon charm, and blue eyes, not very large, but irresistibly fascinating, recalling the glance of a charming and candid child. I rejoiced in the depths of my heart when we were introduced to each other, and it turned out that this personality which was so inexplicably sympathetic to me belonged to a musician whose warmly emotional music had long ago won my heart. He proved to be the Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg.» This was in 1888, when Grieg was forty-five. We may compare with it another description, made a year later by a Frenchman, M. Ernest Closson, when Grieg was playing and conducting his works in Paris. «Grieg is small, thin, and narrow-shouldered,» writes M. Closson.[C]«His body, which is like a child's, is always in motion—themovements short, lively, singularly jerky and angular, each step shaking the whole body and hitching the shoulder as if he limped; a 'bundle of nerves' [«paquet des nerfs»], to use a doctor's phrase of picturesque energy. The head, which looks massive on so small a body, is intelligent and very handsome, with long grayish hair thrown back, thin face, smooth-shaven chin, short, thick mustache, small but full nose, and eyes!—eyes superb, green, gray, in which one can fancy one catches a glimpse of Norway, with its melancholy fjords and its luminous mists. His gaze is serious, wonderfully soft, with a peculiar expression, at once worn, tentative, and childishly naïve. The entire effect is of kindness, gentleness, candor, a sincere modesty.»
It is thus obvious that Grieg is of the nervous, sensitive temperament, the temperament of Keats and Stevenson, quick and ardent in feeling, and in art notable for subjective, intimate work rather than for the wide objective point of view. Grieg's music is of value, indeed, just because it is the artistic expression of delicate personal feeling. We shall find that his whole development tended toward a singularlyindividual, or at most national, utterance; that his efforts toward a complexer or more universal style, such as in poetry we call epic, were unsuccessful; and that his real and inimitable achievement is all in the domain of the pure lyric.
Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1843. At an early age he showed musical talent, starting in to learn the piano and theory at six, under his mother's direction. Gesine Grieg, born Hagerup, descendent from a forceful Norwegian family which had produced some famous men, was a woman of musical and poetic instinct and of strong character. She had studied music in Hamburg and in London, and given some concerts and many soirées in Bergen. In a word, her son could not have found a better guide in his first studies. At nine Grieg surprised his school-teacher by submitting in place of a literary composition a set of original variations on a German melody, a substitution which was not kindly received. He was told to stop such nonsense. The artistic temperament revealed itself also in great sensitiveness to the beauty of the somber Northern landscape, and at fifteen Grieg wishedto become a painter. Fortunately, however, his musical ability was recognized by the famous violinist Ole Bull, at whose suggestion his parents decided to send him to the Leipsic Conservatory, whither he traveled in 1858. Here again the romanticism of the boy showed itself in his fretfulness under the strict régime of his masters, Hauptmann, Richter, Rietz, Reinecke, and Moscheles, and in his passionate devotion to the works of Schumann and Chopin, who were then looked upon in academic circles as somewhat dangerous revolutionaries. Except for a vacation of some months at home, necessitated by the pulmonary trouble which has ever since weakened Grieg's health, he spent four years in the Conservatory, being graduated in 1862.
In his earliest compositions, produced at this period, the traits that afterwards distinguished him are rather hampered by academic influences and uncertainty of intention. The four Pieces, opus 1, by no means devoid of his peculiar flavor, are yet tentative in style and reminiscent of older masters, particularly Chopin and Mendelssohn. Of the Poetic Tone-pictures, opus 3, the second and fourth are thewell-established type of gracefulsalonpiece. Number four, indeed, might almost be a strayed leaf from that gentle but hackneyed work which some modern cynic has called the «Songs without Music.» Yet the very next piece is full-fledged Grieg. Here is the short four-measure phrase, transposed a third and repeated, here the descending chromatic harmonizations, here the raucous fifths as of peasant players, that we shall presently learn to look for among the hall-marks of his writings. But more important than any such technical details is the general animation, producing trenchant rhythm, graceful melody, and warm harmony, that always sparkles in Grieg's best work. In the Poetic Tone-pictures he is already himself, though not his mature self.
Being at graduation somewhat bewildered and uncertain as to his future course, Grieg turned his steps in 1863 to the Danish capital, the home of a great man whom he idolized. «One day,» he writes in an autobiographical fragment, «I had gone out with my friend Matthison-Hansen to Klampenborg. Suddenly he nudged my arm.
«'What is it?' I said.
«'Do you see that little man with the large gray hat?'
«'I see him.'
«'Do you know who it is?' said he.
«'I haven't the least idea.'
«'That's Gade,' he said. 'Shall I introduce you?'
«And without waiting for my reply he took me up to the Professor, with the curt announcement:
«'Professor, a Norwegian friend of mine—a good musician.'
«'Is it Nordraak?' asked Gade.
«'No, it is Grieg,' answered Matthison-Hansen.
«'Oh, that's who it is,' said Gade, scanning my insignificant and humble self from head to foot with a searching glance, while I stood, not without awe, face to face with the man whose works I treasured so highly. 'Have you something to show me?'
«'No,' I answered. For the things I had finished didn't seem good enough.
«'Then go home and write a symphony,' recommended Gade.»
It is indicative of the groping stage atwhich Grieg's genius still paused that he actually tried to write a symphony, two movements of which are preserved in the Symphonic Pieces, opus 14—Grieg, whose talent was symphonic in about the degree that Brahms's was operatic. Contact with the friendly little man in the large gray hat, who has been dubbed the «Danish Mendelssohn,» was doubtless a stimulus to the young Grieg; but other and more radical influences were needed to awaken his personality and bring him to his own. Such influences, however, he actually found in Copenhagen. The «Nordraak» for whom Gade had at first taken him, a fervently patriotic Norwegian of magnetic personality, acquainted him with Norwegian folk-songs and fired him with an ambition to found on them a finished art. Meeting in solemn conclave, with all the self-importance of youth, these two enthusiasts took the oath of musical allegiance to their fatherland. «It was as though scales fell from my eyes,» writes Grieg; «for the first time I learned ... to understand my own nature. We abjured the Gade-Mendelssohn insipid and diluted Scandinavianism, and bound ourselves with enthusiasm to the new path whichthe northern school is now following.» Nor did their zeal confine itself to composition. In 1864 they founded, with their Danish friends Horneman and Matthison-Hansen, the Euterpe Musical Society, for the performance of Scandinavian works. This institution, which must have reacted stimulatingly on their composition, they supported energetically up to Grieg's departure in 1866 for Christiania. Finally, it was in these years of his freshest vigor, in which he was conscious both of inner power and of outer opportunities, that Grieg met the lady, Miss Nina Hagerup, his cousin, who became in time his wife. It is not to be wondered at that no period in his life was so fruitful as this.
His most characteristic works, accordingly, were composed between his graduation from the conservatory and the early seventies—between his twentieth and his thirtieth years. There are the two inimitable Sonatas for Violin and Piano, opus 8 and 13; the Piano Sonata, opus 7; the incidental music to Ibsen's Peer Gynt; some of the most charming of the Lyric Pieces for piano and of the Songs, and the Piano Concerto, opus 16; the best part, certainly, of his entire musical product. It were a hopeless as well as uselesstask to describe in words the qualities of these compositions. What shall one say in words of the flavor of an orange? It is sweet? Yes. And acid? Yes, a little. And it has a delicate aroma, and is juicy and cool. But how much idea of an orange has one conveyed then? And similarly with this indescribably delicate music of Grieg; there is little that can be pertinently or serviceably said of it. One may point out, however, its persistently lyrical character. It is like the poetry of Mr. Henley in its exclusive concern with moods, with personal emotions of the subtlest, most elusive sort. It is intimate, suggestive, intangible. It voices the gentlest feelings of the heart, or summons up the airiest visions of the imagination. It is whimsical, too, changes its hues like the chameleon, and often surprises us with a sudden flight to some unexpected shade of expression. Again, its finesse is striking. The phrases are polished like gems, the melodies charm us with their perfect proportions, the cadences are as consummate as they are novel. Then, again, the rhythm is most delightfully frank and straightforward; there is no maundering or uncertainty, but always a vigorous dancing progress, as candid as childhood.It is hard to keep one's feet still through some of the Norwegian Dances. And though in the Lyric Pieces rhythm is idealized, it is always definite and clear, so that they are at the opposite pole from all that formless sentimentality which abandons accent in order to wail. Again, we must notice the curious exotic flavor of this music, a flavor not Oriental but northern, a half-wild, half-tender pathos, outlandish a little, but not turgid—on the contrary, perfectly pellucid. An example is a little waltz that figures as number two of the Lyric Pieces, opus 12. Grieg's music, then, is lyrical, intimate, shapely, and exotic, if such words mean anything—yes, just as the orange is sweet, acid, and aromatic. One who would feel the quality of these works must hear them.
On the other hand, Grieg is never large or heroic; he never wears the buskin. He has neither the depth of passion nor the intellectual grasp needed to make music in the grand style. Probably of all his peculiarities the most significant is the shortness of his phrases and his manner of repeating them almost literally, displaced a little in pitch, but not otherwise altered. Almost all his music can be cut up into segmentstwo or four measures long, each segment complete in itself, an entire musical thought. If the reader will examine the little Waltz just mentioned, for example, he will see that it is constructed as follows: after two introductory measures a phrase of melody is announced, four measures in length; this is immediately repeated, at the same pitch but slightly varied in rhythm; then enters another phrase, two measures long, which is repeated literally a third lower; its latter half is twice echoed, and there is a two-measure cadence. All is then repeated. The middle part of the piece, in A major, is built in much the same way; after it the first part is given once more, and there is a short coda. The construction of this charming piece, in a word, is very like that of the passages from primers that are familiar to us all: «Is this a boy? This is a boy. Has the boy a dog? The boy has a dog. This is the dog of the boy.» And Grieg's coda adds meditatively, «Of the boy ... the boy ... boy.» His thoughts complete themselves quickly; they have little span, and they are combined, not by interfusion, but by juxtaposition. He never weaves a tapestry; he assembles a mosaic. Wehave only to compare his music with that of some great master, of wide scope and large synthetic power, like Brahms or Beethoven, to feel precisely in what sense he is lyrical rather than heroic, charming rather than elevated, suggestive rather than informative. Compare, for instance, with his waltz, the waltz of Brahms, number eight in opus 39. Here there is a sustained flight of twelve measures, the tune poising and soaring as it were on a rising or falling breeze, or like a kite that now dips and now is up again, but never touches the earth. It is interesting to play the two waltzes one after the other, noting the difference in effect between the precise, dainty, clipped phrases of the one and the broad-spanned arch of melody of the other. Such contrasts are at the basis of all significant discriminations of musical form.
How much the «short breath» of Grieg is due to the nature of his thematic material is a difficult question to answer. Folk-tunes, it is certain, are simple in structure, composed of short phrases expressing the naïve emotions of childlike minds. On the other hand, had they not fulfilled Grieg's personal needs, supplying the sort of atmosphere he was meant to breathein, he could never have assimilated them as he has done. Perhaps a true account of the matter is that his nature is of such unusual simplicity and ingenuousness as to find in folk-melodies its natural utterance, and to feel in their primitive phrase-structure no limitation. Intellectually, the man is not more mature than the people. From whatever sources he might draw his germinal ideas, he would never combine them in complexer forms or larger patterns than he has found ready-made to his hand in the national song. There are, however, in Norwegian music peculiarities of a different sort that we can hardly conceive as proving other than hindrances in the formation of a wholesomely eclectic style—peculiarities which are all present full-fledged in so early a work of Grieg as the Piano Concerto, opus 16, written in 1868. At the very outset, in the descending octave passage, there are two melodic tricks that recur everywhere in Grieg—the fall from the seventh of the scale to the fifth, and from the third to the tonic. Both progressions, anomalous in classic music, are prominent features of the Northern folk-tunes. Then, in the first theme, assigned to the orchestra, there are tobe noticed, besides these melodic steps, the bodily displacement of the phrase already described, carrying it from A minor into C major. In the second theme, as well as in thecantabilepiano passage that prepares the way for it, there is a rhythmic device characteristic of Grieg—the mixing in one measure of three notes to the beat with two notes to the beat, of which the prototype is to be found in the «Springtanz» of Norwegian peasants. Here also is the weak cadence, that is to say, the cadence with tonic chord coming on an unaccented beat. So much for melodic and rhythmic peculiarities; as a harmonist Grieg has methods equally persistent. His love of bare fifths, reiterated in the bass with boorish vigor, and his manner of harmonizing with descending chromatic sixths or thirds, both of which we remarked in opus 3, are illustrated in this Concerto; the first in the conclusion-theme of the first movement, and the second in measures fourteen to sixteen of the beautiful Adagio. Finally, he is devoted to the secondary sevenths, especially in harsh and daring sequence such as make up most of the Norwegian March, opus 54, No. 2. Mannerisms like these Grieg has, on the whole, infar larger measure than most composers. On almost any of his pages the student will have no difficulty in finding for himself instances of one or more of these mannerisms.
Now, so many little tricks and idiosyncrasies, however piquant in the work of a beginner, could hardly escape becoming, as time went on, an incubus to even the most vigorous imagination. Nothing menaces thought more than affectations and whimsicalities of style. And even in the meridian of Grieg's activity, when he was charming a staid world with the fresh beauties of the Piano Sonata and the two early Violin Sonatas, there were not wanting critics who discerned his danger and foresaw that he must either broaden his methods or deteriorate. Over twenty years ago the following words were written in an English magazine by Frederick Niecks: «My fear in the case of Grieg always was that his love of Norwegian idioms would tend to narrow, materialize, and make shallow his conceptions, and prevent him from forming a style by imposing on him a manner.» Subsequent events have proved that this fear was but too well founded. Although, during the years at Copenhagen, and the eight years, from1866 to 1874, that Grieg lived in Christiania teaching and conducting, he continued to do excellent work, he seems to have even then reached the acme of his powers, and thenceforward to have imperceptibly declined. It is rather a melancholy fact that when, in 1874, receiving a pension of sixteen hundred crowns from the Government, which enabled him to resign the conductorship of the Musical Union of Christiania, he began to devote himself almost entirely to composition, his mental vivacity was waning and his lovely lyrical utterance was beginning to be smothered under mannerisms. From this time on he advanced more by familiarizing the world with his earlier compositions than by adding to them anything particularly novel or precious. He traveled in Germany, Holland and Denmark, gave concerts in England in 1888, and visited France a year later, playing and conducting his works at Paris. For the rest, he retired to his picturesque villa, Troldhangen, ten miles from Bergen, where he lives a peaceful and secluded country life.
It is not difficult to see why Grieg's later works should decline rather than advance. In the first place, his interest had been from thefirst concentrated on personal expression. His impulse was individual, not universal. He never sought to widen or deepen the forms of musical beauty, to extend the range of resources at the command of musicians; he merely used what he found ready-made to voice his own poetic feeling. In this he succeeded admirably. In the second place, charmed by the exotic quality of Norwegian music, a quality that he found also in his own nature, he adopted the native idiom with eagerness, and spent the years most composers devote to learning the musical language in acquiring—a dialect. Thirdly, his mind was of the type which cares much for beauty of ornament—even more, perhaps, than for a highly wrought harmony of line and form. It was the inevitable result of these three circumstances that, first, he should reach his highest activity in early youth, when romantic feeling is at its acme and thought habitually subjective, and thereafter decline; second, that the dialect which at first was so charming, with its unfamiliar words and its bewitching accent, should eventually reveal its paucity and its provincialism; and finally, that a mind naturally fond of rich detail, neglectful of large shapeliness,should have recourse, in the ebb of inner impulse, to transcription, paraphrase, and all the other devices for securing superficial ornament and luxury of effect. With opus 41 Grieg began transcribing his own songs for the piano, dressing up the simple melodies in all sorts of arpeggios, curious harmonies, and other musical decorations; and between his fiftieth and seventieth opus-numbers there is little but representation of Norwegian tunes, now in one guise and now in another, but seldom indeed with any of the old novel charm. (A trace of it there is, perhaps, in opus 62, No. 2, and again in opus 80, No. 4.) The extraordinary pyrotechnical display that the transcription, opus 41, No. 5, makes out of so simple a song as «The Princess» is branded by M. Closson as «un crime de lèse-art.» And to one who has felt the magic of the Kuhreigen, opus 17, No. 22, it is saddening to turn to the same melody as it appears in opus 63, No. 2, with all its maiden grace brushed and laced and furbelowed into anà la modeelegance and vacuity. Thus Grieg has not, like the more cosmopolitan, objective, and universal composers, advanced in his work up to the very end. As years haveprogressed, the accidental in it, the inessential, has become more prominent, has tended to obscure what is vital and beautiful. As the spirit waned, the letter has become more rigidly insistent. Idiosyncrasy has supplanted originality. To find the true Grieg, supple, spontaneous, and unaffected, we must go back to the early works.
When all is said, however, Grieg has in these early works made a contribution to music which our sense of his later shortcomings must not make us forget. His Piano Sonata and his Violin Sonatas supply chamber-music with a note of pure lyric enthusiasm, of fresh unthinking animation, not elsewhere to be found. His Peer Gynt Suite fills a similar place among orchestral works. His best piano pieces, and, above all, his lovely and too little known songs, are unique in their delicate voicing of the tenderest, most elusive personal feeling, as well as in their consummate finesse of workmanship. It is a Lilliputian world, if you will, but a fair one. That art of the future which Grieg predicts in his essay on Mozart, which «will unite lines and colors in marriage, and show that it has its roots in all the past, that it draws sustenance from old as well as from new masters,» will acknowledge in Grieg himself the source of one indispensable element—the element of naïve and spontaneous romance.
BIBLIOGRAPHICALNOTE.—Grieg has had the good sense to publish almost all of his works in the inexpensive and excellent Peters Edition. The amateur will wish to acquaint himself first of all with some such representative pieces as the following: Piano-pieces—Poetic tone-pictures, op. 3, Humoreskes, op. 6, Sonata, op. 7, Northern Dances, op. 17, Albumblatter, op. 28, and the Lyric Pieces, op. 12, 38, 43, and 47 (op. 54, 57, 62, 65, and 68 are inferior). Four hand arrangements—Elegiac Melodies, op. 34, Norwegian Dances, op. 35, and the first Peer Gynt Suite, op. 40. Chamber-music—the three Sonatas for Violin and Piano and the 'Cello Sonata, op. 36. Of the songs, sixty are printed in the five «Albums» of the Peters Edition. The second contains half a dozen of Grieg's most perfect songs, among them «I Love Thee,» «Morning Dew,» «Parting» and «Wood Wanderings.» «To Springtime» in Album I, «A Swan» and «Solvejg's Song» in Album III, and «By the Riverside,» «The Old Mother,» and «On the Way Home» in Album IV, are also characteristic and beautiful. The reader who feels Grieg's charm at all will end by buying all five Albums, though there is little of value in the last.
BIBLIOGRAPHICALNOTE.—Grieg has had the good sense to publish almost all of his works in the inexpensive and excellent Peters Edition. The amateur will wish to acquaint himself first of all with some such representative pieces as the following: Piano-pieces—Poetic tone-pictures, op. 3, Humoreskes, op. 6, Sonata, op. 7, Northern Dances, op. 17, Albumblatter, op. 28, and the Lyric Pieces, op. 12, 38, 43, and 47 (op. 54, 57, 62, 65, and 68 are inferior). Four hand arrangements—Elegiac Melodies, op. 34, Norwegian Dances, op. 35, and the first Peer Gynt Suite, op. 40. Chamber-music—the three Sonatas for Violin and Piano and the 'Cello Sonata, op. 36. Of the songs, sixty are printed in the five «Albums» of the Peters Edition. The second contains half a dozen of Grieg's most perfect songs, among them «I Love Thee,» «Morning Dew,» «Parting» and «Wood Wanderings.» «To Springtime» in Album I, «A Swan» and «Solvejg's Song» in Album III, and «By the Riverside,» «The Old Mother,» and «On the Way Home» in Album IV, are also characteristic and beautiful. The reader who feels Grieg's charm at all will end by buying all five Albums, though there is little of value in the last.