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A brief introduction to Grieg’s life

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Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), Norway’s most outstanding composer Home. Born in Bergen, he went to study at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music in Germany when he was 15 years old. Later he went to Copenhagen and became his teacher under Gade. After getting acquainted with the composer Richard Nodrak in 1864, they both engaged in research on Norwegian folk music. In 1867, he founded the Norwegian Music School, created unique lyrical songs based on Norwegian poetry, and compiled and adapted folk songs. His wife, the singer Nina, is the best interpreter of his works.

He can skillfully combine the theme with classical structure, form and realistic traditional tones, making it indistinguishable from real folk music. In his creation, he often breaks some rules and regulations. In 1868, he composed the "Piano Concerto in A minor", making him a leader among composers at that time. Later works generally adopt short lyrical forms and are very successful. Representative as the symphonic suite "Peer Gynt".

Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Debussy, etc. were all influenced by him. He was highly respected in Norway and received a state funeral after his death. 1. Grieg’s indissoluble bond with Norway. Grieg, who was born in Bergen, Norway in 1843, did not write nationalist music because of any suffering in his birthplace, but because of his love for his motherland. The beauty of the motherland and the love of the simple and strong people. His parents were wealthy and well-educated. His mother played the piano beautifully and wrote some short songs that are still heard in Norway today. One day, little Edward stretched out his two hands to the piano and struck two keys, missing one of them, resulting in the so-called third interval. Then he added another note—two notes higher than the first two—to create a sound called tri***. For his last note, he pressed the ninth note above the lowest note. At this time he had a complete four-note tone - now called that lovely, dissonant "nine tone".

Grieg said: "When I discovered it, I didn't know how happy I was. I was probably only five years old at that time." Soon, his mother began to teach him to play the piano. One day, when the school teacher asked all the students to bring their written compositions, twelve-year-old Edward brought a piece of music. The other children were surprised, but the teacher was not happy. Grieg later wrote: "She grabbed me by the hair and shook me until everything went black before my eyes, and told me to leave that stupid piece of crap at home." One of Grieg's friends was the great Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, often called "Blonde Paganini" because he could also do all kinds of amazing tricks with his violin. He was as tall as an old Norse legendary hero, with blond hair and blue eyes, and would tell tales of ghosts and deeds of great men in such a way that he charmed all the young listeners. He passed on to the boy who listened with wide eyes his love for the very old stories, the cheerful tunes played by violinists at weddings, and the sad, simple songs sung by the old ladies at their spinning wheels. Grieg.

Ole Buell also persuaded Grieg's parents to send him to the Conservatory of Music in Leipzig, so that he could learn to regard music as his lifelong work. His years at Leipzig were unhappy. The teachers didn't know what to make of his Norwegian melodies and the strange and wonderful dissonances with which he often played. They tried to make Grieg imitate his music after those classical and romantic masters like others. So Grieg's music at school ended up being nothing more than imitations of others, no better than what any other student could have written. He studied so hard that he suffered severe physical collapse, but he finally graduated with honors. He returned to Norway and settled in Bergen, living on a farm that once belonged to his grandfather. Many of his friends still believed that Grieg should be less Norwegian in his work and make his music sound more like what was heard elsewhere in the world.

Others, like Ole Bull, advised him that his music would only be truly good if it was rooted in its local soil. 2. The pioneer of nationalist music Grieg’s friendship with Ole Burr deepened. They often went hiking together to distant places in the mountains. They loved to look up at the snow-white mountaintops and the stormy fjords overlooking the black lake or the gloomy fir trees around them. They always saw some mountain eagles circling over the rocky gorges and reindeer nibbling at the moss in the rocky areas. They loved to hear the lonely songs of the mountain girls who spent the whole bright summer alone with their sheep in the mountains until winter came and drove them back to the farm for the winter. They also loved the joyful wedding processions that returned from the village chapel to the farm, and listened to the cheerful scratching of the strings of the country fiddler who rode in front.

Grieg weaved these songs and dances and rural scenes into his musical magic. The always magnanimous Franz Liszt was one of the first musicians to encourage Grieg abroad in Norway. He wrote a letter to the young musician with such glowing words of praise that the Norwegian Communist Party gave Grieg a sum of money to enable him to visit Liszt in Rome. But his first real big opportunity came when the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen commissioned him to set the music for his play Peer Gynt. 3. Grieg, Ibsen and "Peer Gynt" Like Shakespeare in England and Goethe in Germany, Ibsen is the greatest representative of Norwegian writers, so that they not only belong to their own country, but also to the whole world. world.

"Peer Gynt" is based on a Norwegian folk tale. No one but Grieg could have written such expressive music for poor Peer Gynt's visit to the halls of the Mountain Devil, where the mischievous dwarfs jumped on him and pinched him. , the scene when he bit him, or the gentle song that the patient Solveig sang in that lonely shack while he waited for Peer Gynt, who had been wandering the world for many years. Even when Grieg described Peer's adventures in Egypt and the exotic lands of the East, his music almost always sounded "Norwegian" in some way.

That song "Morning" seems more like a sound painting at dawn in the pleasant Norwegian woods than the words of a mysterious statue at sunrise in the Moroccan desert. Thousands of people who had never heard of Ibsen's plays knew and loved Grieg's music on record players and radios. 4. Historical status Although Grieg became famous not only in his own country but also around the world, musicians only truly appreciated his work when his long life ended in 1907. It was then that they discovered that his melodies were not mere copies of old folk songs, but echoes of his heart to the beauty of his birthplace and the strong life of its people. They gradually came to see that the strange and lovely harmonies in his music were not just strange Norwegian things, but new discoveries that later musicians could learn from and enrich their music.