Part 14 (1/2)

The next few years were spent in travel and study, and later in hard, successful work among his own countrymen. The latter are genuinely proud of him, and he has a firm hold on the affections of the people of his native city, where he now resides. His country home, which is his favorite retreat, is almost ideally located, with a commanding view of the fjord and surrounded by forest and heights.

PROGRAM.

Suite. ”From Holberg's Time.” Opus 40.

Praeludium.

Sarabande.

Gavotte.

Air.

Rigaudon.

Songs for Alto Voice.

Sunset.

Cradle Song.

The Poet's Last Song.

Eight Lyric Pieces. Opus 12.

Arietta, Walzer, Wachterlied, Elfentanz, Volksweise, Norwegisch, Alb.u.mblatt, Vaterlandisches Lied.

Songs for Soprano.

”Good Morning.”

”Thanks for Thy Hand.”

Suite, Peer Gynt, Opus 46, 1.

”Morning Mood” (Morgenstimmung).

”The Death of Ase.”

”Anitra's Dance.”

”In the Halls of the Mountain King.”

”On the Mountains.” Opus 19, No. 1.

NOTE.--In case a good violinist is available, I recommend modifying the above by omitting the ”Holberg” suite and taking the ”Peer Gynt” to begin with; then close with the Sonata for Piano and Violin, Opus 8.

In many respects Edvard Grieg is one of the most interesting composers of the present time. While it is by no means certain that his works will find a place in the cla.s.sics of the tone poetry of the world, he is ent.i.tled, at least, to this much credit--of having, in the first place, found a wider acceptance outside of his native Norway than has fallen to the lot of any Scandinavian composer before him. He has also made a more marked impression, and has brought into the music of the world what might be called, in literary parlance, ”a characteristic note.” It would be very curious and interesting, if it were convenient, to trace the gradual evolution of this talent, as shown in the successive works which have come from his pen. But for the present it must suffice to speak of a few of them in a more particular manner.

Grieg has written in almost every department of music: chamber music, orchestra suites, overtures, compositions for string quartet, and sonatas for piano and violin, a sonata for piano, concerto for piano, and a very considerable variety of poetic and interesting compositions for piano alone; in addition to these, many songs, some of which have attained a wide currency. In all these works certain characteristic peculiarities of Norwegian music continually make themselves felt, so that there is nothing of Grieg's which could be mistaken for the work of any good German composer. Whether we should regard these national peculiarities in his music as provincialisms, considered from the world's standpoint, or as a fortunate appeal to the ears of his own countrymen and generation, who shall decide?

Grieg belongs to the modern romantic school, conspicuously, in having derived the suggestion or inspiration of many of his pieces from poetic suggestion. One of the most famous and best known of this kind is the first ”Peer Gynt” suite. Peer Gynt is a ne'er-do-weel in Ibsen's poem.

He had a variety of adventures in the course of his unprofitable life, a few of which are alluded to in the suite here under consideration.

For example, it begins with a prelude in 6/8 time--a movement somewhat pastoral in character, designated ”Morgenstimmung,” or, in English, ”The Morning Mood.” In this piece the flavor of Norwegian folk-song is only very faintly perceptible, if at all, and is perhaps more to be imagined from the somewhat unusual succession of chords than from anything very characteristic in the melody. The second piece of this suite, ”The Death of Ase,” is practically a funeral march of a sad and grief-laden character. Ase is the poor mother of Peer Gynt, who was left alone in her cottage on the mountains while her ne'er-do-weel son was off on his travels. At length death overtook her, desolate and alone, on the bleak mountain side. This is the story of the march.

The third piece in this suite is ent.i.tled ”Anitra's Dance.” Anitra, in Ibsen's story, was a fascinating minx of the desert, who, when Peer Gynt was masquerading as the prophet, encountered him upon his travels and beguiled from him one gift after another until finally she took from him his rings, spare apparel, and finally his horse, and capered off with them like the winds of the morning, while the pseudo-prophet pursued his sandy and inglorious way on foot. In this music of Grieg we have simply the sparkling lightness of Anitra, the unaccustomed charm which induced her victim to yield so easily to her the things he most valued. To come down from the realm of poetry to the barren facts, it is simply a sort of quick waltz or mazurka, and the connection of Mr. Ibsen's Anitra with it is purely imaginary.

The fourth of these tone pictures is ent.i.tled ”In the Hall of the Mountain King.” It relates to an episode in Peer Gynt's life when, in exploring the mountain, he came upon one of the original owners of the country, quite in the manner that happened later to Rip Van Winkle in the Catskills of New York. The gnome took him into the cavern in the mountain where his people had their home, and it is the queer and uncanny music of these humorous and prankish people that Grieg has brought out in this closing movement of the suite. It is a rapid, dance-like movement which, in the orchestral arrangement, is extremely grotesque in the tone coloring; even on the piano, when sufficiently well done, much of this quality appertains to it.

More closely examined, this suite of Grieg's has a certain resemblance to a sonata. The first movement is somewhat elaborately worked out, the second movement a slow one, the third in the manner of a scherzo, and the fourth a sort of grotesque finale. The order of the keys, however, is different from what would be considered correct in a sonata. The first piece is in the key of E major, the funeral march in B minor, Anitra's dance in A minor, and the finale in B minor again--the whole very pleasing and poetic.