New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1897-08-08
MUSICAL COMMENT.
EDWARD HAGERUP GRIEG-SOME COM
MENTS ON HIS COMPOSITIONS AND

Edward Hagerup Grieg is yet one Of the most in
teresting figures in the group Of latter day COM
posers who have set before themselves the dis
tnctively modern ideal Of natonalism in music
The group is not large but Is commanding the
attention OF the people more and more and its
influence is wonderfully stimulating. we may
soon have occasion to observe, in the compo-
sltions Of American musicians None of Greg's
colleagues. models precursors have sought in
spiration more zealously than he in the folk
songs and folk dances Of his native land-neither
Gade. nor Chopin, List, nor Smetana nor
Dvorak. None have more persistently and con-
sistenty cultivated the dialect Of the common
PEOPLE. or transferred the spirit of popular music
- undiluted into the sophisticated forms of art.
Z rieg Is known essentially the interpreter to
The world at large Of the Scandinavian feeling
for music. He had predecessors but none who
in anything like the same measure identified
himself with that feeling succeeded in stamp
ing his productions Enthusiastically with the
Morse hallmark. We were once accustomed to
think Of Gade the founder of the Morse school
and it is feared that the impatient modern spirit
Which Graves Grass expression and Is intolerant
of gentltness and elegance Of utterance has
treated him unfairly. not only in negecting his
music, but in holding his nationalism to be pallid
and ineffective. 1t is possible for a modern
"t the moderns to have great fondness for the
hardic echo which sounds in the "Nachkange au
'Sslan overture, and also TO enjoy the gentle
ara poetic melancholy of the Il fiat symphony
Tie gloom of fjords and forests which pervades
il and heightens the effect of the sunny delights
which fell into its scherzo from the breezy noun
tain pastures; yet it was entirely natural that
IN spite Of Gade Cireg's music came upon the
world with the force of absolute novelty. and
u At the freshness Of form and the originality
# content of his earlier publications seemed
irresistible They proclaimed an individuality
which was almost arrogantly assertive, yet were
full Of insinuating grace and haunting charm.
undoubtedly they owed much Of the interest
~ HIGH they created to the unfamiliar idiom
which they employed, but there in them SO
much poetic beauty Of the kind which the ro-
mantle composers had cultivated that DR.. Hans
lick more than half right when he charac-
terized Greg a Mendelssohn in sealskn wrap
pings.
NatiOnalism in music not unknown when
Griegs music first brought to the fore
quarter Of a century ago, but, pushed to the limit
that Grieg set before himself in his early days,
IT a thing. 1t one thing for a
Chopin to turn himself as to a relaxation or an
occasional Renaissance OF his boyhood years TO
the exposition Of the mazurka or the polonase;
or for List to institute for the purposes Of
virtuoso display the rhapsodic music of some Of
the inhabitants Of his native land 1t was an en-
tirely different thing for educated musician.
sophis ticated by the training of the conservatory.
to turn his back deliberately on much that that
training implies. and to dedicate himself ex-
clusively. from almost the first years of his
creative activity. TO the production of music in
q
musician whose chief characteristic is so con
spicuously deliberately chosen popularity of
style cannot wholly free himself from u sus-
picon Of affectation: has Grieg been en-
trely exempt from this suspicion 1t is. on the
hole, unjust; unjust least so far as his
best and most truly inspired compositions are
concerned In these his thought seems to flow
naturally in the formulas so to speak that he
has found to be or selected as national: seems to
be conditioned by them. and to be one with
them. 1t Is only In his less spontaneous mo-
ments-of increasing frequency as the years have
gone by-that there are to be seen the concern
Of the nationalist to be national the striving
after certain effect at the expense Of truth and
sincerity of diction. where the music takes on
the aspect Of outward form without the illu-
minating spirit within.
Grieg's training was in that austere school Of
musical propriety. the Leipsc Conservatory.
When he was a student-from 1858 to 1S62-the
traditions Of Schumann and Mendelssohn had
not disappeared beneath the pedantic dust that
has since settled there. and there was already
stirring among the students that spirit of prog
ress which has held It's own ever since in spite
Of the conservatism Of the professors 1t was