Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg was
born in Bergen in the western part of Norway. At the age of six he
received music lessons from his mother. At 15 he was sent to the Leipzig
Conservatory (Germany) to study music. After studying there he left the
Conservatory as a full-fledged musician and composer, and left to live in
Denmark, where he met his wife, Nina. As Grieg grew older, he
became conscious of the musical potential of his own country's folk-culture and
began to promote Norwegian nationalism by writing pieces based on traditional
popular music. In 1968 Grieg finished what has become one of his
best-known pieces, the Piano
Concerto in A minor. Grieg's talents were put to a test when Henrik
Ibsen asked him to write the
incidental music to
"Per Gynt" This was no easy task for Grieg, but the music he wrote
became one of the major works of the 1870's. In 1874, Grieg moved back to
his home town Bergen, where he purchased a beautiful house in the Swiss style
called Troldhaugen (the Troll Hill). Today Troldhaugen is a museum which is a
main attraction of the city of Bergen.
The characteristic
thing about Grieg is that, whether in the concert hall or at home in the living
room, it is impossible to avoid noticing the fresh breeze of the Norwegian
landscape in his music. It encompasses the snow-clad mountain tops in June, deep
blue fjords with fruit trees ranked on the mountain sides, wild streams on the
mountain plateaus, and giant trolls in the dark forests or great mountains.
There are several descriptions of Grieg wandering in the beautiful surroundings
of Western Norway where he lived and composed at his home and his summer cabin. 
Music Samples related to trolls:
(The mountain King was a huge troll that lived in "Dovrefjell", a mountain area in the middle of Norway
===> To the Troll Collector's Corner