Grieg, Edvard Hagerup.
Chapter 3. Influences Abroad
In his youth Edvard Grieg had had to travel to the music centres of Europe for his classical music education, there being no great academies of music in Norway,. In 1859, at the age of 16, Edvard's parents were persuaded by Ole Bull to send Edvard for an intensive course at Leipzig Conservatoire where he acquired a basic musical education as a romantic composer in the German 'Schuman' style, one outcome being to write a symphony, his one and only, the Symphony in C minor. But he hated it in Leipzig where he found his teachers inefficient and in 1862 returned to his home town, Bergen, earning his living giving classical concerts which proved very successful. Grieg felt, however, that he was not getting the musical stimulation in Bergen.
So in1863 Edvard Grieg went to Copenhagen the capital of Denmark, where he met Rikard Nordraak a fellow composer. It was here that Nordraak's enthusiasm for everything Norwegian, - it's history, culture and mythology, - was to bear fruit. Norway was still dominated by Sweden but the people were looking for their country to become an independent State. Edvard was captured by Rikard's enthusiasm and so it was that they made their solemn pact. Their music would express the 'Spirit of Norway'. The short, close friendship was to last right up to Rikard's tragic and untimely death in 1866: his absence from Nordrak's funeral being forever deeply regretted by Edvard. They had arranged to travel together to Italy but Rikard fell ill, Edvard went on his own to Rome and felt too busy to return for his funeral.
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