4. Style.

During his student years in Leipzig and later in Copenhagen, Grieg became intimately familiar with early Romantic music, especially Schumann’s, and this became the point of departure in his works up to The Heart’s Melodies op.5, the songs of 1863–4. The change in style already apparent in 1865 in the Humoresker, Piano Sonata, and First Violin Sonata came with his turning towards folk music as a direct source of inspiration. While his interest in Norwegian folk music was probably already aroused in early youth by his acquaintance with Ole Bull, the breakthrough came with his renewed meeting with Bull in the summer of 1864 and introduction to Rikard Nordraak in Copenhagen in 1865. Nordraak had a passionate faith in the possibility of developing a distinctively Norwegian musical style, and he imparted something of this ideal to Grieg.

The new involvement with folk music seems to have had its strongest effect on Grieg’s harmonic imagination, and the most radical advances in his harmonic language are frequently found in his numerous folksong arrangements. These are to be found in the Album for mandssang op.30 (1877–8), the Norwegische Tänze op.35 for piano four hands (1881), the Symphonische Tänze op.64 (1896–7, orchestral arrangements of four folktunes) and finally the Four Psalms op.74 for baritone solo and mixed chorus (1906). But the most characteristic such works are the three sets of piano arrangements – the 25 Norske folkeviser og dandse op.17 (1869), 19 Norske folkeviser op.66 (1896) and Slåtter op.72 (1902–3) – which present a cross-section of Grieg’s evolving harmonic style.

While Nordraak’s ideas were of great importance to Grieg in the early development of his interest in folk music, Nordraak's musical style influenced Grieg only slightly; the two musicians proceeded in entirely different directions. In the op.17 pieces, Grieg’s richly chromatic but clearly functional harmony is coupled with rhythmic and melodic folk elements strongly emphasized by the use of pedal points. Wagner too played a role, though limited, in Grieg’s subsequent development; he found the German’s style both attractive and repellent and mostly managed to keep his distance.

Impressionist features began to appear in Grieg’s music as early as the String Quartet in G minor op.27 (1877–8), and emerged more clearly in the 1890s with the op.66 folksong arrangements and Haugtussa song cycle op.67. As the functional relationship between chords gradually weakened in these works, a freer handling of dissonance became evident, including parallel non-triadic progressions. The final stage in Grieg's stylistic development was a bolder, linear treatment of harmony, pointing forward to 20th-century neo-classicism. This progressive feature is manifest in the texture of the Four Psalms and especially in the Slåtter (ex.1), whose dissonance treatment was possibly influenced by the double-stopping technique of the folk instrument, the Hardanger fiddle. But Grieg’s innovations had little or no effect on the compositions of his conservative Norwegian contemporaries.

Grieg, Edvard