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still the only permanent concert company in Kristiania. The
so-called Chambermusic Soirées, which were held for many years
under the management of the highly-respected firm of Hals
Brothers, the owners of the first (1847) and largest piano-factory
in the country, have been discontinued.
The Musical Union, whose object it is to perform
concert-music of all kinds, was founded in 1871 by the co-operation of
the famous Norwegian musician, Edvard Grieg, who was
afterwards joined by his friend Johan Svendsen. These two talented
men, with their strong, warm interest in the musical art of their
country, obtained, during the time that they conducted, quite
brilliant results, in spite of the very insufficient material upon
which they had to work. After them, the Musical Union has
been conducted by Ole Olsen, Johan Selmer, and Iver Holter.
Of these five conductors of the principal musical institution
in the country, Grieg, now that Svendsen has become permanently
attached to Denmark, occupies the undisputed place of
standard-bearer of Norwegian music, the foremost in the ranks of
Norwegian musicians, and one of the most talented of living
composers. He is the highest representative of the Norse element
in music, the great beating heart of Norwegian musical art.
He was born in 1843 in Bergen, the capital of the west country,
with its lyric temperament, and keen artistic interests. He
has seldom stayed long in one place, and has travelled much
in Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Italy. In the latter half
of the sixties, and the first half of the seventies, he lived in
Kristiania, where his labours as teacher, conductor and composer
formed an epoch in musical life there. His work as a composer,
in which he still shows the same youthful freshness and wealth,
extends over a very wide domain — long and short choral works,
the music to Ibsen’s dramatic poem, «Per Gynt», and to Bjørnson’s
«Sigurd Jorsalfar», a number of different compositions for the
piano and for strings, and above all his large collection of
romances and songs in which his deep national feeling, his fine poetic
spirit, his talented melodious and rhythmic sense, have found their
fullest expression.
Grieg’s history cannot be written without mentioning two
earlier pioneers in the domain of national art, namely, Kjerulf
and Nordraak.
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