Edvard Grieg Biography

Edvard Grieg was born on June 15, 1843, in Bergen on the west coast of Norway and died in Bergen on September 4, 1907. Among his ancestors was the Scottish merchant, Alexander Grieg (1739-1803), who had emigrated from Aberdeen to Bergen in 1779.

From 1858 to 1862, Grieg studied piano, music theory, and composition at the Conservatory of Music in Leipzig, Germany. He lived from 1863 to 1865 in Copenhagen. There, in 1867, he married his cousin, Nina Hagerup (1845-1935), an exceptionally talented singer who became the inspiration for and the ideal interpreter of her husband's songs. From 1866 to 1874, Grieg resided in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, where he worked as a private teacher and a conductor and served as one of the co-founders of a short-lived Academy of Music.

During his stay in Rome (1869-70), he received great encouragement from Franz Liszt. In 1871, he founded a concert society, "Musicforeningen," and became its first conductor. In the year 1874, he was awarded the annual artists' grant from Stortinget (the Norwegian national assembly). The following year, he moved to Lofthus on the Hardanger Fjord, where he lived for a couple of years. He was the conductor of the "Harmonien Music Society" in Bergen form 1880-82.

Grieg and Troldhaugen