Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) is the very symbol of Norway in the world of music. Few Norwegians have become so widely known or made such a profound impression as Grieg. Together with the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius and the Dane Carl Nielsen, he is considered the most prominent representative of Nordic music of all time. The innate melodiousness and vitality of Grieg's music have won him the acclaim of generations of music lovers all over the world, and the music seems as fresh today as it did when it was first composed. Its strong appeal lies not only in its markedly national character but also in the universality of the human emotions expressed in the music. Thus, Grieg's art is an embodiment of his own artistic creed: "One must first be a human being. All true art grows out of that which is distinctively human."

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.

The remaining years of his life were spent partly in Norway and partly abroad. In 1884-85, he built the villa, "Troldhaugen" ("The Troll's Hill"), six miles south of Bergen. Since 1936, "Troldhaugen" has been a Grieg museum and a major tourist attraction. Throughout his later years Grieg was a traveling ambassador for his own music, appearing before enthusiastic audiences as a conductor pianist in a number of European music centers, such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Birmingham, Cologne, Copenhagen, London, Munich, Paris, Prague, Stockholm, Vienna, and Warsaw. As the leading Scandinavian composer of his time, Grieg as awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, as well as a large number of other distinctions. (Finn Benestad, Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe)

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