5 Songs with Orchestra

Solveigs Vuggevise Op.23 No.26

Solveigs Sang Op.23 No.18

Det første Møde Op.21 No.1

Våren Op 33 No2

En svane Op 25 No 2

Much loved and admired though his orchestral music is – the Piano Concerto in A minor above all, of course, and the two Peer Gynt Suites – Grieg’s greatest achievement is probably the series of 170 songs written over a period of 25 years between his late teens and his early sixties. “How does it happen that my songs play such an important part in my production?” he once asked. “Quite simply,” he said, “because I, like other mortals, was for once in my life endowed with genius… The flash of genius was: love. I loved a young girl who had a wonderful voice and an equally wonderful gift of interpretation. That girl became my wife and my lifelong companion to this very day.”

Obviously, there were other sources of inspiration beside his wife (and cousin) Nina Hagerup – not the least of them being the poetry of such Norwegian contemporaries as Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Aasmund Vinje. Ibsen was a particularly significant influence, as we know from the 85 minutes of incidental music (less than half of which is represented in the two Suites) that the composer wrote for Peer Gynt between 1874 and 1875. Included in the Peer Gynt incidental music are two of Grieg’s most famous songs, both of them sung by the ever devoted Solveig who waits patiently for Peer as he makes his irresponsible way round the world before, in the end, returning to her in Norway. Solveigs Vuggevise is, in fact, the very last item in the play, a tender cradle song in which, now old and nearly blind, she lulls Peer to rest. “As Solveig is bent over Peer Gynt,” Grieg instructs, “the curtain must fall very slowly.” Solveigs Sang comes from the previous act where, while Peer is being entertained by Anitra in a Bedouin camp, the faithful Solveig sings quietly to herself at home. Grieg’s instruction that “the whole song must be kept in the style of a folk song” is fairly superfluous since the melody that alternates with a wordless dancing refrain is one of the few Grieg actually borrowed from Norwegian folk song.

Until he committed himself to working with Ibsen on Peer Gynt Grieg had had a good relationship with Norway’s national poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and had made at least ten settings of his poems. The rift eventually healed, however, and in 1895 when he came to arrange a group of his songs for orchestral performance Grieg chose to include two of his most popular Bjørnson settings, Fra Monte Pincio and Det første Møde. Based on poems in Fiskerjenten (The Fisher Maiden), the four songs of Op.21 are clearly inspired by the romantic atmosphere of Bjørnson’s novel, beginning with the lovers’ first meeting in Det første Møde, where the understated wonder of that event is developed into a kind of ecstasy.

When Grieg discovered landsmål Norwegian - as distinct from the more literary bokmål of Ibsen and Bjørnson - he discovered a new sound or, in his own words, "a world of unborn music." It is a sound we know particulaly well, though in different colours, from the transcriptions of Våren and another song to words by Aasmund Vinje in the Two Elegiac Melodies for strings Op.34 – where, in recognition of what he called its “profound sadness” he expanded the title of Våren from “Spring” to “The last Spring.” En svane, which floats on a pool of calm but doom-laden chromatic harmonies, is not only the most inspired of Grieg’s Ibsen settings but also the most beautiful of swan songs.

Gerald Larner ©2007