CHAPTER III

THE MUSIC OF MODERN SCANDINAVIA

The Rise of national schools in the nineteenth century--Growth of national expression in Scandinavian lands--Music in modern Denmark--Sweden and her Music--The Norwegian composers; Edvard Grieg--Sinding and other Norwegians--The Finnish Renaissance: Sibelius and others.

The most striking characteristic of the music of the nineteenth century has doubtless been its astonishing enrichment in technical means. Its next most striking characteristic is easily its growth in national expression. National art-music in the modern sense was almost unknown before the nineteenth century. The nearest thing to it was a 'Turkish march' in a Mozart operetta or sonata, or an 'allemand' or 'schottisch' in a French suite. The national differences in eighteenth century music were differences of school, not of nationality. It is true that Italian music usually tended to lyricism, French to dexterity of form, and German to technical solidity; it is true further that these qualities corresponded in a rough way to the characteristics of the respective nations. But all three used one and the same musical system; they differed not so much in their music as in the way they treated their music.

In the nineteenth century the national feeling found expression as it never had before. The causes of this were numerous, but the most important were two of a political nature: First, the spread of the principles of the French Revolution made democracy a far more general fact than it had ever been before; political authority and moral influence shifted more and more from the rulers to the people and the character of the ordinary men and women became more and more the character of the nation. Second, the resistance called forth by Napoleon's wars of aggression aroused national consciousness as it had never been aroused before. Napoleon, with a solid national consciousness behind him, was invincible until he found a national consciousness opposed to him--in Spain in 1809, in Russia in 1812, and in Germany in 1813. Only the sense of nationality had been able to preserve nations; and it was the sense of nationality that thereafter continued to maintain them.

To these two political causes we may perhaps add a third cause--one of a technical-musical character. With the early Beethoven the old classical system of music had reached its apogee. When this was once complete and firmly implanted in people's consciousness contrasting sorts of music could be clearly apperceived. Once the logical course of classical development was finished, men's minds were free to look elsewhere for beauties of another sort. So when a political interest in the common people led men to investigate the people's folk-songs, musical consciousness was at the same time prepared to appreciate the striking differences between art-music and folk-music.

Now all the national music of the nineteenth century is based in a very real sense on the folk-music of the people. The music of the eighteenth century could not be truly national, because it was supported chiefly by the aristocracy, and an art will inevitably tend to express the character of the people who pay its bills. The differences between the aristocracy of one nation and that of another are largely superficial. The court of Louis XV was distinguished from that of Frederick the Great chiefly by the cut of the courtiers' clothes. But the France of 1813 was distinguished from the Germany of 1813 by the mould of the national soul. And the national soul can be seen very imperfectly in the official art of a nation; it must be sought for in the popular art--in the myths, the fairy tales, the ballads, and the folk-songs. So when the newly awakened national consciousness began to demand musical expression, it inevitably sought its materials in the music of the people.

I

In the eighteenth century this popular music was thought too crude to be of artistic value. The snobbishness of political life was reflected in the prevailing attitude toward art. Because the people's melodies were different from the accepted music they were held to be wrong. Or rather, one may say that cultivated people hardly dreamed of their existence. Gradually, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, scholars became aware of the value of popular art. Herder was the first important man to discover it in Germany, and he passed his appreciation of it on to Goethe. By the opening of the nineteenth century the appreciation of folk-art was well under way. Collections of folk-songs and folk-poetry were appearing, and their high artistic value was being recognized. With the first decade of the century the impulse reached the Scandinavian lands, and their national existence in art began.

These countries had of course been free from the immediate turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. They had suffered, as all Europe had suffered, but they had not been obliged to defend their nationality with their blood. Denmark and Norway-Sweden had been for centuries substantially independent, and Finland, which had been in loose subjugation alternately to Sweden and Russia, was practically independent for some time until a political pact between Napoleon and the Czar Alexander made her a grand duchy of Russia; but even as a part of the Russian Empire she suffered no violation of her national individuality until late in the nineteenth century. Political independence and geographical isolation had left the northern nations somewhat turgid and provincial. Their artistic life had been largely borrowed. The various courts had their choirs and kapellmeisters, usually imported from Germany. Native composers were infrequent; composition was largely in the hands of second-rate musicians from Germany who had migrated that they might be larger fish in a smaller puddle. And the composition was, of course, entirely in the foreign style. Stockholm and Copenhagen had their opera in the latter half of the eighteenth century, but the works performed were chiefly French and Italian. These imported works set the standard for most of the native musical composition. Toward the end of the eighteenth century German influence began to predominate, especially in Denmark, where the German _Singspiel_ took root and enjoyed a long and prosperous career. The German influence was much more proper to the Scandinavian lands than that of France or Italy, but it had not the slightest relation to a national art. Danish stories occasionally appeared in the subject matter, but the music was substantially that of Reichardt and Zelter in Germany. In Sweden the course of events was the same. Occasionally national subject matter appeared in operatic librettos, but in the music never. Sweden, which up to the beginning of the nineteenth century continued to be a force in European political affairs, had naturally enjoyed a considerable degree of intercourse with other nations, and was all the more influenced by them in her art. Norway and Finland, however, were completely isolated, and received their musical ministrations not at second hand but at third. In all these countries there was a considerable degree of musical life (choirs, orchestras, and dramatic works), but this was almost wholly confined to the large cities. Yet all these nations had the possibilities of a rich artistic life--in national traditions, in folk-song, and in a common sensitiveness of the racial soul. All four nations are distinctly musical, and in Denmark and Finland especially the solo or four-part song was cultivated lovingly in the home and in the smaller communities.

From their isolation and provincialism the Scandinavian countries were awakened, not by direct, but by reflex impulse. The vigorous national life of other European lands gradually stimulated a sympathetic movement in the two Scandinavian peninsulas. Denmark saw its first good collection of folk-songs in 1812-14, Sweden in 1814-16. In 1842 came A. P. Berggreen's famous collection of Danish songs, and about the same time the 540 Norse folk-songs and dances gathered and edited by Ludwig Lindeman. Doubtless this interest had some political significance. But far more important than these was the appearance in 1835 of the first portion of the _Kalevala_, the Finnish national epic, which has since taken its place beside the Iliad and the _Nibelungenlied_ as one of the greatest epics of all time. This remarkable poem seems to have been genuinely popular in origin. It remained in the mouths and hearts of the people throughout the centuries, almost unknown to the scholars. A Finnish physician, Elias Lönnrot, made it his life work to collect and piece together the fragments of the great poem. In 1835 he published thirty-five runes, and in 1849 a new edition containing fifty--all taken down directly from the peasants' lips. This work had a decided political significance. It intensified and solidified the national consciousness, tending to counterbalance the influence of the Swedish language, which until then had been unquestionedly that of the cultivated classes; later it formed a buffer to the Russian language which the Czar attempted to force upon the Finns by imperial edict. It served to arouse the national feeling to such a pitch that Finland has in recent years been the chief thorn in the Czar's side. And this fact, as we shall see, helped to give the Finnish music of the last three decades its intense national character.

The distinctly national movement in Scandinavian countries began, as we have said, in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Its growth thereafter was steady and uninterrupted and was aided by the generous spread of choral and symphonic music. In the first stage the music written was based chiefly on German models, but it was written more and more by native Scandinavians. In the second stage (roughly the second third of the century) the native composers wrote music that was based on the national folk-music, but timidly and vaguely. In the third stage, the folk-tunes were frankly utilized, the national scales and rhythms were deliberately and continuously called into service, and the whole musical output given a character homogeneously and distinctively national. It was in this stage that the Scandinavian music became known to the world at large. Grieg, a man of the highest talent, possibly of genius, made himself one of the best loved composers of the nineteenth century, and awakened a widespread taste for the exotic. Together with Tschaikowsky the Russian he made nationalism in music a world-wide triumph. After his success it was no longer counted against a composer that he spoke in a strange tongue. The very strangeness of the tongue became a source of interest; and if there was added thereto a strong and beautiful musical message the new composer usually had easy sailing. The outward success of Grieg doubtless stimulated musical endeavor in Scandinavian lands, and enabled the world at large to become familiar with many minor talents whose reputations could otherwise not have passed beyond their national borders. Finally, there has arisen in Finland the greatest and most individual of all Scandinavian composers, and one of the most powerful writers of music in the modern world--Jean Sibelius. In him the most intense nationalism speaks with a universal voice.

The folk-music which made this Scandinavian nationalism possible is rich and extensive. Apparently it is of rather recent growth, but this fact is offset by the isolation of the countries in which it developed. It is of pure Germanic stock (with the exception of certain Eastern influences in the music of Finland). Yet it has a marked individuality, a perfume of its own. This is the more remarkable as we discover that in external qualities it exhibits only slight differences from the German folk-song. The individuality is not obvious, as with the Russian or Hungarian folk-music, but subtly resident in a multitude of details which escape analysis. Not only is the Scandinavian music clearly distinct from that of the other Germanic lands, but the music of each of the four countries is subtly distinguished from that of all the others. The Danish is most like the ordinary German folk-song with which we are familiar. It is not rich in extent or variety of mood. Its chief qualities are a discreet playfulness and a gentle melancholy. In formal structure it is good but not distinguished. It is predominantly vocal; in old and characteristic dances Denmark is lacking. The Swedish folk-music is in every way richer. It does not attain to the extremes of animal and spiritual expression, like the Russian, but within its fairly broad limits it can show every variety of feeling. Even in its liveliest moments it reveals something of the predominant northern melancholy, but the dances, which are numerous and spirited, reveal a buoyant health. The thin veil of melancholy which has been so often noticed is not nearly so prominent as a certain refined sensuality. Sweden, more than any of the other Scandinavian lands, has known periods of cosmopolitan luxury. She has become a citizen of the world, with something of the man-of-the-world's self-indulgence and self-consciousness. So her folk-songs frequently reveal an exquisite sense of form which seems French rather than Germanic.

The Norse folk-song naturally shows a close relationship with that of Sweden, but in every point of difference it tends straight away from the German. Norway has for centuries been a primitive country in its material conditions; a country of tiny villages, of valleys for months isolated one from the other; a country of pioneer virtues and individualistic values. Large cities are few; the ordinary machinery of civilization is even yet limited. The economic activities are still in great measure primitive, and much of the work is out of doors, as in shipping, fishing and pasturing. The scenery is among the grandest in the world. So it is not surprising that the Norwegian folk-music is vigorous and sometimes a little crude, and that it reveals an intense feeling for nature. The people are deeply religious and filled with the stern Protestant sense of a personal relation with God. The tender and mystic aspects of the music are less easy to account for; many of the songs are an intimate revelation of subtle mood, and others show a tonal vagueness which in modern times is called 'impressionistic.' More than the Swedish songs they are spontaneous and poetic. If they reflect nature it is in her personal aspect. They show not so much the Norwegian mountains as the fog which covers the mountains. They sing not so much the old Vikings as the quiet people who have settled down to fishing and trading when their wanderings are over. They reveal not the face of nature, but her bosom on which lonely men may rest.

The Finnish music is of a mixed stock. Primarily it is an adaptation of the Swedish, and the greater number of Finnish songs are externally of Swedish mould. But Lapland has also contributed her child-like melodies. The true Finnish music, however, is that drawn from the legendary sources of the original race. The melodies of the old runes retain their primitive aspects, and are unlike those of any other nation. They are doubtless the very melodies to which the _Kalevala_ was originally sung. Externally monotonous and heavy, they reveal strange beauties on closer examination. They are distinguished by many repetitions of the same note, by irregular or ill-defined metre, and by a long and sinuous melodic line. Another typical sort of melody is the 'horn-call,' developed from the original blasts of the hunting-horn. The theme of the trio of the scherzo of Sibelius' second symphony is typical of the rune melody. Finally the Russian influence may be felt in many of the older Finnish tunes--in uncertain tonality and a peculiar use of the minor. This mixture of musical forces is indicative of the ethnological and social mixture which is the Finnish race. The Finns are primarily a Mongolian people. From the Laplanders to the north they received what that simple people had to give. For centuries they were under the domination of Sweden; Swedish was the language of their literature and their cultured conversation, and Swedish was their official civilization. A considerable accession of Swedish immigrants and infusion of Swedish blood left their affairs in the control of Germanic influences. (It is on this account that the Finnish is included in a chapter on Scandinavian music.) Finally, a nearness to Russia and an intermittent subjugation to the Czardom brought into their midst Russian influences which were assimilated flexibly but incompletely. In the late nineteenth century Finland experienced a renaissance of national feeling. The genuine Finnish language gained the uppermost, and provided a rallying point for the resistance to the Czar's attempted Russianization of his duchy. Finnish traditions displaced those of the Vikings. And Finland began to stand forth as an oriental nation with a heroic background. Therefore, though her music developed largely out of Germanic materials, it has become, under Sibelius (himself of Teutonic blood), a thing apart.

The use of folk-music on the part of the Scandinavian composers seems to have been less deliberate and conscious than in the case of the 'neo-Russian' nationalists.[10] In the earliest composers who can be regarded as national it is scarcely to be noticed. For some years after Danish music began to have a national character the actual presence of folk-elements was to be detected only on close examination. Such a careful writer as Mr. Finck indignantly denies that Grieg made any deliberate use of folk-music. In his view the melodies of the people are so inferior to those of Grieg that to suggest the latter's indebtedness is something in the nature of blasphemy. Nevertheless, in the process of nationalizing the northern music the patriotic composers introduced the spirit and the technical materials of the folk-music into conscious works of art. Just what the process was is hardly to be known, even by the composers themselves. We know that Grieg was an ardent nationalist and studied and admired the folk-songs. To what extent he imitated or borrowed folk-melodies for his compositions is not of first importance. Probably, with the best of the nationalists, the process was one of saturating themselves in the music of their native land and then composing personally, and from the heart. At all events, it is certain that the influence of any folk-music, deeply studied, is too pervasive for a sensitive composer to escape.

Since the first third of the nineteenth century the Scandinavian composers have been heavily influenced by the prevailing German musical forces. German musicians were frequent visitors or sojourners in Scandinavian cities, and the musicians of the northern lands sought their education almost exclusively in Germany. Hence Scandinavian music has reflected closely the changes of fashion that prevailed to the south. Mendelssohn and Schumann (through the work of Gade) were the first dominating influences. Chopin influenced their style of pianistic writing, and Wagner and Liszt in due time influenced their harmonic procedure. Music dramas were written quite in the Wagnerian style, and a minor impulse toward programme music came from Berlioz and Liszt. In the art of instrumentation Wagner and Strauss received instant recognition and imitation--an imitation which soon became a schooling and developed into a pronounced native art. Even Brahms had his share in the work, primarily in the shorter piano pieces which have been so distinctive a part of the Scandinavian musical output, and latterly in the 'absolute' polyphonic work of Alfvén, Stenhammar and Norman.

But though all these strands are distinctly discernible, that which gives the Scandinavian tonal art a right to a separate existence is a contribution of its own. In the larger and more ambitious forms the Scandinavian composers have usually not been at their best or most distinctive. It is the smaller forms--songs, piano pieces, orchestral pictures, etc.--which have carried the music of the Northland throughout Europe and America. In these we best see the distinguishing Scandinavian traits. First there is an impressionism, a dexterity in the creation of specific mood or atmosphere, which preceded the recent craze for these qualities. The music of Grieg, simple as it seems to us now, was in its time a sort of gospel of what could be done with music on the intimate or pictorial sides. Vagueness, mystery, poetry spoke to us out of this music of the north. Next there was a feeling for nature, for pictorial values, for delineative music in its more romantic terms, which had not been found in the more strenuous program music of the Germans. The 'Sunrise' of Grieg's 'Peer Gynt Suite' attuned many thousands of ears to the beauty of natural scenery as depicted in music. Finally there was a feeling for tonal qualities as such, which the modern French school has developed to an almost unbelievable extent. The tone of the piano became an intimate part of the poetry of northern piano pieces. Further, the school of Grieg has shown an astonishing talent in the handling of orchestral color. Brilliant and poetic instrumentation has been one of the chief glories of the northern school. It was the romantic impulse that was behind all the best work, and accordingly the formal element does not bulk large in Scandinavian music. But there is often a wonderful finesse, polish and dexterity which reveals an exquisite sense of structure and workmanship, especially in the smaller forms. Vocal music, especially before the opening of the twentieth century, flourished, and the songs of certain northern composers have taken their place beside the best beloved lyric works of Germany. Finally, there are brilliant exceptions to the statement that the best northern work has been achieved in the smaller forms; the concertos of Grieg, the symphonic pieces of Sinding, and the symphonies and tone-poems of Sibelius, strike an epic note in modern music.

II

The early history of Danish music is that of any royal court of post-Renaissance times. Foreign composers and performers were invited to the capital, and when the lower classes had been unusually well drained of their earnings history recorded a 'brilliant musical age.' In the eighteenth century there was a royal opera, performing French and Italian pieces. From time to time various choral or instrumental societies were founded. In the conventional sense the musical life of Copenhagen was flourishing. But in all this there was no trace of national Danish music.

The first composer who may be called truly national began working after a thorough Germanizing of the country's musical taste had taken place. This man was Johann Peter Emilius Hartmann (1805-1900). His extensive work was hardly known outside the limits of his native land. The few examples which were played in Germany were speedily forgotten. But he gradually came to be recognized as the great national composer of Denmark. Though a large part of his student years was spent in his native land, he was at first under the influence of the fashionable composers of the time, such as Marschner, Spontini, Spohr and Auber. But, though not a student of Danish folk-songs, he gradually came to feel the individuality of the national music, and in 1832 made himself a national spokesman with his _melodrame_ 'The Golden Horns,' to Oehlenschlager's text. His opera, 'Little Christine,' to Andersen's story, performed in 1846, was thoroughly national and popular in spirit. His output was astonishingly large and varied. He wrote for nearly every established form, symphonies, overtures, songs, choral pieces, religious and secular, sonatas as well as short romantic pieces for the piano, works for organ and violin, ballets, and picturesque orchestral poems. His nationalism does not appear consistently in his work; he seems to have made it no creed; perhaps he only imitated it from Weber and Chopin. But when he chose to work with national materials he came nearer to the popular spirit than any other composer of the time, barring the two or three great ones of whom Weber is the type. His facility was great, his themes pregnant and arresting. He revealed an energetic structural power, and together with fine polyphonic ability a mastery of romantic suggestion in the style of Mendelssohn. But it is chiefly by his native feeling for the folk-style that he established himself as the first Scandinavian nationalist in music. Grieg wrote of him: 'The dreams of our younger generation of northern men were his from the time he reached maturity. The best and deepest thoughts which moved a later generation of more or less important spirits were spoken first in him, and found their first echo in us.'

But it was Niels W. Gade (1817-1890) who represented the Danish school in the eyes of the outside world. This was due chiefly to his strategic position as friend of Mendelssohn and, after Mendelssohn's death, director of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. At bottom he was thoroughly a German of the conservative romantic school. His excellence in the eyes of the time consisted in his ability at writing Mendelssohn's style of music with almost Mendelssohn's charm and finish. But he was also the Dane, and in subtle wise he managed to impregnate his music with Danish musical feeling. His eight symphonies had a high standing in his day, the first and last being typically national in character, serving, in fact, as a sort of propaganda for the national school that was to come. But Gade was more thoroughly national in some of his choral ballads and dramatic cantatas, such as 'Calamus,' 'The Erlking's Daughter,' 'The Stream,' and others; and especially in his orchestral suite, 'A Summer Day in the Country,' and his suite for string orchestra, _Holbergiana_. His personality was not so vigorous as that of Hartmann; his culture was more conservative and classical; the shadow of Mendelssohn prevented the more aggressive national utterance that might have been desired. But what he did he did well, and his immense influence on the future of Scandinavian music was established through his masterful fusing of the best German classic manner of the time with popular national materials.

Among the Danish composers of the same time we may mention Emil Hartmann (1836-1898), son of the great Hartmann, prolific composer of orchestral pieces, chamber music, and operas of professedly national character; Peter A. Heise (1830-1870), composer of songs to some of the best national lyric poetry of the time; and August Winding (1835-1899), composer of piano, orchestral and chamber music in which national color and folk humor were discreetly brought to the foreground.

In recent times the Danish school, of the four Scandinavian branches, has been least national in intent. Foreign gods have exercised their sway in one fashion or another. Nor can we say that the absolute value of the more recent works is distinguished. Among the half dozen Danish composers who have attained to eminence there is none who can be considered the equal of either Gade or Hartmann in personal ability. Much of the best efforts of the younger men has gone to larger forms, in which either their creative inspiration or their formal mastery has proved insufficient. Among them there are four of marked ability: August Enna, in opera; Asger Hamerik, in symphonic music; P. E. Lange-Müller, in lyric and piano works; and Carl Nielsen, in chamber music.

August Enna (born 1860) is the most prolific and successful of Denmark's opera composers. Chiefly self-taught, but mainly German in his influences, he has written some ten operas in which one influence or style after another is evident. 'Cleopatra,' after Rider Haggard's story, is ambitious and theatric, but it reveals, alongside of frank Wagnerism, the ghost of Meyerbeer and of Italian opera of the 'transition period' of the 'eighties. 'Aucassin and Nicolette' attempts the quaint and naïve style which is supposed to comport with the late Middle Ages; it has a distinction of its own, but too often it is mere conventional romantic opera. The fairy operas after Andersen--'The Little Match Girl' and 'The Princess of the Peapod'--are in more congenial style, but lack the necessary consistent manner of light fantasy. The truth is that Enna, with marked abilities, is limited to the expression of tender sentiment, gentle melancholy, and personal, intimate moods. His invention is happy, though uneven; his use of the orchestra colorful but not always in taste. He lacks the ability to conceive and carry out a large work in a consistent and elevated manner. He fails in that ultimate test of the thorough workman--the ability to execute a whole work in a consistent and homogeneous style. The trouble is not with his operatic instinct, which is sufficiently vivid; nor with his melodic invention as such, for this is often fresh and charming. But his musicianship and his inspiration have not proven equal to the task he has set himself.

Asger Hamerik (born 1843) has undertaken an equally big task in the field of symphonic music. He plans on a large scale, but it can hardly be said that he thinks likewise. We may note a 'Poetic' symphony, a 'Tragic' symphony, a 'Lyric' symphony, a 'Majestic' symphony, and a choral symphony, among several others. Of his two operas, one, 'The Vendetta,' received a performance in Milan. There is considerable choral and chamber music, and in particular a 'Northern' orchestral suite by which his artistic personality may be best known. But he has at bottom little of the national feeling. He is facilely eclectic, but with no individual or consistent binding principle. He has a romanticism that recalls Dvořák's--graceful, mildly sensuous, pleasing rather than inspiring; he has further a marked gift as an instrumental colorist. But his harmony is conventional, and his thematic ideas are usually undistinguished. Finally, his structural power is not sufficient to raise his musical material to a high artistic plane. Hamerik is out of the main line of Scandinavian national music, but has not been able to make a place for himself in music universal.

Much more to the purpose in intent and achievement is P. E. Lange-Müller (born 1850). He reveals a graceful sense of form and a sincere emotional feeling in his smaller works for piano and voice. His harmony is conservative and sometimes disappointing; but whenever he strikes the tender mood of folk-music he saves himself with a touch of poetry. But he is rather a follower of the old school of German romanticism than of Scandinavian nationalism. The four-act opera, _Frau Jeanna_, is content with an unobtrusive lyric style, but the lyricism is not exalted enough to sustain such a large-scale work. The melodrama _Middelalderlig_, of more recent date, shows much poetic color but a fundamental lack of invention. In the larger works he is at his best in the fairy-comedy, 'Once upon a Time.' His symphony 'In Autumn,' his orchestral suite, 'Alhambra,' and 'Niels Ebbesen' for chorus, have met with indifferent success. Lange-Müller is primarily a lyric composer for voice and piano, and in this field he shows a sort of grace and tenderness which we shall meet with frequently in recent Swedish music.

A sincere and able, yet austere, composer is Carl Nielsen (born 1865). His music is, with that of the Swede Alfvén, less programmistic and more 'absolute' than we shall meet with in any other distinguished Scandinavian musician of modern times. The national element in his work is almost _nil_. A master of counterpoint, and a vigorous innovator in the modern Russian style, he commands respect rather than love. His output includes more than half a dozen symphonies, a number of works for string quartet and violin, some large compositions for chorus and orchestra, and a four-act opera, 'Saul and David.' It is by this that he is best known. This is a work to command respectful attention from musicians, but hardly enthusiastic applause from ordinary audiences. The writing shows great musical knowledge, careful and ample ability in counterpoint and in modulation of the complex modern sort, a certain unity of style, and a command of special emotional color. But the work is perhaps rather that of the symphonist than of the operatic poet. His instrumentation, unlike his harmony, is conservative. His workmanship is thorough, and his musicianship wide and soundly based.

Among the minor names there are several who deserve mention for one reason or another. Ludolf Nielsen (born 1876) is a thorough classicist at heart, though he has become known in Germany through his symphonic poems 'In Memoriam,' _Fra Bjaergene_, and 'Summer Night Moods.' He is more than usually talented, but very conservative in his style. His themes are interesting though not striking, and his product is sufficiently inspired with human feeling to be preserved from pedantry. Hakon Börresen (born 1876) has distinguished himself with many songs which preserve the national tradition established for Norway by Grieg and Sinding. His chamber music has revealed harmonic invention and tender coloring which show him to be one of the chosen of the younger Danish composers. Finally, we may mention Otto Malling (born 1848), an able writer for organ and string quartet; Victor Bendix (born 1851), well known in Denmark for a number of symphonies which combine delicate poetry with structural beauty; Ludvig Schytte (born 1848), prolific writer of piano pieces, and Cornelius Rübner, who commands respect for solidly classic workmanship. These latter men are of the old school. Of the younger generation in Denmark we are hardly justified in hoping for works of great distinction, unless a possible exception may be made in the case of Börresen. For, speaking broadly, the national impulse has departed from Danish composition.

III

Though Scandinavian art was first brought to the attention of the world at large through the Norwegians (Grieg in music and Ibsen in literature), Sweden has in more recent years held her share of international attention. After Ibsen the Swede Strindberg was perhaps the most talked-of dramatist in Europe. Still more recently the novels of Selma Lagerlöf and the sociological writings of Ellen Key have been widely translated and read, not only in European lands, but in America also. Strindberg was a supreme artist, a personality of an intensity equalling Nietzsche and of a spiritual variety suggesting that of Goethe. The strain of violent morbidity in his _Weltanschauung_ was a purely personal and not at all a national matter. As executive artist he showed an almost classic balance and control. Selma Lagerlöf is sane and finely poised, and Ellen Key has by her moderation and her clearness of intellectual vision made herself a leader in a department of modern sociological study which more than any other is apt to be treated sentimentally and hysterically. Poise and artistic control are, in fact, to be noticed generally in modern Swedish art, and especially in music. The cosmopolitan character of Swedish political history is here seen in its results. Someone has called Stockholm 'the Paris of the north.' The epithet is just: grace, conscious artistry, sensuous self-indulgence, are to be found in Swedish music in a degree that contrasts markedly with the militant self-expression of the Norwegian school. Without losing its national qualities the art of modern Sweden has spoken the easy language of the European capitals.

Sweden's story is like Denmark's: first a thorough Germanization of her music, then a gradual growth of the national tone. This tone grew in every case out of the early German romanticism. The first great Swedish composer and the earliest romanticist was Franz Berwald (1796-1868). His position in Sweden is somewhat analogous to that held in Denmark by Hartmann. His output was large, and in the largest forms. He undertook symphonic works which until his time had been neglected in his native land. Without being known much outside Sweden he gained a place in the hearts of his countrymen which he has held ever since. His most popular work was his _Symphonie Sérieuse_ in G minor, composed in 1843, sincere, poetic and musicianly. The influence of Schumann is predominant. A considerable quantity of symphonic and chamber music, reflecting chiefly Beethoven and Mendelssohn, gained him a position as the foremost symphonic writer of his time. An early violin concerto, composed in 1820, reveals him as a sincere student of Beethoven, youthful, romantic and progressive. Out of half a dozen operas we may mention _Estrella de Soria_, a romantic work of large proportions, built on the Parisian model (though showing the homely influence of Weber)--with hunting chorus, grand ballet, and all. That he was not unconscious of his nationality is proved by the names of some of his choral compositions, such as _Gustav Adolph bei Lützen_, 'The Victory of Karl XII at Narwa,' and the _Nordische Phantasiebilder_. A 'symphonic poem,' _En landtlig Bröllopfest_, makes extensive use of Swedish melodies, but the style is not a national one, and the themes are merely utilized without being developed. As a highly trained and spontaneous worker in the early romantic style Berwald performed a great service in awakening musical consciousness in his native land. But here ends his national significance.

Berwald's tendency was represented in the following generation by Albert Rubenson (1826-1901), a less talented but very able composer. He came from the Leipzig school and was thoroughly Germanized, but like Berwald devoted some attention to Swedish subjects. Ludwig Normann (1831-1885) anticipated the modern Swedish composers in his preference for the smaller forms. In his piano music he is tender and idyllic, delighting in detail and suggestive device, something of a poet and tone-painter. Mendelssohn is the chief influence in his piano work. Though this is thin in style, it is rich in charming melody and is carried out with a fine polish. In his larger works, such as the symphony in E-flat major (1840), he is still the melodist; his writing is fresh and even original, but his scoring is without distinction. His romantic overtures are in the Mendelssohnian manner, with romantic color in the fashion of the time.

One of the most talented of the early Swedish composers was Ivan Hallström (1826-1901), who may be said to have been the first truly national composer of his land. He appreciated the artistic possibilities of the national folk-song and made its use in his music a chief tenet in his artistic creed. This was preëminently true in his operas--such as _Den Bergtagna_, _Die Gnomenbraut_, _Der Viking_, and _Neaga_. The last-named is a romantic work teeming with color and poetry, with traces of Wagnerian influence, but with much vigor, beauty and depth. Some of these works have been favorably received in Germany, but they are not sufficiently personal and dramatic to justify a long life. The Swedish folk-song was carried into symphonic and chamber music by J. Adolph Hägg (born 1850), a disciple of Gade and an able and fruitful composer of symphonies and sonatas, and romantic pieces for piano, which are filled with romantic and local color.

But the early musical generation, of which Hallström may be considered one of the last, was more distinctive and national in its songs than in its instrumental works. The first half of the nineteenth century may be called the golden age of the Swedish _Lied_. It was a time of choral societies, some of which became famous throughout the continent. Otto Lindblad (1809-1864) was a leader and prolific composer for such societies. It is to his credit to have composed the official national song of Sweden. But the great lyric genius of Sweden was Adolph Fr. Lindblad (1801-1879), who is commonly called 'the Swedish Schubert.' His genius was tender and elegiac, responding sensitively to the colors of nature, and, thanks to the art of Jenny Lind, it became familiar to concert-goers in many lands.

Swedish music of modern times has maintained a wide variety of forms and styles. The national feeling is still strong, though some of the ablest work is being done in an 'absolute' idiom. On the whole the recent Swedish school is best represented to the outside world by Petersen-Berger with his short and graceful piano pieces, and by Sjögren with his songs. In opera Sweden has approached an international standing, but has not quite attained it. Her opera is represented at its best by Andreas Hallén (born 1846), who used national tone-material with Wagnerian technique. Like most other northern musicians of his time he went to Leipzig for his training and sought in Germany for his beacon lights. After returning to his native land he became indispensable in its musical life, serving as director of the Stockholm Philharmonic Society and of the Stockholm opera. Besides songs and choral works he wrote a number of symphonic pieces of a high order, filled with Swedish melody and Swedish color. The Swedish Rhapsodies opus 23, based entirely upon well-known national songs, are of a solid technique and agreeable variety; the themes themselves are little developed, but by their scoring and their juxtaposition they become fused into an admirable whole. The _Sommersaga_, opus 36, lacks specific Swedish color, but is an attractive and able work in the older romantic style. The _Toteninsel_, opus 45, is an ambitious symphonic poem. The themes are arresting, the development powerful, and the harmony energetic, but the work lacks the dithyrambic quality demanded of tone-poems in recent times, and hence seems outmoded. In 'The Music of the Spheres,' dating from 1909, we discover an admirable adaptation and fusion of modern harmonic technique, but the ideas and the construction speak of a bygone age. In all these works Hallén was mainly under the influence of Liszt. In the operas, on which his reputation chiefly rests, he was at first wholly Wagnerian. His first work for the stage, 'Harald the Viking,' though presumably Swedish, is utterly Wagnerian in treatment. Were it not that Wagnerian imitation cannot be truly creative, this work would surely take a high rank, for it is powerful, dramatic, and admirably scored. The national tone becomes more marked in the later operas--_Hexfällen_ (1896), _Waldemarskatten_ (1899) and _Waldborgsmässa_ (1901). The Wagnerian leit-motif and Wagnerian harmony are still present, but the Swedish material has suitably modified the general style. In _Waldemarskatten_, which is of a light romantic tone, one even feels that the composer has despaired of being successful in the highest musical forms and has made a compromise in the direction of easy popularity. But the work is filled with beautiful passages. In the spots where Hallén imitates folk-song or folk-dance, he is fresh and inspiring. His musical treatment is never highly personal; on the other hand he shows most valuable qualities--vigor, passion, folk-feeling, and above all dramatic sense. His scoring, too, is rich and colorful.

Perhaps the best known and most typical of the modern Swedes is Emil Sjögren (born 1853), the undisputed master of the modern Swedish art-song. No other composer of his land is so individual as he. No other is more specifically Swedish, in perfumed grace and sensuous tenderness. Yet he is by no means a salon composer. His work is energetic, showing at times even a touch of the noble and heroic. His nationalism does not consist so much in his use of actual Swedish material as in his finely racial manner of treatment. In his short piano pieces--cycles, novelettes, landscape pictures, etc.--he has impregnated the salon manner of a Mendelssohn with something of the color and personal feeling of a Grieg. His choral works are highly prized in Sweden. His work in the classical forms, chiefly for violin and piano, are conservative in form and (until recently) in harmony. But it is in his songs that Sjögren has expressed himself most perfectly. These are very numerous and show a wide range of emotional expression. Beyond a doubt they are thoroughly successful only in the tenderer and intimate moods. They reveal a psychological power recalling that of Schumann, and an impressionistic harmonic perfume similar to that in Grieg's best work. In the brief strophe form Sjögren shows himself master of the exquisite form which distinguishes the Swedish folk-song. In his early period his accompaniment followed closely the regular voice-part, and his harmony, while always personal, was simple. A middle period shows a perfect blending of voice and piano, with freedom and variety in each, much pianistic resourcefulness, and a remarkable melodic gift. Since this period his harmony has undergone a striking change. He has evidently sat at the feet of the modern French masters, and has adopted an idiom which is complex and difficult. He has managed to keep it original and personal, but it is to be doubted whether the recent songs will ever hold a permanent place beside the lovely ones of the middle period.

Of almost equal personal distinction and importance is Wilhelm Petersen-Berger (born 1867), a master of romantic piano music in the smaller forms, and a national voice to his native land. His work is varied. There is chamber music such as the E minor violin sonata. There is a 'Banner Symphony' (1904) and one entitled _Sonnenfärd_ (1910). There are male choruses, such as _En Fjällfärd_, and orchestral works such as the 'May Carnival in Stockholm,' together with at least four operas--_Sveagaldrar_ (1897), _Das Glück_ (1902), _Ran_ (1903) and _Arnljot_ (1907). Finally there are the piano pieces, a rich and varied list ranging all the way from the simplest of 'parlor melodies' to large tone poems and concert works. Some of the piano pieces bear such titles as 'To the Roses,' 'Summer Song,' and 'Lawn Tennis.' Others are ambitiously named 'Northern Rhapsody' (with orchestra) and 'Swedish Summer.' With some of these works Petersen-Berger takes a place beside the ablest and most poetic modern writers for the pianoforte. Landscape, story and mood are here expressed, with a technique ranging from that of Schumann's 'Children's Pieces' all the way to the modern idiom of Ravel. If some of the pieces seem cheap and sentimental let it be remembered that they are replacing much less attractive things written by third rate men, and are helping to raise the taste of the 'ordinary music-lover' as Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words' did half a century before. His melody is truly lyric and his harmony truly impressionistic. His genius for the piano is proved by his ability to get full and colorful effects out of a style of writing which on paper looks thin. Though sentimentality abounds, the spirit is fundamentally vigorous and healthy and at times approaches something like tragic dignity. The 'Northern Rhapsody' is a wholly admirable treatment of folk-tunes on a large scale and with the idiom of pianistic virtuosity. The songs are often charming, though on the whole less satisfactory than the piano pieces. When he writes simply he shows almost flawless taste and artistic selection. When he aims at the mood of high tragedy, as in the songs from Nietzsche, he is sometimes unexpectedly successful. The Nietzsche songs, radical in technique, are moving and impressive. In his large works Petersen-Berger is not so successful. His _Sonnenfärd_ symphony is lyric, rather than orchestral. It is lacking in structural power, and in the broad spiritual sweep which such a large-scale work must have. But here again his charming melody almost saves the day. The opera _Arnljot_ can hardly be called a success; it is long and ambitious, but thinly written, undramatic, and not very pleasing.

In direct contrast to Petersen-Berger is Hugo Alfvén (born 1872), Sweden's most important contrapuntist. In him the national influence is reduced to a minimum, though it is sometimes to be noticed in a certain manner of forming themes and moulding cadences. Swedish color is, however, noticeable in certain works specifically national. The _Midsommarvaka_ is built upon Swedish tunes, organized and developed in the spirit of the classic composers. The whole spirit is intellectual and technical, but this has its agreeable side in the composer's ability to build up long sustained passages. The 'Upsala Rhapsody,' opus 24, is merely an excuse for the technical manipulation of a collection of rather cheap melodies. The symphonies are more able and even less interesting. The solidity and complexity of the polyphonic style excite admiration, but the themes are without distinction and the total effect is pedantic. In his songs, however, Alfvén gives us a surprise. His power of development here becomes something like poetic greatness, especially where the form is free enough to give the work a symphonic character. The voice part is unconventional, declamatory and impressive, and the accompaniment varied and impressive. Altogether, these songs are among the most admirable which modern Scandinavian has given us.

Among the other able composers of modern Sweden we should mention Tor Aulin (born 1866), who has consecrated his lyric and poetic talent chiefly to the violin; Erik Akerberg (born 1860), whose classical predilections have led him to choral and symphonic work; and Wilhelm Stenhammar (born 1871). The last is one of the ablest of modern Swedish composers, a man whose talents have by no means been adequately recognized, and a genius, perhaps, who is destined to out-strip his better-known contemporaries. The list of his works includes two operas, _Tirfing_ (1898) and 'The Feast at Solhaug' (the libretto from Ibsen's play); string quartets, sonatas and concertos for piano and violin; large choral works, songs, and ballads with orchestral accompaniment. The piano concerto, opus 23, ranks with Grieg's finest orchestral works. The themes, not always remarkable, are lifted into the extraordinary by Stenhammar's brilliant handling of them. The A minor quartet, opus 25, shows great beauty of simple material, and an intellectual and technical dominance which lift it quite above the usual Swedish chamber music. The sonata for violin and piano, opus 19, is a fine work, simple, fresh, original and charming. In much of the instrumental music the idiom is advanced, with the emphasis thrown on the voice leading rather than on the harmony; but it cannot easily be referred to a single school, for it is always personal and individually expressive. When we come to a work like _Midvinter_, opus 24, a tone poem for large orchestra, we are at the summit of modern Scandinavian romantic writing. This work is a masterpiece. The themes, says the composer in a note, were taken down by ear from the fiddler Hinns Andersen, except for one, a traditional Christmas hymn which is sung by a chorus obbligato. The counterpoint in this work is masterly, the animal vigor overwhelming. At no point is the composer found wanting in structural power or invention. On the whole, no modern Scandinavian composer, unless it be Sinding, approaches Stenhammar in the fusing of fresh poetry with strong intellectual and technical control. But not only has he written some of Scandinavia's finest chamber and symphonic music; he has written also at least one opera which stands out from among its contemporaries as genius stands out from imitation. This is 'The Feast at Solhaug,' opus 6, dated 1896, and performed at the Berlin Royal Opera House in 1905. This work is utterly lyrical and utterly national; it is doubtful if there is a more thoroughly Swedish work in the whole list of modern Scandinavian music. In the vulgar sense it is not dramatic; it has little concern for square-cornered emotions and startling confrontations. Its melody, which is astonishingly abundant, is always spontaneous and always expressive. The discreetly managed accompaniment is unfailingly resourceful in supplying color and emotional expression. We can say without hesitation that there has been no more beautiful dramatic work in the whole history of Scandinavian opera.

IV

Norway, as it seems, has always been a nation of great individuals. In her early history she was as isolated socially as she was geographically. Though nominally a part of the Swedish Empire, she always maintained a large measure of independence, and strengthened the barrier of high mountains with a more impassable barrier of neighborhood jealousy. Life was difficult among the mountains and fjords, and each man was obliged to depend upon his own courage and energy. Luxury was unknown. Even civilization was primitive. Hence, when Norway began to attain artistic expression in the nineteenth century she was as provincial as a little village in the middle west of America. But her life, while simple, was intense, and the narrowness of the spiritual environment fostered a broad culture of the soul. Norway became a nation of laborers, of poets, of thinkers, and of religious seers. The very friction that opposed the current made it give out more light.

Ibsen, the first supreme genius of Norway in the arts, wrote equally from Norway's traditional past and from Norway's circumscribed present. Out of the combination of the two he created 'Brand,' one of the noblest poetic tragedies of modern times. His later social dramas, as we know, altered the theatre of the whole world. Beside Ibsen was Björnson, only second to him in poetry and drama. And it was during Ibsen's early years that Norway began to attain self-expression in music. The first composer of national significance was Waldemar Thrane (1790-1828), composer of overtures, cantatas, and dances, and of the music to Bjerragaard's 'Adventure in the Mountains.' But the fame of Norway was first carried outside the peninsula by Ole Bull (1810-1880), the virtuoso violinist who, after touring through all the capitals of Europe, settled down in Pennsylvania as the founder of a Norwegian colony. His compositions for the violin had an influence out of all proportion to their inherent value. He was a romantic voice out of the north to thousands who had never thought of music except in terms of Mendelssohn and Händel. His Fantasies and Caprices for the violin were filled with national melodies and national color. He was an ardent patriot, and through his national theatre in Bergen, no less than through his music and playing, awakened his countrymen to artistic self-consciousness.

Of far wider power as a composer was Halfdan Kjerulf (1815-1863), a composer of songs which stand among the best in spontaneity and delicate charm. His charming piano pieces in the small forms were filled with romantic color. In his many songs, simple, yet varied and original, he showed a power of evoking emotional response that forces one to compare his talent with that of Schubert. With him we should mention E. Neupert (1842-1888), who carried the romanticism of Weber and Mendelssohn into Norway, in a long and varied list of chamber and orchestral music; M. A. Udbye (1820-1889), composer of Norway's first opera _Fredkulla_; and O. Winter-Hjelm (born 1837), who was a generous composer of songs, choral and orchestral pieces in the conservative romantic style of Germany. Johann D. Behrens (1820-1890) proved himself a valuable conductor and composer for Norway's unbelievably numerous male singing societies.

But the greatest composer of the older romantic period was Johan Svendsen (born 1840). He was solidly grounded in the methods and ideals of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gade and even Brahms, and remained always true to their vision. A specific national composer he was not, but with discreet coloring he treated national subjects in such works as the 'Norwegian Rhapsody,' the 'Northern Carnival,' the legend for orchestra _Zorahayde_, and the prelude to Björnson's _Sigurd Slembe_. In the classical forms he wrote two symphonies and a number of string quartets of marked value. As a colorist he must be highly ranked. But his color is not so much that of nationality as that of romanticism in the conventional sense. His virtues were the romantic virtues of sensuous beauty, discreet eloquence, and somewhat self-conscious emotion. But Norway found her true national propagandist in Richard Nordraak (1842-1866). This man, who died at the age of twenty-four, was a remarkably talented musician, and an unrestrained enthusiast for the integrity of his native land, both in politics and in art. It is said that his meeting with Grieg in Copenhagen in 1864, and their later friendly intercourse, determined the latter to the strenuously national aspirations which he later carried to such brilliant fruition. The funeral march which Grieg inscribed to him after his death is one of his deepest and most moving works. Nordraak's few compositions--incidental music to two of Björnson's plays, piano pieces and songs--show his effort after purely national coloring, but have otherwise no very high value.

The great apostle of Norwegian nationalism was of course Grieg. His place among the composers of whom we are now speaking was partly that of good angel and partly that of press agent. The other Scandinavian composers have basked to a great extent in the light which he shed, have taken their inspiration from him, and have learned invaluable lessons in the art of musical picture painting. He was by no means merely a nationalist. Besides acquainting the world with the beautiful peculiarities of Norwegian folk-song and with the fancied beauties of northern scenery, he showed composers in every part of the world how to use the melodic peculiarities of these songs to build up a strange and enchanting harmony, capable of calling forth mysterious pictures of the earth and sea and their superhuman inhabitants. Grieg was the first popular impressionist. He helped to shift the emphasis from the technical and emotional aspects of music to its specific pictorial and sensuous aspects. And he prepared the world at large for the idea of musical nationalism, which has become one of the two most striking facts of present-day music.

When we say that Grieg was the first popular impressionist we do not mean that he was more able or original than certain others who were working with the same tendencies at the same time. His popularity resulted to a great extent from the form and manner in which he worked. His piano music was admirably suited to making a popular appeal. It was often short and easy; it was nearly always melodious and clear. Its picturesque titles suggested a reason for its unusual turns of harmony and phrase. It was never so radical in its originality as to leave the mind bewildered. Hence Grieg became extremely popular among amateurs and casual music-lovers. His piano pieces became _Hausmusik_ as those of Mendelssohn had been a generation before. The 'impressionistic' effect was usually produced by simple means--a slight alteration of the familiar form of cadence, a gentle blurring of the major and minor modes, an extended use of secondary sevenths and other orthodox dissonances. These interested the musical amateur without repelling him, and, when listened to in association with the picturesque titles, suggested all sorts of delightful sensuous things, such as the mist on the mountains, the sunlight over the fjords, or the heavy green of the seaside pines. This musical style of Grieg's was expertly managed; it was unquestionably individual and was matured to a point where it showed no relapses to the style out of which it had developed. As an orchestral colorist Grieg was talented and original, but by no means revolutionary. He chose _timbres_ with a nice sense of their picturesque values, but in orchestration he is not a long step ahead of the Mendelssohn of the overtures.

[Illustration: Edvard Grieg at the Piano] _After a photograph from life_

Edvard Hagerup Grieg, the son of Alexander Grieg, was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1843. He was descended from Alexander Greig (the spelling of the name was changed later to accommodate the Norwegian pronunciation), a merchant of Aberdeen, who emigrated from Scotland to Norway soon after the battle of Culloden, in 1746. His father and his grandfather before him served as British consul at Bergen. His mother was a daughter of Edvard Hagerup, for many years the mayor of Bergen, the second city of Norway. It was from her that Grieg inherited both his predisposition for music and his intensely patriotic nature. She was a loyal daughter of Norway and was possessed of no small musical talent, which her family was glad to cultivate, sending her to Hamburg in her girlhood for lessons in singing and pianoforte playing. These she supplemented later by further musical studies in London, and she acquired sufficient skill to enable her to appear acceptably as a soloist at orchestral concerts in Bergen. It was a home surcharged with a musical atmosphere into which Edvard Grieg was born; and his mother must have dreamed of making him a musician, for she began to give him pianoforte lessons when he was only six years old.

Though he disliked school (he appears to have been a typical youngster in his predilection for truancy), the boy made commendable progress in his music and even tried his hand at little compositions of his own; but before his fifteenth year there was no serious thought of a musical career for him. In that year Ole Bull, the celebrated violinist, visited his father's house, and, having heard the lad play some of his youthful pieces, prevailed upon his parents to send him to Leipzig that he might become a professional musician. It was all arranged very quickly one summer afternoon; the fond parents needed little coaxing, and to the boy 'it seemed the most natural thing in the world.' Matriculated at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858, young Grieg at first made slow progress. He studied harmony and counterpoint under Hauptmann and Richter, composition under Rietz and Reinecke, and pianoforte playing under Wenzel and Moscheles. At the conservatory at that time were five English students, among them Arthur Sullivan, J. F. Barnett, and Edward Dannreuther, who subsequently became leaders in the musical life of London; and their unstinting toil and patience in drudgery inspired the young Norwegian to greater concentration of effort than his frail physique could stand. Under the strain he broke down completely. An attack of pleurisy destroyed his left lung and thus his health was permanently impaired. He was taken home to Norway, where it was necessary for him to remain the greater part of a year to recuperate. But as soon as he was able he returned to Leipzig; he was graduated with honors in 1862.

At Leipzig Grieg came strongly under the sway of Mendelssohn and Schumann. He did not escape from that influence when he went to Copenhagen in 1863 to study composition informally with Niels Gade. While Grieg always held Gade in high esteem, the two musicians really had little in common, and the slight influence of the Dane was speedily superseded by that of Nordraak, with whom Grieg now came in contact. Nordraak was ambitious to produce a genuinely national Norwegian music, and, brief as their friendship was, it served to set Grieg, whose talents lay in the same direction, on the right path. Now fairly launched upon the career of a piano virtuoso and composer, he became a 'determined adversary of the effeminate Scandinavianism which was a mixture of Gade and Mendelssohn,' and with enthusiasm entered upon the work of developing independently in artistic forms the musical idioms of his people. In 1867 Grieg was married to Nina Hagerup, his cousin, who had inspired and who continued to inspire many of his best songs, and whose singing of them helped to spread her husband's fame in many European cities. In 1867 also he founded in Christiania a musical union of the followers of the new Norse school, which he continued to conduct for thirteen years.

Besides the giving of concerts in the chief Scandinavian and German cities and making an artistic pilgrimage to Italy Grieg at this period was increasingly industrious in composition. He was remarkably active for a semi-invalid. He had found himself; and he continued to develop his creative powers in the production of music that was not only nationally idiomatic, but thoroughly suffused with the real spirit of his land and his people. In 1868 Liszt happened upon his first violin sonata (opus 8) and forthwith sent him a cordial letter of commendation and encouragement, inviting him to Weimar. This letter was instrumental in inducing the Norwegian government to grant him a sum of money that enabled him to go again to Rome in 1870. There he met Liszt and the two musicians at once became firm friends. At their second meeting Liszt played from the manuscript Grieg's piano concerto (opus 16), and when he had finished said: 'Keep steadily on; I tell you you have the capability, and--do not let them intimidate you!' The big, great-hearted Liszt feared that the frail little man from the far north might be in danger of intimidation; but his spirit was brave enough at all times--though he wrote to his parents: 'This final admonition was of tremendous importance to me; there was something in it that seemed to give it an air of sanctification.' Thenceforward the recognition of his genius steadily increased. In 1872 he was appointed a member of the Swedish Academy of Music; in 1883 a corresponding member of the Musical Academy at Leyden; in 1890 of the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 1893 the University of Cambridge conferred on him the doctorate in music, at the same time that it honored by the bestowal of this degree Tschaikowsky, Saint-Saëns, Boito, and Max Bruch. Except when on concert tours his later years were spent chiefly at his beautiful country home, the villa Troldhaugen near Bergen, and there he died on September 4, 1907, after an almost constant fight with death for more than forty-five years.

Hans von Bülow called Grieg the Chopin of the North, and the convenience of the sobriquet helped to give it a wider popular acceptance than it deserved, for in truth the basis for such a comparison is rather slight. Undoubtedly Chopin's bold new harmony was one of the sub-conscious forces that helped to shape Grieg's musical genius. His mother had appreciated and delighted in Chopin's music at a time when it was little understood and much underrated; and from childhood Chopin was Grieg's best-loved composer. In his student days he was deeply moved by the 'intense minor mood of the Slavic folk-music in Chopin's harmonies and the sadness over the unhappy fate of his native land in his melodies.' It is certain that there is a certain kinship in the musical styles of the two men, in their refinement, in the kind and even the degree of originality with which each has enriched his art, in many of their aims and methods. While Grieg never attained to the heights of Chopin in his pianoforte music, he surpassed his Polish predecessor in the ability to handle other instruments as well as in his songs, of which he published no fewer than one hundred and twenty-five.

These songs we hold to constitute Grieg's loftiest achievement; and in all his music he is first of all the singer--amazingly fertile in easily comprehensible and alluring melodies. He patterned these original melodies after the folk-songs of that Northland he loved so ardently, just as he often employed the rhythms of its folk-dances; and by these means he imparted to his work a fascinating touch of strangeness and succeeded in evoking as if by magic the moods of the land and the people from which he sprang. On the wings of his music we are carried to the land of the fjords; we breathe its inspiriting air, and our blood dances and sings with its lusty yet often melancholy sons and daughters. Much as there is of Norway in his compositions, there is still more of Grieg. His melodies are his own and more enchanting than the folk-songs which provided their patterns; and as a harmonist he is both bold and skillful.

Grieg's place, as may be gathered from what has already been said, is in the small group of the world's greatest lyricists. He wrote no operas and he composed no great symphonies. His physical infirmity militated against the sustained effort necessary for the creation of works in these kinds; but it is also plain from the work he did when at his best that his inclination and his powers led him into other fields. He possessed the dramatic qualities and ability only slightly, the epic still less, though it cannot be denied that in moments of rare exaltation he was 'a poet of the tragic, of the largely passionate and elemental.' His nearest approach to symphonic breadth is to be found in his pianoforte concerto, which Dr. Niemann pronounces the most beautiful work of its kind since Schumann, his sonatas for violin and pianoforte, his string quartet and his 'Peer Gynt' music. Yet these beautiful and stirring compositions are, after all, only lyrics of a larger growth. Grieg himself knew well his powers and his limitations, and he was as modest as he was candid when he wrote: 'Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last dramas, to build dwellings for men in which they might feel at home and happy. In other words, I have recorded the folk-music of my land. In style and form I have remained a German romanticist of the Schumann school; but at the same time I have dipped from the rich treasures of native folk-song and sought to create a national art out of this hitherto unexploited expression of the folk-soul of Norway.' The spirit of the man recalls the pretty little quatrain of Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

'I would be the lyric, Ever on the lip, Rather than the epic Memory lets slip.'

And this is not to disparage pure and simple song. It is enough for Edvard Grieg's lasting fame that he did have in rare abundance the pure lyric quality--that close and delicate touch upon the heart strings which makes them vibrate in sympathy with all the little importances and importunities of individual human life.

V

The one Norwegian composer, besides Grieg, who has attained an international position, is Christian Sinding (born 1856). He is consciously and genuinely national, but in almost every other way is a complement and contrast to the other northern master. Where Grieg is best in the idyllic, Sinding is best in the heroic. Sinding is apt to be trivial where Grieg is at his best--namely, in the smaller forms. On the other hand, Sinding is noble and inspiring in works too long for Grieg to sustain. In Sinding the Wagnerian influence is marked and inescapable. He, like Grieg, is most at home when working with native material--the sharp rhythms, short periods and angular line of the Norwegian folk-song--but he develops it objectively where Grieg developed it intensively. Sinding need not work from the pictorial; Grieg was obliged to. Sinding's speech is much more cosmopolitan, his harmony less pronounced, his form more conventional. At times he attains a high level of emotional expression. On the other hand, he has written much, and his reputation has suffered thereby. Frequently he is uninspired. But the sustained magnificence of his orchestral and chamber music has done much to offset the prevailing idea that the northern composers could work only in the parlor or _genre_ style. He sounds the epic and heroic note too often and with too much inspiration to permit us to question the greatness of his art.

He has worked in most of the established forms. His D minor symphony, opus 21, is one of the noblest in all Scandinavian music. His symphonic poem, 'Perpetual Motion,' with its inexhaustible energy and its glittering orchestral color, takes a high rank in modern orchestral music. His chamber music--quartets, quintets, trios, violin sonatas, etc.--is distinguished by melodic inspiration, vigorous counterpoint, and sustained structural power. His piano concerto and two violin concertos, and his grandiose E-flat minor variations for two pianos, have taken a firm place in concert programmes. As a piano composer in the smaller forms he is of course less personal, less distinguished, than Grieg. But every piano student knows his _Frühlingsrauschen_ and _Marche Grotesque_. As a song composer he may justly be ranked second to Grieg in all the Scandinavian lands. His power and sincerity in the shorter strophic song is astonishing; his strophes have the cogency and finish of the Swedish folk-song combined with the intensity and sincerity of the Norwegian. In his longer songs he is noble and dramatic; he is a master of poignant emotional expression and of sustained and mounting energy. Two of his familiar songs--'The Mother' and 'A Bird Cried'--are masterpieces of the first rank. Sinding's harmony is vigorous. An 'impressionist' in the modern sense of the term he is not. He loves the use of marked dissonance for specific effect; his harmonic style is broad, solidly based, square-cornered. It is regrettable, perhaps, that he did not work more in opera; his only dramatic work, 'The Holy Mountain,' was performed in Germany early in 1914. But this fact doubtless furnishes us the reason, for Norway does not offer a career for an opera composer, who must depend for his success on great wealth and large cities. As it is, Sinding has made a high, perhaps a permanent, place for himself in chamber and orchestral music.

Johan Selmer (born 1844) has taken a place as the most radical of the 'new romanticists' in Norway. His work is extensive and varied, and is most impressive in the larger forms. He has written a series of symphonic poems, several large choral works, many part songs and ballads, and the usual quota of _Lieder_. His chief influences were Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. He can hardly be called a nationalist in music, for his work shows little northern feeling except where he makes use of specific Norwegian tunes; indeed he seems equally willing to get his local color from Turkey or Italy. His work is thoroughly disappointing; modelling himself on the giants, he has been obliged to make himself a gigantic mask of paper. Neither his melodic inspiration, his structural power, nor his technical learning was equal to the task he set himself. His chief orchestral work, 'Prometheus,' opus 50, is ridiculously inadequate to its grandiose subject. His _Finnländischer Festklang_ is the most ordinary sort of rhapsody on borrowed material. Of his other works we need only say that they reveal abundantly the effect of large ambitions on a little man. Along with Selmer we may mention three opera composers of Norway, none sufficiently distinguished to carry his name beyond the national border: Johannes Haarklou (born 1847), Cath. Elling (born 1858) and Ole Olsen (born 1850). The last, though yet 'unproduced' as a dramatic composer, deserves to be better known than he is. His symphonic and piano music is pleasing without being distinguished; but the operas _Lajla_ and _Hans Unversagt_ are charmingly colorful and melodic, revealing musical scholarship and fine emotional expression. Finally we may mention Johann Halvorsen (born 1864), a follower of Grieg and an able composer for violin and male chorus.

One of the most promising of the younger Norwegians was Sigurd Lie (1871-1904), whose early death cut off a career which bade fair to be internationally distinguished. Surely he would have been one of the most national of Norwegian composers. His list of works, brief because of ill health, includes a symphony in A minor, a symphonic march, an oriental suite for orchestra, a piano quintet, a goodly list of short piano pieces, and many songs and choral works. He used the Norwegian folk-song intensively, combining its spirit with that of the old ecclesiastical tone. He was a true poet of music; his moods were usually mystic, gray and religious, and his effects, even in simple piano pieces, were obtained with astonishing sureness. His harmony, though not radical, was personal and highly expressive. His songs, much sung in his native land, reveal a genius for precise and poignant expression.

One of the most popular of Norway's living composers for the piano is Halfdan Cleve (born 1879), writer of numerous works of which those in the large forms are most important. Cleve is cosmopolitan, enamored of large effects, and of dazzling virtuosity. His technique is varied and exceedingly sure, but he lacks the appealing loveliness which has brought reputation to the works of so many of his countrymen. More popular is Agathe Backer-Gröndahl (born 1847), industrious writer of piano pieces in the smaller forms. Outwardly a classicist, she has drunk of the lore of Grieg and has achieved charming and able works, distinguished by delicate feeling and care for detail. Her children's songs are altogether delightful. But when she attempts longer works her inspiration is apt to fail her.

Perhaps the most original and personal composer after Grieg and Sinding is Gerhard Schjelderup (born 1859), a tone poet of much technical ability and genuine national feeling. His songs and ballads are very fine, striking the heroic note with sincerity and conviction. In his simple songs and piano pieces, Schjelderup's innate feeling for the folk-tone makes him utterly successful. In his operas, 'Norwegian Wedding,' 'Beyond Sun and Moon,' 'A People in Distress,' and his incidental music, he lacks the dramatic and structural power for long sustained passages; but his genius for expressive simplicity has filled these works with beauties. Schjelderup's symphonies and chamber music have made a place for themselves in European concert halls equally by their freshness of feeling and by their excellence of technique.

VI

Finland's music, centred in its capital Helsingfors, was from the first under German domination. The national spirit, as we have seen, grew up under the inspiration of the _Kalevala_, then newly made known to literature. The first national composer of note was Frederick Pacius (1809-1891), born in Hamburg, but regarded as the founder of the national Finnish school. He was under the Mendelssohnian domination, but gave no little national color to his music and helped to centre the growing national consciousness. Besides symphonies, a violin concerto and male choruses, he wrote an opera 'King Karl's Hunt,' and several _Singspiele_ which contained national flavor without any specific national material. To Pacius Finland owes her official national anthem. Other Finnish composers of note were Karl Collan (1828-1871), F. von Schantz (1835-1865) and C. G. Wasenus. The Wagnerian influence first penetrated the land of lakes in the works of Martin Wegelius (1846-1906), able composer of operas, piano and orchestral music, and choral works. But the first specific national tendency in Finnish music is due to Robert Kajanus (born 1856), who achieved the freshness and primitive force of the national folk-song in works of Wagnerian power and scope. Besides his piano and lyric pieces we possess several symphonic poems of his--including _Aino_ and _Kullervo_--all markedly national in feeling.

Among the modern Finnish composers of second rank Armas Järnefelt (born 1869) is distinguished. In orchestral suites, symphonic poems (for example, the _Heimatklang_), overtures, choral works, piano pieces, and songs, he has shown spontaneity and technical learning. Poetic feeling and sensitive coloring are marked in his work. Much the same can be said of Erik Melartin (born 1875), except that his genius is more specifically lyric. His songs reflect the energy and freshness of a race just coming to consciousness. His smaller piano pieces show somewhat the salon influence of Sweden, but in all we feel that the artist is speaking. Ernst Mielck (1877-1899) had made a place for himself with his symphony and other orchestral works when death cut short his career. Oscar Merikanto (born 1868) has written, besides one opera, many songs and piano pieces, most of them conventional and undistinguished, and Selim Palmgren (born 1878) has already attained a wide reputation.

In Sibelius we meet one of the most powerful composers in modern music. Masterpiece after masterpiece has come from his pen, and the works which fall short of distinction are few indeed. He is at once the most national and the most personal composer in the whole history of Scandinavian music. His style is like no one else's; his themes, his mode of development, his harmonic 'atmosphere,' and his orchestral coloring are quite his own. But his materials are, with hardly an exception, drawn from the literature and folk-lore of the Finnish nation; his melodies, when not closely allied to the folk-melodies of his land, are so true to their spirit that they evoke instant response in his countrymen's hearts; and the moods and emotions which he expresses are those that are rooted deepest in the Finnish character. This powerful national tradition and feeling of which he is the spokesman he has vitalized with a creative energy which is equalled only by the few greatest composers of the world to-day. He has touched no department of music which he has not enriched with powerful and original works. As an innovator, pure and simple, he seems likely to prove one of the most productive forces in modern music. No deeper, more moving voice has ever come out of the north; only in modern Russia can anything so distinctly national and so supremely beautiful be found.

Jean Sibelius was born in Finland in 1865 and at first studied for the law. Shifting to music, he entered the conservatory at Helsingfors and worked under Wegelius. Later he studied in Berlin and thereafter went to Vienna. Here, under Goldmark, he developed his taste for powerful instrumental color, and under Robert Fuchs his concern for finely wrought detail. But even in his early works there was little of the German influence to be traced beyond thorough workmanship. With his symphonic poem, _En Saga_, opus 9, he became recognized as a national composer. The Finns, longing for self-expression, looked to him eagerly. They had, as Dr. Niemann[11] has put it, been made silent heroes by their struggles with forest, plain, cataract and sea, and by the bitter recent political conflict with Russia. And, as always happens in such cases, they sought to give expression to their suppressed national ideals in art. Sibelius's symphonic poem, _Finlandia_, is a thinly veiled revolutionary document and his great male chorus, 'The Song of the Athenians' (words by the Finnish poet Rydberg), gave verbal expression to the thoughts of the patriots of the nation. The former piece has explicitly been banned in Finland by Russian edict because of its inflammatory influence on the people. But all this has not made Sibelius a political figure such as Wagner became in 1848. He has worked industriously and copiously at his music, watching it go round the civilized world, keeping himself aloof the while from outward turmoil, though his personal sympathies are known to be strongly nationalistic.

It was the symphonic poems which first made Sibelius a world-figure. These include a tetralogy, _Lemminkäinen_, consisting of 'Lemminkäinen and the Village Maidens,' 'The River of Tuonela,' 'The Swan of Tuonela,' and 'Lemminkäinen's Home-faring'; _Finlandia_, _En Saga_, 'Spring Song,' and the more recent 'Spirits of the Ocean' and 'Pohjola's Daughter.' The _Lemminkäinen_ series is based on the Kalevala tale, which narrates the adventures of the hero Lemminkäinen, his departure to the river of death (Tuonela), his death there, and the magic by which his mother charmed his dismembered limbs to come together and the man to come to life. Of the four separate works which make up the series 'The Swan of Tuonela' is the most popular. It was in this that Sibelius's original mastery of orchestral tone was first made known to foreign audiences. With its enchanting theme sung by the English horn it weaves a long, slow spell of the utmost beauty. _Finlandia_ tells of the struggles of a submerged nation; the early parts of the work are filled with passionate excitement and military bustle; then there emerges the motive of all this struggle--a majestic chorale melody, scored with the strings in all their resonance, a song at once of battle and of devotion, a melody for whose equal we must go to Beethoven and Wagner. _En Saga_, the earliest of the great nationalistic works, is without a definite program, but is dramatic in the highest degree. It is a masterpiece of free form, with its long, swelling climaxes and passionate adagios, surrounded by a haze of shimmering tone-color, as though the bard were singing his story among the fogs of the northern cliffs. The national character of these works is quite as marked in their themes as in their subject-matter. Sibelius is fond of the strange rhythms of the old times--3/4, 7/4, 2/2, or 3/2 time. His accent is almost crudely exaggerated. His original themes are so true to the national character that they seem made of one piece with the folk-tunes. The mood of these works is rarely gay; the animation is primitive and savage. The prevailing spirit is one of loneliness and gloom. In the symphonic poems, which grow increasingly free in harmony, we see in all its glory the orchestral scoring which is one of Sibelius's chief claims to fame. It is no mere virtuoso brilliancy, as is often the case with Rimsky-Korsakoff. It is always an accentuation of the character of the music with the character of the tone of the instrument chosen. It is color from a heavy palette, chosen chiefly from the deeper shades, showing its contrast in modulation of tones rather than high lights, yet kept always free of the turgid and muddy.

The same qualities are shown in the four symphonies. Of these the last is a thing of revolutionary import--a daring work whose full meaning to the future of music has not begun to be appreciated. The other three are perhaps less symphonies than symphonic rhapsodies. They seem to imply a program, being filled with episodes, dramatic, epic, and lyrical, interspersed with recitative and legend-like passages. But, however free the form, the architecture is cogent. In his development work Sibelius is always masterly. Some of the passages, like the main theme of the first movement of the first symphony, or the slow movement from the same, are amazing in their imaginative power and beauty. The fourth symphony is a work apart. In the first and second movements the harmony is quite as radical as anything in modern German or French music. It is, in fact, hardly harmony at all, but the free interplay of monophonic voices.

[Illustration: Jean Sibelius] _After a photo from life (1913)_

From this method, which at the present moment is almost Sibelius's private property, the composer extracts a quality of poetry which is impressive in its suggestions of great things beyond.

Some of Sibelius's best music has been written to accompany dramatic performances. That for Adolph Paul's play, 'King Christian II,' has been widely played as an orchestral suite. The introduction is especially fine. The warm and sweetly melancholy nocturne, the 'Elegy' for strings, and the profoundly moving Dance of Death are all movements of rare beauty. The lovely _Valse Triste_, a mimic drama in itself, written for Järnefelt's play, _Kuolema_, has carried his reputation far and wide, as the C sharp minor prelude carried Rachmaninoff's, or the 'Melody in F' Rubinstein's. There are, further, two orchestral suites from the accompanying music to Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas and Mélisande,' and Procopé's 'Belshazzar's Feast.' For orchestra we may further mention the _Karelia_ Overture, the _Scènes historiques_, the Dance-Intermezzo, 'Pan and Echo,' the melancholy waltzes to accompany Strindberg's 'Snowwhite,' the two canzonettas for small orchestras, the Romance in C major for string orchestra, the short symphonic poem, 'The Dryads,' and the Funeral march.

The violin concerto, one of the most difficult of the kind in existence, has already gained its place among the standard concert pieces for the instrument. It shows deep feeling and national color, especially in the rhythmically vigorous finale. The string quartet, _Voces Intimæ_, opus 56, is a masterly work in a reserved style. The first three movements are said to have as a sort of program certain chapters from Swedenborg. The piano music is generally on a lower plane. To a great extent it recalls Schumann and Tschaikowsky; in such works as the _Characterstücke_, opera 5, 24, 41, and 58, in the sonatina, opus 67, and in the rondinos, opus 68, we find little that can be called original. But we must remember that in these pieces Sibelius was writing music to appeal to the people, and has succeeded to a remarkable degree in raising the general standard of taste in his native land. For his most personal piano work we must look to his transcriptions of Finnish tunes, especially 'The Fratricide' and 'Evening Comes.'

In his songs for solo voice Sibelius has achieved remarkable things. The remarkable 'Autumn Evening' is a sort of free recitative, always verging on melody, accompanied by suggestive descriptive figures in the piano part. Here we see in germ one of his most important contributions to modern music--an emphasis on expressive monody. The ballad, _Des Fahrmanns Braut_, which has been arranged for orchestral accompaniment, is weaker musically, but shows the same genius for expressive melodic recitative. And not the least important and characteristic part of Sibelius's work has been in the form of male choruses. Of these we may mention 'The Origin of Fire' and 'The Imprisoned Queen,' both with orchestral accompaniment, and, above all, the magnificent 'Song of the Athenians,' which has come to have a national significance among the Finns. As we look over this remarkable list of works, from the great symphonic forms down to brief songs, and note the quantity of germinal originality they contain, their high poetry, their universal beauty and intense national expression, we must adjudge Sibelius to be a master with a creative vitality which cannot be matched by more than half a dozen composers writing to-day.

H. K. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] See Chapter IV .

[11] Walter Niemann: _Die Musik Skandinaviens_.

##