From Grieg to Brahms: Studies of Some Modern Composers and Their ArtMason, Daniel Gregory
History
From Grieg to Brahms: Studies of Some Modern Composers and Their Art
Mason, Daniel Gregory
Composers -- Biography; Music -- 19th century -- History and criticism
When all is said, however, Grieg has in these early works made a
contribution to music which our sense of his later shortcomings must
not make us forget. His Piano Sonata and his Violin Sonatas supply
chamber-music with a note of pure lyric enthusiasm, of fresh unthinking
animation, not elsewhere to be found. His Peer Gynt Suite fills a
similar place among orchestral works. His best piano pieces, and,
above all, his lovely and too little known songs, are unique in their
delicate voicing of the tenderest, most elusive personal feeling, as
well as in their consummate finesse of workmanship. It is a Lilliputian
world, if you will, but a fair one. That art of the future which Grieg
predicts in his essay on Mozart, which «will unite lines and colors in
marriage, and show that it has its roots in all the past, that it draws
sustenance from old as well as from new masters,» will acknowledge in
Grieg himself the source of one indispensable element--the element of
naïve and spontaneous romance.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--Grieg has had the good sense to publish almost
all of his works in the inexpensive and excellent Peters Edition.
The amateur will wish to acquaint himself first of all with some
such representative pieces as the following: Piano-pieces--Poetic
tone-pictures, op. 3, Humoreskes, op. 6, Sonata, op. 7, Northern
Dances, op. 17, Albumblatter, op. 28, and the Lyric Pieces, op. 12,
38, 43, and 47 (op. 54, 57, 62, 65, and 68 are inferior). Four hand
arrangements--Elegiac Melodies, op. 34, Norwegian Dances, op. 35, and
the first Peer Gynt Suite, op. 40. Chamber-music--the three Sonatas
for Violin and Piano and the 'Cello Sonata, op. 36. Of the songs,
sixty are printed in the five «Albums» of the Peters Edition. The
second contains half a dozen of Grieg's most perfect songs, among them
«I Love Thee,» «Morning Dew,» «Parting» and «Wood Wanderings.» «To
Springtime» in Album I, «A Swan» and «Solvejg's Song» in Album III,
and «By the Riverside,» «The Old Mother,» and «On the Way Home» in
Album IV, are also characteristic and beautiful. The reader who feels
Grieg's charm at all will end by buying all five Albums, though there
is little of value in the last.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Thus «4/4 time» is a compound of twos, «6/8 time» is a compound of
threes, and the interesting 5/4 measure, so effective in the second
movement of Tschaïkowsky's Pathetic Symphony, is a compound of twos and
threes regularly alternating.
[B] «Diary of My Tour in 1888,» translated in «Tschaïkowsky, His Life
and Works,» by Rosa Newmarch. (John Lane, New York, 1900.)
[C] «Edvard Grieg et la Musique Scandinave,» Ernest Closson. Paris,
Librairie Fischbacher, 1892.
III
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
[Illustration: ANTONIN DVOŘÁK]
III
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account