It may be remarked that Edvard Grieg has not only given Norway a conspicuous place on the map of musical Europe, but that he has influenced unmistakably composers of the rank of Tschaikowsky, the Russian; Paderewski, the Pole; Eugene d'Albert, the Scotch-English-German; Richard Strauss, the German; and our own lamented Edward McDowell, the American. "From every point of view that interests the music lover," says Mr. Finck, "Grieg is one of the most original geniuses in the musical world of the present or past. His songs are a mine of melody, surpassed in wealth only by Schubert's, and that only because there are more of Schubert's. In originality of harmony and modulation he has only six equals: Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt. In rythmic invention and combination he is inexhaustible, and as orchestrator he ranks among the most fascinating. To speak of such a man--seven-eighths of whose works are still music of the future--as a writer of 'dialect,' is surely the acme of unintelligence. If Grieg did stick to the fjord and never got out of it, even his German critics ought to thank heaven for it. Grieg in a fjord is much more picturesque and more interesting to the world than he would have been in the Elbe or the Spree." While Norway has neither permanent opera nor permanent orchestras, she has produced concert virtuosi of a high order. Ole Bull, the so-called violin-king, already referred to, was unsurpassed in his day. Among piano artists may be named the talented composer, Mrs. Agatha Backer-Gröndahl, Thomas Thellefsen, Edmund Neupert, Martin Knutzen, and the great composer Edvard Grieg. The flutist Olaf Svenssen and the vocal artists Thorvald Lammers, Ingeborg Oselio-Björnson, and Ellen Gulbranson, have also brought distinction to their country.