The classical music community in Norway owes a great debt to composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). Although Norway achieved its independence only two years before his death, Grieg’s compositions and concert activities ensured that the fledgling country enjoyed great renown within the international music community. The fact that Norway gained its independence as late as 1905 has had a significant influence on Norwegian music history. Five hundred years of less exposure to the main currents of European aristocratic and bourgeois cultural traditions means that Norway has little to offer by way of Renaissance and Baroque music. But Grieg did have some influential predecessors. Halfdan Kjerulf (1815-1868) established a fine reputation as a composer of piano works, lieder and choral music in the mid-1800s. The great Norwegian violin virtuoso Ole Bull (1810-1880) had a brilliant career in Europe and the USA also in the mid-1800s. These two figures paved the way for the development of today’s classical music community in Norway. Grieg and Bull are key figures at the Bergen International Festival, with special venues such as the Edvard Grieg Museum and Ole Bull’s home, Lysøen devoted to their lives and works.
Today’s Norwegian classical music community also features a number of flagships, including the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, cellist Truls Mørk and soprano Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz.
The period between Grieg’s and Bull’s days of glory and the current wave of top artists also featured a few soloists of international calibre, such as soprano Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962). Norway owes its present crop of internationally acclaimed soloists, ensembles and orchestras to the investment in the Norwegian music community initiated in the 1970s. First, public music education was established, then a number of festivals were organized and concert halls were built in all the country’s largest cities. The next major project planned within this sector is the construction of the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo.
Norwegian composers have kept Edvard Grieg’s heritage alive throughout the years. His greatest heir, without a doubt, was Christian Sinding (1856-1941), whose idiom was clearly influenced by Romanticism. Even as the continental trend towards atonality began to exert an influence on Norwegian music, a solid core of composers continues to use Grieg’s tonal and nationalistic elements as building blocks in their compositions. These include David Monrad Johansen (1888-1974), Ludvig Irgens Jensen (1894-1969), Harald Sæverud (1897-1992), Klaus Egge (1906-1979), Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981), Øistein Sommerfeldt (1919-1994) and Johan Kvandal (1919-1999). The contemporary composer who is most closely associated with this trend is Ragnar Söderlind (born 1945).
By the The Music Information Centre Norway