If the dwellers of the deep fjords, the somber fir-clad mountain valleys, and the bleak ice-fields do not "open their lips so readily for song" as the people of southern lands where the sun creates an eternal spring, it is not because they are without lyric power, as is clearly apparent from the rich and varied folk-songs and the splendid creative work of Edvard Grieg.

The Norwegian folk-songs, spring dances, hallings, and wedding marches, have been well characterized as the outpourings of the inner lives of the common people, the expression of their dauntless energy, their struggles and aspirations. The folk-song of Norway, more than in any other land, embodies the character and expresses the tendencies of Viking life, ancient and modern. It bears the unmistakable marks of weal and woe of Norse life, the strongly marked and regularly introduced rythms of the developed and developing national character. And while an undercurrent of melancholy runs through most of it, it is, after all, the faithful interpreter of the lives of isolated and solitary occupants of fjords, fjelds, and dalen.

The folk-songs of Norway are singularly typical of the country and its inhabitants. Some "seem to take us into the dense forest among mocking echoes from, the life outside; others show us the trolls tobogganing down the highest peaks of Norway; in some we feel human souls hovering over reefs; in others, memories of the old sun-lit land flit before us; but in none do we meet with sentimentalism, despondency, or disconsolateness." But with their weird and minor strains, and their odd jumps from low tones to high, on first acquaintance they strike the hearer as strange and elusive.

Some of the epic songs, as Telemarken, are of great antiquity. But it was not until the last century that Norse tone artists discovered the wealth that had long been cherished by the peasants of the fjords and mountain valleys. Lindeman (1812-1887) was the first to recognize the musical significance of Norwegian folk-songs. He collected many hundred national ballads, hymns and dances, and called attention to their richness and variety as thematic material for a school of national music. In Lindeman's collection will be found songs which tell of the heroic exploits of old Norse vikings, kings, and earls of the heathen days of Thor and Odin, together with lyrics, deep and ardent, which sing of the loves, the joys, and the sorrows of the humbler Christian folks.

The Hardanger violin, the lur and the langeleik have played a leading role in the development of Norwegian folk-songs and dances. The Hardanger instrument is more arched than the ordinary violin; there are four strings over the finger-board and four underneath, the latter of fine steel wire, acting as sympathetic strings. The men of the Hardanger fjord have long been distinguished for the workmanship and tonal qualities of their violins, and with them the peasants have improvised the rich and varied impressions of nature which we find embodied in folk-songs. The lur is a long wooden instrument, of the trumpet order, and is usually made of birch bark. It is much used in the mountains. The langeleik, or Norwegian harp, is a long, narrow, box-like stringed instrument, something of the character of the ancient zither. It has seven strings and sound holes, but its tone is weak and monotonous.

The national dances of Norway have bold rythms which at once arrest the attention. Perhaps the most characteristic is the hailing, a solo dance in two-four time. It is usually danced by young men in country barns, and its most striking feature is the kicking of the beam of the ceiling. In the story of Nils the fiddler, in his novel Arne, BjÖrnson has given this account of the hailing: "The music struck up, a deep silence followed, and he began. He dashed forward along the floor, his body inclining to one side, half aslant, keeping time to the fiddle. Crouching down, he balanced himself, now on one foot, now on the other, flung his legs crosswise under him, sprang up again, and then moved on aslant as before. The fiddle was handled by skilful fingers, and more and more fire was thrown into the tune. Nils threw his head back and suddenly his boot heel touched the beam."

The spring dance is less vigorous, but more graceful than the hailing. It is a round dance in three-quarter time, in which two persons, or groups of two, participate. It is danced with a light, springing step, and has been compared with the mazurka by Liszt. Like the hailing, however, it is markedly individual in its pleasing combinations of tones. Forestier says of the spring dance of Norway: "There is a freshness, a sparkle, and energy, a graceful life about it that is invigorating."

If Lindeman was the first to collect folk-songs and dances in Norway, Ole Bull (1810-1880) was the first to popularize them. He was, as Grieg once declared, a pathbreaker for the young national music. At the early age of nineteen he sallied forth with his fiddle and wherever he appeared in Europe and America he played the folk-music and national dances of Norway. The favor which he found encouraged his countrymen. His brilliant career glorified musical Norway; gave it confidence to assert itself, and serve as the inspiration of a long list of creative tone artists—Kjerulf, Nordraak, Grieg, Svendsen, Winter-Hjelm, Sindling, and Behrens—to write out and arrange for voice and modern instruments the music that had so long been preserved in the memories of the people.

The best art-made music of Norway has been built upon the folk-songs and dances of the common people. Halfdan Kjerulf (1815-1868) was the first serious composer of the new art school. He lived during the trying period of Norwegian storm and stress, but he wrote something like a hundred compositions, and in his songs is found "the bud of national feeling which has burst into full bloom in Grieg."

Richard Nordraak (1842-1866), during his brief career, set to music several of BjÖrnson's plays, and composed some strong pianoforte pieces and songs. "He was," says Siewers, "a man with a bold fresh way of looking at things, strong artistic interests, an untiring love of work, and deep national feeling. He had decided influence upon his friend Grieg's artistic views, and he is the connecting link between Kjerulf and Grieg in the chain of Norwegian musical art."

Otto Winter-Hjelm, who, with Grieg, attempted to establish a conservatory of music at Christiania after their return from Germany in the sixties, contributed much to the national art of Norway by his excellent arrangements of hallings and spring dances for piano and violin. Thomas Thellefsen (1823-1874), a pupil and friend of Chopin, was distinguished as a national composer as well as a pianist, and Carl F.E. Neupert (1842-1888), who lived in America six years, did much by his concert tours and teaching to dignify Norse music.

Johan Severin Svendsen, while a Norwegian by birth and training, has expatriated himself by his long residence in Denmark. So far as his compositions have national flavor they are German. Johan Selmer, while a prolific composer, will probably be best remembered as a conductor. Christian Sinding, after Grieg, is the best-known Norwegian composer. His productions range from symphonies and symphonic poems through chamber music to romances. He is credited with a wide range of musical ideas, deep artistic earnestness, and bold power of expression; but his compositions in the larger forms are thought unduly noisy and restless.

Two women who have helped to make the music history of Norway are Agatha Backer-GrÖndahl and Catharinus Elling. Mrs. Backer-GrÖndahl was a pupil, first of Kjerulf and Winter-Hjelm, and later of Kullak, Hans von BÜlow, and Liszt. Many of her songs and instrumental pieces display fine artistic feeling and musical scholarship of no mean order. Catharinus Elling has ventured into the larger fields of music-forms, and has produced operas, symphonies, and oratorios, as well as chamber music and songs. Her music drama, "The Cossacks," is her most ambitious work.

Says Henry T. Finck, an able American music critic: "When I had revelled in the music of Chopin and Wagner, Liszt and Franz, to the point of intoxication, I fancied that the last word had been said in harmony and melody; when lo! I came across the songs and piano pieces of Grieg, and once more found myself moved to tears of delight." Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) undoubtedly occupies the foremost place among Norwegian composers. He is the highest representative of the Norse element in music, "the great beating heart of Norwegian musical art."

Grieg's genere pieces represent the pearls of his compositions. The arrangements of folk-songs and dances for the piano in "Pictures of Popular Life" (opus 19) are characterized by consummate lyric skill; and Ole Bull once declared that they were the finest representations of Norse life that had been attempted. Grieg wrote one hundred and twenty-five songs, most of which take high rank. Finck is of the opinion that fewer fall below par than in the list of any other song writer. He adds: "I myself believe that Grieg in some of his songs equals Schubert at his best; indeed, I think he should and will be ranked ultimately as second to Schubert only; but it is in his later works that he rises to such heights, not in the earliest ones, in which he was still a little afraid to rely on his wings."

When it is recalled that Grieg was a pianist of exceptional merit, the large place occupied by pianoforte pieces—twenty-eight of the seventy-three opus numbers—it is easily understood. Grieg's piano pieces are brief, but they are veritable gems. The Jumbo idea in music still lingers with minor professionals. They shrug their shoulders, remarks Finck, and exclaim: "Yes, that humming bird is very beautiful, but of course it can not be ranked as high as an ostrich. Don't you see how small it is?"

Grieg composed nine works for the orchestra; and here, as in lyric art-songs and pianoforte pieces, he reveals himself as a consummate master in painting delicate yet glowing colors. The music which he set to Ibsen's Peer Gynt brought him the largest measure of fame as an orchestral composer. Indeed it was more cordially received than the drama, as is indicated by this criticism by Hanslick: "Perhaps in a few years Ibsen's Peer Gynt will live only through Grieg's music, which, to my taste, has more poetry and artistic intelligence in every number than the whole five-act monstrosity of Ibsen." Among other notable orchestral and chamber music numbers may be mentioned a setting of BjÖrnson's Sigurd the Crusader, Bergliot, based upon the sagas of the Norse kings, a suite composed for the two hundredth anniversary of Ludwig Holberg, and a number of choice chamber music pieces.

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.

The male choirs of Norway have always played a leading rÔle in the music life of the nation. The students', merchants', and artists' singing clubs at Christiania during the past seventy-five years, have had artistic as well as patriotic aims. Festivals, after the pattern of those held at Cincinnati, and Worcester and Springfield, Massachusetts, have also contributed toward the development of national music. The most eminent choral leaders in Norway have been Johan D. Behrens, F.A. Reissinger, and O.A. GrÖndahl. The Norwegian Musical Union has also been active in the development of tonal ideals. Its aim has been to provide chamber concerts of a high order. Grieg and Svendsen were its first conductors. They were succeded by Ole Olsen, who combined the talents of orchestral leader with those of composer, chorister, and band leader. For many years he directed the Second Brigade Band at Christiania with the rank of captain. Johan Selmer, also a composer, succeeded Olsen in the direction of the Musical Union; and Iver Holier, a composer of symphonies, orchestral suites, chamber music, and vocal scores, followed Selmer. Other orchestral leaders are Johan Hennum, Per Winge, and Johan Halvorsen,