Edvard Grieg-Part 1

Grieg's strong national tendencies, despite his conventional German training, places him at once in a class with Dvorak, Rimky-Karsakov and others who have attempted to preserve the beautiful spirit embedded in the folk music of the lands of their birth. "The Land of the Midnight Sun" presents many of the most strongly pronounced national characteristics to be found in any part of Europe. The location and topography of the country has much to do with this. In the same latitude as Greenland and spared the same icy fate by the Gulf Stream, Norway reaches from a temperate climate right up into the frozen north. Its west coast is a huge series of natural parapets broken by fjords sometimes a hundred miles in length and thousands of feet in depth. It is not surprising that a land so situated should hold its people together in wonderfully strong natural bonds. Although Grieg was born when Norway was a part of Sweden he always made a strong distinction between the two countries.

                                                     The Etude Magazine June 1913