n and supranational elements in the by edvard grieg...

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Markéta Štefková

national and supranational eleMents in the piano Works by edvard grieg

The idea of national culture has its roots in the nineteenth century. One of its major proponents was Johann Gottfried von Herder, who already during the second half of the eighteenth century urged

nations to search for their spiritual wealth and strength in folk cultural tradition. Elements of folk music considered typically national at the time were applied by the exponents of national music schools of the nineteenth century, namely Slavs (Russians, Poles and Bohemians), Hungarians and Scandinavians, with the aim of manifesting ‘the spirit of the nation’. In 1989, Carl Dahlhaus referred to the fact that these elements were not uniquely ‘national’ in their essence: for instance, mazurka rhythms, drone fifths and Lydian fourths were generally considered to be ‘specifically Polish’ signs of Chopin’s music despite the fact that they occurred also in the folklore of other nations across the continent.1 As early as 1933, Bartók outlined the concept of ‘peasant music’, having in mind the music of peasantry (without a particular nationality specification) more or less untouched by urban culture. ‘We can presume that for a long time this old style was the sole distinctive style of particular nations’.2

In piano music, a peculiar national style crystallised mostly in the works of Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849) and Edvard Grieg (1843–1907). Chopin’s contact with folk music was not as intense as Grieg’s, partly because during Chopin’s youth the collecting of folk songs was just be-ginning, whereas Grieg had at his disposal Ludwig Mathias Lindeman’s

1 Carl Dahlhaus, Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Laaber, 1989), pp. 33–34.2 Béla Bartók, Postrehy a názory [Insight and opinions], ed. Oskár Elschek (Bratislava, 1965), pp. 107–108.

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Markéta Štefková

monumental collection of vocal and instrumental music,3 and he con-stantly sought contact with authentic folk music. Chopin came into direct contact with folk songs and dances during his summer sojourns in Szafarnia in 1824 and 1825 and also on further vacations in the Polish countryside up to 1830. Even in his early mazurkas and songs, he used ‘the rhythmic and modal patterns, the characteristic melodic intonations and the duda drones of the mazur, kujawiak and oberek’, while these early mazurkas ‘clearly evoke the world of the traditional folk ensemble of central Poland, where a melody instrument (violin or fujarka, a high pitched shepherd’s pipe) would often be accompanied by a drone (duda or gajda, a Polish bagpipe) and/or a rhythmic pulse (basetla or basy, a string bass)’.4

Example 1. Fryderyk Chopin, Mazurka in B flat major [WN 7], bars 1–8

The fundamental sequence to the bass line of the Mazurka in B flat major composed by the sixteen-year-old Chopin is tonic–dominant–tonic –dominant. The folk-tune-inspired melody in the descant is conspicu-ously ‘chromatic’: note the ‘hiatus’ bflat–csharp, always possessing the status of an ‘exotic’ interval within the context of diatonicism consisting of alternating whole tones and semitones, and the oscillation of c sharp–c ande–eflat. The alto voice brings a counter-melody to the soprano and thus intensifies the tension between the horizontal and vertical com-ponents (dissonances produced by the use of non-scale notes). Chopin

3 Hella Brock, Edvard Grieg. Eine Biographie (Schott, 1989), pp. 23–27.4 Kornel Michalowski and Jim Samson, (2001), ‘Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 2nd edn (London, 2001), vol. v: p. 713

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National and supranational elements in the piano works by Edvard Grieg

uses here a kind of embellishment typical also of Norwegian folk music, mostly of a dance character: appoggiaturas, upper mordents and trills.

Czech musicology has coined the term ‘diatonic flection’, reflecting the use of similar tonal phenomena in Janáček’s music. Since 1980, the renowned Czech musicologist Jaroslav Volek has used it to describe a spe-cific kind of chromaticism used in CentralEastern European songs and dances and in compositions by Janáček and Bartók. Although scores are filled with accidentals, in this case the seemingly ‘nonscale notes’ result not from chromatic alterations, but from socalled ‘flexible diatonicism’, consisting in the variability of particular degrees of a heptatonic diatonic scale.5 Thus in Chopin’s Mazurka in B flat major we can find the 2nd degree in the variants c sharp–c and the 4th degree in the variants e–eflat. The prominent Slovak musicologist Jozef Kresánek also dealt with this phenomenon in the realm of folk songs. In 1951, he based a tonal classi-fication of folk songs on his observation that it was two notes, most often in the interval of a perfect fourth, that stood out, serving as ‘pillars’. For Kresánek, this phenomenon was something like a parallel to the system of Greek tetrachords. Also, he saw the descending melody of the songs as being related to the Greek understanding of tetrachords which are also perceived in a descending order.6 As the term ‘tetrachord’ evokes the idea of a section from the scale, Kresánek later replaced it with the new term ‘fourthframe’, or ‘fifthframe’ for songs organised by the interval of a fifth.7 Thus there are two principles integrated in this system: the principle of a consonant and stable frame, the concept of which had been stabilised presumably with the help of pipes and strings, and the principle of the local affinity (oscillation, flexibility) of particular degrees within that frame, or at its borders.

While Volek claims that diatonic flection may occur on any degree of a heptatonic diatonic scale, Kresánek notes the need to differentiate between the stable (frame) notes and the oscillating, flexible notes. It is important that the frame is created by an interval smaller than an octave: a fourth or a fifth. Hence melodies of this kind cannot be explained from

5 Jaroslav Volek (1980). ModalitaaflexibilnídiatonikauJanáčkaaBartóka [Modality and flexible diatonicism in Janáček and Bartók] (Prague, 1980), p. 24.6 Jozef Kresánek, Slovenskáľudovápieseňzostanoviskahudobného [Slovak folk song from the musical perspective] (Bratislava, 1951), p. 184.7 Kresánek, Tonalita [Tonality] (Bratislava, 1982), pp. 54–55.

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the position of heptatonic, major-minor or ‘modal’ diatonicism (in the sense of medieval modes). This is a problem which many of you are fa-miliar with. I have used Kresánek’s system to analyse music by nine-teenth and twentiethcentury composers influenced by folk music and identified certain common regularities in their compositions.

Chopin’s way of stylising folk idioms influenced Grieg substantially. While still only eighteen, Grieg paid tribute to Chopin in his Mazurka Op. 1 No. 3, with which he finished his studies at the Leipzig Conserva-tory in 1862 – both as composer and pianist.

Even in Grieg’s music, we find the application of the principles of Kresánek’s ‘frame’ tonality.

Example 2. Edvard Grieg, Moods, Op. 73 No. 7, ‘The Mountaineer’s Song’, bars 15–30

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‘The Mountaineer’s Song’, No. 7 from Moods, Op. 73 (1901–1905), was inspired by the ‘lokk’, a signal for assembling cattle. Grieg used such signals several times in his work. In the middle section, the motif appears in imitative dialogue over a ‘drone fifth’ in a deep bass register. It evokes the playing of ‘question – answer’, or echo effects in the vast mountain space, known also from Slovak folk music tradition.

It is based on ‘fifthframes’ and their transpositions by a fifth (C–G; B flat–F). We find a ‘Lydian fourth’ in all the fourbar groups, but in the second group it occurs as part of a minor pentachord. Again we encounter here the ‘hiatus’ (bflat–csharpin G minor and aflat–bin F minor) that adds a certain ‘exotic’ character and aspires to the status of an exclusively national element. Indeed, Kresánek considers it to be uniquely Slovak, whilst Janáček scholars claim it to be a ‘Lydian minor’ unique to that composer.8 A minor pentachord with Lydian fourth can be found also in the Mazurka in A minor, Op. posth. 68 No. 2 by the seventeen-year-old Chopin. A play with this shape also forms the core of the piece ‘In Oriental Style’, No. 58 from the second volume of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos.

Regarding Grieg’s endeavours to develop a specific national idiom of Norwegian or Scandinavian art music, let us focus now on the melodic motif from Norwegian folklore about which Grieg wrote:

There is, however, one peculiarity of our folk music that has always had a strong appeal to me: the treatment of the leading tone, in particular when the progres-sion is from the leading tone down to the dominant.9

8 Volek, Modalita, p. 21.9 Edvard Grieg, (2009), Regarding my Songs, tr. William Halverson (Bergen, 2009), p. 11.

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Markéta Štefková

Perhaps the most famous example is the first piano entrance in Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 (1868):

Example 3. Edvard Grieg, Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, piano part, bars 1–4

One may conclude that this is a rather archaic melodic progression; the fourth frame and the descending character evoke Kresánek’s ‘frame tonality’. However, in the context of major-minor harmony, Grieg ex-plains it as the upper tetrachord of a minor key. Although the progres-sion a–g sharp–e belongs to a harmonic minor scale, we perceive it as something ‘exotic’, as the melodic scale with natural seventh a–g–f–a is used in the descending progression of traditional tonal music in order to eliminate the hiatus.

Hence the specific character of the ‘Grieg motif ’, which scholars have referred to as his ‘motto’ or ‘signature’: a melodic ‘jump’ from the lead-ing note to the fifth does not satisfy us and evokes the expression of something unaccomplished. Grieg enhances the effect of melodic figures inspired by archaic modality through their positioning in contexts of cur-rent harmonic language:

The realm of harmony has always been my dream-world […] I have found that the obscure depth in our folk melodies has its foundation in their undreamt-of harmonic possibilities. In my arrangements in op. 66 and elsewhere I have tried to give expression to my sense of the hidden harmonies in our folk tunes.10

Grieg’s uncovering of the ‘hidden harmonic dispositions’ of archaic songs and dances consists in their projection into contexts of Romantic

10 Ibid., p. 13.

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harmony based on developed chromaticism and alterations, through which the composer strengthens the lyrical, balladic and elegiac character, recognised by Norwegians as the ‘national’ character of their art music. Grieg even intensified this character using rhetorical figures handed down in European music since Baroque times.

Example 4. Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 68 No. 4, bars 9–36

The main monophonic theme of Grieg’s piece ‘Evening in the Moun-tains’, from the Lyric Pieces, Op. 68 No. 4 (1899), evokes the playing of a shepherd’s shawm; in his orchestration, Grieg assigned it to the oboe. In the structure of this melody, we find archaic traits, mentioned by Kresánek: a non-periodic, almost rubato structure strengthened by agogic instructions; the expansion of the compass through the addition of fourth-frame units. We do not perceive the key E minor designated by the composer as the main organising background to the melody: the support-ing ‘frame notes’ b, e and f sharp are much more prominent, attained at the climax of the melodic line in bar 23. Descending motion dominates,

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and oscillating notes may be found inside particular ‘frames’. The ‘Grieg motif ’ appears in bar 4 and immediately in a transposition by a fifth. From bar 17, abrupt leaps and dramatic-looking ruptures appear in the melody, which in the Norwegian folk tradition occur as cries serving for assembling the cattle (lokk) or particular shepherds’ calls to the distance (huving), etc.

In some forms it demands from the singer a splendid degree of coloratura and great virtuosity in managing octave or larger leaps in the vocal line. Not all lokk are so complicated, however, and obviously much would have depended on the skill of the individual singer to develop and embellish the calls.11

In the phase of retrogradation from bar 27, the Grieg motif is found in the chain of chromatically descending sequences. This is one of many instances where Grieg joins this unit with the rhetorical figure passus duriusculus (etymologically, ‘rough movement’). This figure, the most expressive rhetorical figure of all, is still associated with a nega-tive, lamenting character and expressive connotations like grief, pain, hardship and death. Structurally, it is a chromatic melodic run most often within the compass of a perfect fourth, and its most famous ap-pearance is the ostinato repeated figure in a low voice, the socalled ‘lament bass’, proceeding in a slow tempo, most often with a harmonic progression from the tonic to the dominant of the home key. A typical sign of these devices is that they create non-harmonic, ‘wrong’ relations with other voices. Passus duriusculus may occur not only in the bass, but also in higher voices; likewise, it may also be an ascending run within the compass of a fourth.12

Through the connection of the Grieg motif with this figure, the com-poser bestows an extremely elegiac character on his music. In the process, the effects of latent polyphony occur frequently: in our case, the bottom line is created by the succession of b-b flat-a-aflat-g[-f sharp-f-e] and the upper line e-d sharp, d sharp-d, d-c sharp, c sharp-c, c-b; this sobbing style further intensifies the effect of a certain ‘fatal resignation’.

11 Beryl Foster, The Songs of Edvard Grieg (Woodbridge, 2007), p. 3.12 Markéta Štefková, Na ceste k zmyslu (štúdie k hudobnej analýze) [Towards meaning (studies on musical analysis)] (Bratislava, 2007), pp. 57–60.

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Example 5. Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 68 No. 4, bars 47–73

It is interesting to examine how the composer harmonises this ‘quasi folk’ melody in the second section of the piece (strings dominate the in-strumentation). Encouraged by his American biographer Henry T. Finck, regarding his ‘method’, Grieg confided in letters written in 1900 that while arranging folk songs he felt ‘especially fascinated by the chromatic lines in the harmonic texture’.

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Markéta Štefková

In the use of chromatic scale, my ideal teachers were names such as Bach, Mozart, and Wagner. I have observed that these immortal masters gave expression to their deepest and most fervent thoughts; they had a marked fondness for chromatic lines, each in his own original way. On this basis I quietly evolved little by little my own sense of the importance of the chromatic element.13

In bars 47–58, the supporting element is the bass note E, and ini-tially also the frame of a ‘drone fifth’ E–B. The melody in the right hand is counterpointed by the left hand with snippets of counter-melodies, perceived as a kind of a ‘vibration’ around E minor. The dramatic ruptures in the melody from bar 55 onwards (huving) are confronted first with a descending chromatic line, then from bar 57 onwards by an ascending chromatic line of tenor countervoice filling the space of the fifth A–E, as an extremely impressive form of the figure passus duriusculus. This prepares the moment of the climactic melodic expansion in bars 59–61. The overall impression of this moment is intensified by Grieg through an abrupt harmonic ‘break’ from the tonal embedding on the bass tone of the E centre; note the chromatic shift of the tenth structure, which attains the first inversion of the E minor triad in a wide harmony as its goal in bar 60. The melodic climax in bar 61 is harmonised with the C major triad in ff – a Phry-gian explosion of grief in relation to the dominant B major. Since the times of Baroque rhetoric, the use of a Phrygian chord has been one of the most impressive harmonic figures, symbolising anguish, sorrow and lament.14

The melodic gesture of the ensuing fatal resignation is strengthened by Grieg using chromatically ‘falling’ lines of alto and tenor, as if ‘in-fected’ by the virus of passus duriusculus. The vertical results of these horizontal processes can be partly explained also in terms of the altered harmony of late romanticism, but it is primarily a derivative result of polymelodic lines.

However, using the descending chromatic progressions, Grieg was able to bestow on his works an utterly different and original expression. Grieg himself was aware of his deeply torn personality:

13 Grieg, Regarding my Songs, p. 13.14 Štefková, Ohudobnomčase [On musical time] (Bratislava, 2011), p. 64.

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One [part of his personality] strove for contemplation, in order to find creativity, the other continuously fled from calm, in an unsatisfied, almost insatiable need for stimuli in the form of new, colourful experiences.15

He perceived it allegorically in connection with the symbolism of good and bad trolls, magical characters from Norwegian legends.

Example 6. Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 54 No. 3, ‘March of the Trolls’, bars 1–10

In the ‘March of the Trolls’ from the Lyric Pieces, Op. 54 No. 3 (1891), Grieg uses descending chromatic progressions to express the musical idiom of ‘bad trolls’: an initial run is followed by a chromatic descending line in the soprano voice, which with its quick tempo, staccato articu-lation and distinctive rhythm creates an essential contrast to the tonal frame of D minor and a stinging, derisive, sarcastic expression. The motif is then repeated in a transposition by a fifth.

Finally, let us turn our attention to the application of idiomatic ‘na-tional’ elements in Grieg’s Ballade in G minor, Op. 24 (1876), his most significant work for solo piano. In this piece, he exhibits absolutely differ-ent expressions typical of the ‘spirit of the Norwegian nation’, which he comments on impressively in his correspondence with Finck. Regarding the general difference between German and Norwegian songs, he first points to the poetics of ancient Norwegian sagas, which are ‘the founda-tion on which Bjørnson and Ibsen built’.

15 Finn Benestad and Dag Schjerdelup-Ebbe, Edvard Grieg. Mensch und Künstler (Leipzig, 1993), p. 205.

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One can say that in a similar way the folk song is a musical reflection of the innermost soul of the people. [...] The exaggerated external trappings so typical for the Germans is foreign to Scandinavians. [...] These songs [i.e. German, author’s comment] are for the most part balladic in character and are solemn and dignified. The basic feature of the Norwegian folk song, however – in comparison with the German – is a deep sense of melancholy that can suddenly change into wild, unbridled humor. Mysterious gloom and unrestrained wildness – these are the contrasting elements in the Norwegian folk song.16

Grieg’s Ballade is his reaction to the death of his parents, and in formal terms it is a set of variations on the theme of a Norwegian folk song from the collection of M. L. Lindeman.

Example 7. Edvard Grieg, Ballade in G minor, Op. 24, bars 1–17

The theme has an archetypal structure a a’ II: b a’’ :II and evokes a gloomy balladic atmosphere with its minor character, the minor third attained mostly through descending runs, the use of sobs and

16 Grieg, Regarding my Songs, p. 15.

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gasps, the characteristic idiom of funeral marches – a melodic formula on one note in a dotted rhythm, etc. This atmosphere is enhanced by subtly chromatic harmonisation, a gradual ‘splitting off ’ of the lines of chromatic descending counter-voices as the melody progresses, which seem to ‘paralyse’ it. Due to the choral texture, however, we perceive the whole structure mostly vertically, while the leading altered seventh chords are generated linearly and possess a high tension. Due to the linear descending progress, this tension is permanently rejected, which underlines the tragic result.


The fourth variation is inspired by the Norwegian male folk dance springar (‘leap dance’). The ‘leaps’ are expressed by the rapid alter-nation of notes of various rhythmic value and syncopated accents. The rough character is intensified by the use of dissonant clusters on rhythmically accentuated beats, by which their effectiveness is also heightened. Grieg drew inspiration here from the playing on a popu-lar folk instrument, the Hardanger fiddle, with its four strings and

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Markéta Štefková

four understrings, which often create together dissonant intervals such as tritones, seconds and sevenths. The technique of the left hand is quite specific, imitating the technique of violin playing, while the chords g–c sharp and d–b flat in the given harmonic context (G mi-nor) resemble a deformation of the consonant fifths g–d and d–a. Grieg finally uses chromatically descending passages (the ‘bad troll’ idiom), which in a quick semiquaver pulse ‘cross’ the melody and dissonant chords.


The dolce middle section of the fifth variation adheres to the spirit of a specific ‘Scandinavian’ lyric idiom. It is as if the beautiful yet coldly melancholic atmosphere of the Norwegian fjords were reflected here. The wide ascending arpeggios of the piano evoke an endless horizon; the Grieg motif, combined with characteristic upper mordents, evokes a Norwegian ambience.

Despite the decidedly national character of his piano music, Grieg arrived at a musical language that is at the same time supranational and universal.

He significantly enriched the current musical language, mostly in terms of harmony. Grieg’s way of using the energetic metres and rhythms of Norwegian dances (dissonant clusters on rhythmically effective beats and syncopations) and his stylisations of Hardanger fiddle playing


(Norwegian Peasant Dances / Slåtter, Op. 72; 1903), which had fascinated Bartók to such an extent that he travelled to Norway in 1912 to buy that musical instrument,17 foreshadowed the modern way of the usage of trad-itional idiomatics typical of piano works by twentieth-century composers who had parted with the ideals of Romantic pianism represented in the nineteenth century by Chopin (the bel canto ideal on the piano) and Liszt (the ideal of symphonic sound on piano) and begun to perceive the piano mostly as a percussion instrument (Bartók’s Allegro barbaro).

17 Brock, Edvard Grieg, pp. 308–309.

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