Edvard Grieg
Eilif Peterssen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Norway, once the homeland of the Vikings during the Medieval Period, had been a single kingdom with Denmark since 1397, Denmark and Norway had been a single kingdom. During the Napoleonic Wars, Norway was attacked by the United Kingdom. This caused it to enter into an alliance with Napoleon. When they lost the war in 1814, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden.

Not a fan of this arrangment, the Norwegians declared independence, establishing a parliamentary democracy and electing the crown prince, Christian Frederick, as king. Sweden and Norway went to war, which resulted in a peace treaty in which the Norwegian parliament was forced to elect King Charles XIII of Sweden as King of Norway. Norway was allowed to keep its parliament and constitution, but Sweden determined foreign policy. This situation led to a surge in Norwegian nationalism throughout the nineteenth century, one of the heroes of which was composer Edvard Grieg.

Grieg was born in Bergen in 1843, the son of a British consul (official representative) of Scottish descent and a Norwegian musician. His talent was developed early and at the age of 15 he was sent to Leipzig in Saxony to study, although he later reported that he did not learn much there. He married his first cousin, Nina, in 1867. The following year, they had a daughter, Alexandra, although she died when she was only a year old.

In 1868, Grieg composed his famous Piano Concerto in A minor, and two years later, travelled to Rome to meet Franz Liszt in his monastery. Liszt sight-read the concerto and offered some compositional advice, which Grieg did not take.

Back home, Grieg befriended the poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, a strong advocate of Norwegian self-governance, as well as the playwright Henrik Ibsen, composing a suite to complement his play, "Peer Gynt." This became another of Grieg's most beloved works. Due to his association with these prominent literary figures and his support for Norwegian independence, Grieg by this point was considered a national hero, and in 1874 was awarded a lifetime pension by the Norwegian government.

Grieg continued to compose and travel around Europe, meeting Tchaikovsky as well as Percy Grainger, and playing privately for Queen Victoria in 1897. He was also an advocate of developing music technology, and made gramophone recordings of his piano works in 1903.

Throughout his life, Grieg suffered from poor health, and a bout of tuberculosis when he was young had left him with only one functioning lung. He died of heart failure in Bergen in 1907, having lived to see Norway become independent with the accession of King Haakon VII just two years earlier.