Abstract
Grieg famously collaborated with the Norwegian poet Arne Garborg (1851–1924) to create his song cycle Haugtussa (1895). Paradoxically, only five years later at the height of Norway’s fight for independence, Grieg drew inspiration from the Danish poet Otto Benzon (1856–1927) to compose his last published songs, Opp. 69 and 70. These creative partnerships expose a persistent source of tension in Grieg’s fin-de-siècle career: how could the composer appeal to the masses while avoiding fanatical steams of nationalism? His answers to this problem are manifested in his correspondence wherein he takes these writers to task for cultivating a narrow appeal as he simultaneously experimented with methods for engaging universalism in music. Therefore, this chapter offers a closer examination of the motives behind their affinities and disagreements while providing for an analysis of the modes by which Grieg’s cosmopolitan discourse developed as a reaction to a broad array of literary stimuli.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for instance, Who Sings the Nation-State? (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2010); Krishan Kumar, “Nation-states as Empires, Empires as Nation-states: Two Principles, One Practice?” Theory and Society 39/2 (2010): 119–43. In musicology, the many contributors to The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music, ed. Jane F. Fulcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), have problematized the role of nationalism in perpetuating established narratives. For particular articles that have served as the stimulus for this study, see especially William Weber, “Cosmopolitan, National, and Regional Identities in Eighteenth-Century European Musical Life,” 209–227; Philip V. Bohlman, “Translating Herder Translating: Cultural Translation and the Making of Modernity,” 501–522; Michael P. Steinberg, “Whose Culture? Whose History? Whose Music?,” 550–561.
- 2.
Cosmopolitan Vision, 163–177. To be sure, Beck’s work in dismantling the normative claims of nationalism and his recourse to the temporal dimension of cosmopolitanism are invaluable tools that I will invoke throughout this study.
- 3.
Robert J. Holton, Cosmopolitanisms: New Thinking and New Directions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 209.
- 4.
Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 2006), 5.
- 5.
Joseph E. Morgan, Oberon and Cosmopolitanism in the Early German Romantic (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
- 6.
See Chapter 2, “The Development of Weber’s Adult Style,” 43–76.
- 7.
See Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Charles S. Maier, Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2012).
- 8.
Maier, Leviathan 2.0, 17.
- 9.
Oxfeldt, Nordic Orientalism: Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 40–53.
- 10.
Amanda Anderson, The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 20.
- 11.
Chris Goertzen, Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 5.
- 12.
For a detailed account of the period surrounding 1814, see Andreas Elviken, “The Genesis of Norwegian Nationalism,” The Journal of Modern History 3/3 (September, 1932): 365–91 and H. Arnold Barton, Sweden and Visions of Norway: Politics and Culture, 1814–1905 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 3–86.
- 13.
For a detailed account, see Neil Kent, The Soul of the North: A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries, 1700–1940 (London: Reaktion Books, 2000).
- 14.
Karin M. E. Alexis, “Culture and Identity: Regionalism and Nationalism in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Swedish Painting,” in Nordic Experiences: Exploration of Scandinavian Cultures, edited by Berit I. Brown (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997), 237.
- 15.
National Romanticism in Norway (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1933), 40–41.
- 16.
A History of Scandinavia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 238.
- 17.
Byron J. Nordstrom, Scandinavia Since 1500 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 186–256.
- 18.
For an in-depth discussion of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, see Aletta J. Norval, “Democratic Identification: A Wittgensteinian Approach,” Political Theory 34/2 (April 2006): 229–255.
- 19.
“Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 226.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
For a summary and discussion, see Beryl Foster, The Songs of Edvard Grieg (Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press, 2007), 123–25.
- 22.
Daniel Grimley, Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), 117. See pp. 117–46 for a detailed account of the social properties of language and the key figures in the debate.
- 23.
For an overview of Wegeland’s life and works, see especially Illit Grøndahl and Ola Raknes, Chapters in Norwegian Literature (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1923), 52–73.
- 24.
Harald Beyer, A History of Norwegian Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1956), 141. The significance of “realism” as an aesthetic movement will be explored further in this study.
- 25.
P. A. Munch (1811–63) was also one of the chiefly outspoken critics of Wergeland’s position and stood firmly against the attempts to “Norwegianize” the Danish language.
- 26.
Falnes, National Romanticism, 33–34. Emphasis added.
- 27.
Diaries, Articles, Speeches, 395.
- 28.
Ibid., 396.
- 29.
Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 86–87.
- 30.
See footnote 88 in Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 138.
- 31.
Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 142.
- 32.
Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 417. In the same letter, Grieg also credits Nordraak for opening his eyes “to the important of that in music which is not music.”
- 33.
“Correction of an Interview,” in Diaries, Articles, Speeches, 331.
- 34.
See also “One-sidedness” in Diaries, Articles, Speeches, 330. Herein Grieg rebukes the newspapers in Bergen (the same people he champions in the passage I quoted above) for not covering the concerts he performed as conductor of the music society “Harmonien,” which reflected a more “cosmopolitan tendency” than his other more overtly nationalist works. He therefore criticized the editor for projecting a one-sided view of his contributions to Norwegian cultural life.
- 35.
See also Grimley’s related study, Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010). Of particular note is Grimley’s study of the tensions that arose from Nielsen’s dual roles as a “cosmopolitan fin-de-siècle artist” and a poster child for the Danish working class.
- 36.
Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity, 221.
- 37.
Benedict Taylor, Towards a Harmonic Grammar of Grieg’s Late Piano Music: Nature and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2017), 141.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 231.
- 40.
Ibid., 162–63.
- 41.
Chapters in Norwegian Literature, 146–47.
- 42.
Falnes, National Romanticism, 317–18.
- 43.
See note 29 in Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 232.
- 44.
Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 232.
- 45.
For an overview of these works, see Foster, The Songs of Edvard Grieg, 123–143.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Finn Benestad and Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe, Edvard Grieg Chamber Music: Nationalism, Universality, Individuality (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1993), 184.
- 48.
Finn Benestad, “Grieg in the Twentieth Century,” in Edvard Grieg Today: A Symposium, edited by William H. Halverson (Northfield: St. Olaf College, 1994), 36.
- 49.
Ibid., 7–14.
- 50.
Foster, The Songs of Edvard Grieg, 140–142.
- 51.
Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity, 109–146.
- 52.
See Grieg’s discussion of his literary references in the complete letter to Finck of 17 July 1900 in Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 225–239.
- 53.
Ibid., 118.
- 54.
Ibid., 119.
- 55.
Quoted and expanded in Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity, 119.
- 56.
Quoted in Ståle Kleiberg, “Grieg’s ‘Slåtter,’ Op. 72: Change of Musical Style or New Concept of Nationality?,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121/1 (1996): 55.
- 57.
Ibid., 56.
- 58.
Grieg, Letter to Arne Garborg, 9 November 1899, in Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 255.
- 59.
Ibid., 147.
- 60.
Ibid., 146.
- 61.
Weary Men (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 25–26.
- 62.
Ibid., 194.
- 63.
Ibid., 244–45.
- 64.
Ibid., 242.
- 65.
Ibid., 250.
- 66.
For a discussion of the significance of this type of analysis, see Kofi Agawu “Theory and Practice in the Analysis of the Nineteenth-Century ‘Lied,’” Music Analysis 11/1 (March, 1992): 11–12.
- 67.
Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 94–95.
- 68.
Grieg outlined the nature of his objections in a letter to Garborg on 9 November 1899 wherein he declares: “I do not regard either the city man or the farmer as holding a patent on the refinement of spirit and heart, and I don’t think the language makes any difference for those who possess that for which language is only an expression—whether it be Dano-Norwegian (a condemned word) or a rural dialect.” [Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 255.]
- 69.
Ibid. See also Grieg’s grievances during this period, which I outlined in the Introduction.
- 70.
Regarding the Dreyfus Affair, see his letters to Édouard Colonne in Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 199–201. A detailed account of the events and politics of the decade-long scandal can be found in Mimi Segal Daitz, “Grieg and Bréville: ‘Nous parlons alors de la jeune école français …’” 19th-Century Music 1/3 (March, 1978): 233–245; “Pierre de Breville (1861–1949),” 19th-Century Music 5/1 (Summer, 1981): 24–37; and Joseph O. Baylen, “Dreyfusards and the Foreign Press: The Syndicate and the Daily News February-March 1898,” French Historical Studies 7/3 (Spring, 1972): 332–348. More generally, these issues have been revisited in Louis Begley, Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Grieg’s reasons for hiring the Concertgebouw Orchestra, which stirred a great deal of controversy, are outlined in his letters to Hans Lied Brækstad, Letters to Colleagues and Friends, 153–155.
- 71.
Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity, 146.
- 72.
16.
- 73.
Ibid., 16–17.
- 74.
Journalist Michael Booth has offered a look into the overlapping issues that link Scandinavian countries in his The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia (London: Penguin, 2015).
- 75.
Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity, 147–191.
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Weber, R.R. (2018). Local Debates, International Partnerships: Garborg, Benzon, and Grieg’s Idea of Cosmopolitanism. In: Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Music and Literature. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01860-3_2
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