Presented at the Grieg Conference in Berlin May 14, 2009
Ryan Weber, USA
M.A., Ph.D candidate at University of Connecticut
Out of Death and Despair: Elements of Chromaticism in the Songs of Edvard Grieg
Grieg‘s intriguing statement, ―the realm of harmonies has always been my dream world,‖1 suggests the rather imaginative disposition that he held toward the roles of harmonic function within a diatonic pitch space. A great degree of his chromatic language is manifested in subtle interactions between different pitch spaces along the dualistic lines to which he referred in his personal commentary. Indeed, Grieg‘s distinctive style reaches beyond common-practice tonality in ways other than modality. Although his music uses a variety of common nineteenth-century harmonic devices, his synthesis of modal elements within a diatonic or chromatic framework often leans toward an aesthetic of Impressionism.
Download the whole paper here
Ryan Weber paper 2009