Presented at the Grieg Conference in Bergen June 2, 2007
Seppo Saari, Finland
Free scholar, Turku
Grieg’s transcriptions and 19th century piano piece:
Op. 17 reflecting typologies
This article deals very briefly with the following questions: How are Grieg’s transcriptions for piano (op. 17) using their original or earlier musical material? How do they treat form, harmony, melody, and texture? And finally, how do they reflect – if at all – some associations of 19th century piano genres in general?
Edvard Grieg published his 25 Norske Folkeviser og Danser in 1870. In the year 1868 he completed is Piano concerto in A minor op. 16, and he was working on the songs of op. 18 Romanser og Sanger, when he in the summer of 1869 first came across a recent copy of Ludvig Lindeman’s historic folksong Collection Ældre og nyere Norske Fjeldmelodier (items 1-592 published in 1853-1867, and items 593-636 posthumously in 1907). Grieg chose to transcribe or rearrange some pieces from the numbers between 292 and 522 in Lindeman’s collection (publ. 1858-1863). One has to bear in mind that Lindeman had already transcribed his collected field notations for the piano.
Download the whole paper here
Seppo Saari paper 2007