and dined there the
next day. From this time on he grew worse. He was very gentle the last
months of his life, and touchingly grateful for every attention shown
him. Every evening he would place himself at the piano and improvise
for half an hour. When too fatigued to continue, he would sit at the
window till long after darkness had fallen. He gradually grew weaker
till he passed peacefully away, April 3, 1897.

The offer of an honorary grave was made by the city of Vienna, and
he has found resting place near Beethoven and Mozart, just as he had
wished.

Memorial tablets have been placed on the houses in which Brahms lived
in Vienna, Ischl and Thun, also on the house of his birth, in Hamburg.

XIX

EDWARD GRIEG

"_From every point of view Grieg is one of the most original
geniuses in the musical world of the present or past. His
songs are a mine of melody, surpassed in wealth only by
Schubert, and that only because there are more of Schubert's.
In originality of harmony and modulation he has only six
equals. Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner and Liszt. In
rhythmic invention and combination he is inexhaustible, and as
orchestrator he ranks among the most fascinating_."

HENRY T. FINCK

Edward Hargarup Grieg, "the Chopin of the North," was a unique
personality, as well as an exceptional musician and composer. While
not a "wonder child," in the sense that Mozart, Chopin and Liszt were,
he early showed his love for music and his rapt enjoyment of the music
of the home circle. Fortunately he lived and breathed in a musical
atmosphere from his earliest babyhood. His mother was a fine musician
and singer herself, and with loving care she fostered the desire for
it and the early studies of it in her son. She was his first teacher,
for she kept up her own musical studies after her marriage, and
continued to appear in concerts in Bergen, where the family lived.
Little Edward, one of five children, seemed to inherit the mother's
musical talent and had vivid recollections of the rhythmic animation
and spirit with which she played the works of Weber, who was one of
her favorite composers.

The piano was a world of mystery to the sensitive musical child. His
baby fingers explored the white keys to see what they sounded like.
When he found two notes together, forming an interval of a third, they
pleased him better than one alo