to prepare for coming musical activities. The next season he gave
his first concert in Bergen, at which the piano pieces of Op. 1, Four
Songs for Alto, and a String Quartet were played. With the proceeds
of this concert he bought orchestral and chamber music, and began to
study score, which he had not previously learned to do. In the spring
of 1863--he was hardly twenty then--he left home and took up his
residence in Copenhagen, a much larger city, offering greater
opportunities for an ambitious young musician. It was also the home of
Niels W. Gade, the foremost Scandinavian composer.

Of course Grieg was eager to meet Gade, and an opportunity soon
occurred. Gade expressed a willingness to look at some of his
compositions, and asked if he had anything to show him. Edward
modestly answered in the negative. "Go home and write a symphony," was
the retort. This the young composer started obediently to do, but the
work was never finished in this form. It became later Two Symphonic
Pieces for Piano, Op. 14.

Two sources of inspiration for Grieg were Ole Bull and Richard
Nordraak. We remember that Ole Bull was the means of influencing his
parents to send Edward to Leipsic. That was in 1858. Six years later,
when Ole Bull was staying at his country home, near Bergen, where
he always tried to pass the summers, the two formed a more intimate
friendship. They played frequently together, sonatas by Mozart and
others, or trios, in which Edward's brother John played the 'cello
parts. Or they wandered together to their favorite haunts among
mountains, fjords or flower clad valleys. They both worshiped nature
in all her aspects and moods, and each, the one on his instrument, the
other in his music, endeavored to reproduce these endless influences.

Richard Nordraak was a young Norwegian composer of great talent, who,
in his brief career, created a few excellent works. The two musicians
met in the winter of 1864 and were attracted to each other at once.
Nordraak visited Grieg in his home, where they discussed music and
patriotism to their hearts' content. Nordraak was intensely patriotic,
and wished to see the establishment of Norse music. Grieg, who had
been more or less influenced by German ideas, since Leipsic days,
now cast off the fetters and placed himself on the side of Norwegian
music. To prove this he composed the Humoresken, Op. 6, and dedicated
them to Nordraak. From now on he felt free to do as he pleased in
music--to be