mber music,
orchestra suites, overtures, compositions for string quartet, and
sonatas for piano and violin, a sonata for piano, concerto for piano,
and a very considerable variety of poetic and interesting compositions
for piano alone; in addition to these, many songs, some of which have
attained a wide currency. In all these works certain characteristic
peculiarities of Norwegian music continually make themselves felt, so
that there is nothing of Grieg's which could be mistaken for the work
of any good German composer. Whether we should regard these national
peculiarities in his music as provincialisms, considered from the
world's standpoint, or as a fortunate appeal to the ears of his own
countrymen and generation, who shall decide?

Grieg belongs to the modern romantic school, conspicuously, in having
derived the suggestion or inspiration of many of his pieces from poetic
suggestion. One of the most famous and best known of this kind is the
first "Peer Gynt" suite. Peer Gynt is a ne'er-do-weel in Ibsen's poem.
He had a variety of adventures in the course of his unprofitable life,
a few of which are alluded to in the suite here under consideration.
For example, it begins with a prelude in 6/8 time--a movement somewhat
pastoral in character, designated "Morgenstimmung," or, in English,
"The Morning Mood." In this piece the flavor of Norwegian folk-song is
only very faintly perceptible, if at all, and is perhaps more to be
imagined from the somewhat unusual succession of chords than from
anything very characteristic in the melody. The second piece of this
suite, "The Death of Ase," is practically a funeral march of a sad and
grief-laden character. Ase is the poor mother of Peer Gynt, who was
left alone in her cottage on the mountains while her ne'er-do-weel son
was off on his travels. At length death overtook her, desolate and
alone, on the bleak mountain side. This is the story of the march.
The third piece in this suite is entitled "Anitra's Dance." Anitra, in
Ibsen's story, was a fascinating minx of the desert, who, when Peer
Gynt was masquerading as the prophet, encountered him upon his travels
and beguiled from him one gift after another until finally she took
from him his rings, spare apparel, and finally his horse, and capered
off with them like the winds of the morning, while the pseudo-prophet
pursued his sandy and inglorious way on foot. In this music of Grieg
we have simply the sparkling lightness o