ber music to romances. He is credited with a wide range of musical
ideas, deep artistic earnestness, and bold power of expression; but
his compositions in the larger forms are thought unduly noisy and
restless.

Two women who have helped to make the music history of Norway are
Agatha Backer-Groendahl and Catharinus Elling. Mrs. Backer-Groendahl was
a pupil, first of Kjerulf and Winter-Hjelm, and later of Kullak,
Hans von Buelow, and Liszt. Many of her songs and instrumental pieces
display fine artistic feeling and musical scholarship of no mean
order. Catharinus Elling has ventured into the larger fields of
music-forms, and has produced operas, symphonies, and oratorios, as
well as chamber music and songs. Her music drama, "The Cossacks," is
her most ambitious work.

Says Henry T. Finck, an able American music critic: "When I had
revelled in the music of Chopin and Wagner, Liszt and Franz, to the
point of intoxication, I fancied that the last word had been said in
harmony and melody; when lo! I came across the songs and piano pieces
of Grieg, and once more found myself moved to tears of delight."
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) undoubtedly occupies the foremost place among
Norwegian composers. He is the highest representative of the Norse
element in music, "the great beating heart of Norwegian musical art."

Grieg's _genere_ pieces represent the pearls of his compositions. The
arrangements of folk-songs and dances for the piano in "Pictures of
Popular Life" (opus 19) are characterized by consummate lyric skill;
and Ole Bull once declared that they were the finest representations
of Norse life that had been attempted. Grieg wrote one hundred and
twenty-five songs, most of which take high rank. Finck is of the
opinion that fewer fall below par than in the list of any other song
writer. He adds: "I myself believe that Grieg in some of his songs
equals Schubert at his best; indeed, I think he should and will be
ranked ultimately as second to Schubert only; but it is in his later
works that he rises to such heights, not in the earliest ones, in
which he was still a little afraid to rely on his wings."

When it is recalled that Grieg was a pianist of exceptional merit,
the large place occupied by pianoforte pieces--twenty-eight of the
seventy-three opus numbers--it is easily understood. Grieg's piano
pieces are brief, but they are veritable gems. The Jumbo idea in music
still lingers with minor professionals. They shrug their sh