oulders,
remarks Finck, and exclaim: "Yes, that humming bird _is_ very
beautiful, but of course it can not be ranked as high as an ostrich.
Don't you see how small it is?"

Grieg composed nine works for the orchestra; and here, as in lyric
art-songs and pianoforte pieces, he reveals himself as a consummate
master in painting delicate yet glowing colors. The music which he set
to Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ brought him the largest measure of fame as an
orchestral composer. Indeed it was more cordially received than the
drama, as is indicated by this criticism by Hanslick: "Perhaps in a
few years Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_ will live only through Grieg's music,
which, to my taste, has more poetry and artistic intelligence in every
number than the whole five-act monstrosity of Ibsen." Among other
notable orchestral and chamber music numbers may be mentioned a
setting of Bjoernson's _Sigurd the Crusader, Bergliot_, based upon
the sagas of the Norse kings, a suite composed for the two hundredth
anniversary of Ludwig Holberg, and a number of choice chamber music
pieces.

It may be remarked that Edvard Grieg has not only given Norway a
conspicuous place on the map of musical Europe, but that he has
influenced unmistakably composers of the rank of Tschaikowsky,
the Russian; Paderewski, the Pole; Eugene d'Albert, the
Scotch-English-German; Richard Strauss, the German; and our own
lamented Edward McDowell, the American. "From every point of view that
interests the music lover," says Mr. Finck, "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's,
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 rythmic invention and combination
he is inexhaustible, and as orchestrator he ranks among the most
fascinating. To speak of such a man--seven-eighths of whose works are
still music of the future--as a writer of 'dialect,' is surely the
acme of unintelligence. If Grieg did stick to the fjord and never got
out of it, even his German critics ought to thank heaven for it. Grieg
in a fjord is much more picturesque and more interesting to the world
than he would have been in the Elbe or the Spree."

While Norway has neither permanent opera nor permanent orchestras, she
has produced concert virtuosi of a high order. Ole Bull, the s