Recently, it’s been my habit, during my morning writing sessions, to tune my TV to some kind of classical music collection from out of the great variety available on YouTube.
Edvard Grieg is always a good choice for me, and I’ve found a couple really weird Grieg collections lately. One of them is posted above. The quotations it features seem dubious to me, and the art was obviously created by AI. Yet the resulting dreamlike concoction seems to suit my so-called creative process.
If you take the time to watch this video, you’ll notice a couple odd images featuring large frogs. I did some web searches about “Grieg’s frog,” and discovered that the composer did, in fact, have a frog, which he kept in his pocket. It was (I was relieved to learn) not a living frog, but a toy frog (rubber, apparently). It was his good luck charm, and he liked to rub it before performing in public.
I learned of that fact in this article, which goes on to tell a truly bizarre story – one that seems to me absolutely too good to be true. I can’t find it mentioned anywhere else online, so I reserve the right to doubt it. But it goes like this (excerpted as published):
Once, the great Norwegian composer was giving a splendid concert in Oslo. In the beginning, he decided to make a programme including only his own compositions, but then he changed his mind and replaced the finishing number with a composition by Beethoven.
As it was usual, the following day, the concert reviews were published in newspapers. It should be remembered that Edvard Grieg, as many talented people, had a lot of ill-wising critics. And one of them, he had an especially strong dislike for Edvard Grieg’s music, wrote a humiliating critic article about the composer’s concert. The number which drew particular attention of the critic was the last one, he disliked that the most. The critic mentioned venomously that the composition was simply ridiculous and absolutely unacceptable.
Having read the critical article, Edvard Grieg called the critic on the phone and said:
– This is Beethoven’s spirit disturbing you. I should tell you that it was me who had composed the finishing composition of Edvard Grieg’s concert!The disgraced critic felt far too awful as it was, and the joke became the last drop, he died from a heart attack. (Credit: CMuse)
It’s always sad when anyone dies, of course, but I don’t think any artist can help feeling a little wistful as he reads that anecdote.
From a middling Amazon Kindle through a $20 Bluetooth Adapter to a vintage amplifier feeding 40 year old budget speakers I am enjoying amazing audio of a remarkable composition. Thanks.
Oddly enough, at least one version of this collection includes the tune to “We Three Kings,” which Grieg most certainly did not write.
Yup, I heard that. One thing that really drew me to my 600 plus classical CDs was my first hearing Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
One tip — if you can find a recording of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” using choral supplementation, jump on it. It’s amazing.
Just remembered the 1970 blockbuster film Song of Norway, an attempt to repeat the success of Sound of Music, My Fair Lady. It was based on an Opereta that used Grief compositions that was highly regarded. Unfortunately it was a huge disaster. I recall it was a great disappointment when we viewed it.
Yes, the original stage play had some success, but the movie was just awful — except for the music and the Norwegian scenery. But the film ended without really resolving the plot problem, and the performances weren’t very good. I remember a review in (I think) Life Magazine, where the critic talked about one actor singing to another in an empty restaurant — “And if you wonder how a restaurant with two actors in it can be empty, you’ve never seen these guys.”