Nina Grieg

Nina Grieg

Nina Grieg (* as Nina Hagerup November 24, 1845 in Bergen ; † December 9, 1935 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish - Norwegian singer ( soprano ), singing teacher and pianist . She was a cousin and the wife of Edvard Grieg . Like him, she grew up in mountains. In Copenhagen she received her training as a singer. It was there that the engagement and marriage to Edvard Grieg took place. She then supported her husband's artistic work and became known as an outstanding interpreter of his songs. She went on concert tours with him in many European countries. After Edvard Grieg's death in 1907, she returned to Copenhagen. There she took care of his musical legacy for 28 years.

Life

The mother: Adeline Hagerup

Childhood in mountains

Nina Hagerup came as the second of the three daughters of Herman Hagerup (1816–1900) and his wife Adeline Werligh Hagerup nee. Falck (1813–1907) was born in Bergen. Her mother, an actress of Danish origin, was a sister of Gesine Grieg, the mother of Edvard Grieg. Nina had known her cousin Edvard, who was two and a half years older and also grew up in Bergen, from an early age. The Hagerup family took part in the musical life in Bergen and also attended the musical societies that Gesine Grieg, a respected piano teacher, organized in their home.

Copenhagen

Nina Hagerup and Edvard Grieg lost sight of each other when the Hagerup family moved to Copenhagen in 1853 . Nina Hagerup was eight years old at the time. She received her vocal training from Carl Helsted in Copenhagen .

In April 1863 Edvard Grieg came to Copenhagen. There he met his cousin again. The two got along very well, met often and made music together. At Christmas 1864 Edvard Grieg confessed his love to her. The engagement was refused by both families, especially by Adeline Hagerup, who did not trust Edvard Grieg to be able to offer her daughter a secure existence. She said: "He is nothing and he has nothing and he writes music that nobody wants to hear." Her sharp opposition led to a rift for years. It took Nina's parents a year to give permission to publicize the engagement. During the engagement, Edvard Grieg wrote something about Nina in his diary almost every day, including adorable declarations of love. He wrote her letters almost as often.

Nina Grieg with her daughter (1868)

Edvard and Nina Grieg (undated photograph on a postcard)

Marriage to Edvard Grieg

On June 11, 1867, Nina Hagerup and Edvard Grieg married in Copenhagen in the absence of both parents. The young couple moved to Christiania . The next year, when Edvard Grieg's recognition as a composer began to emerge, there was a reconciliation with his in-laws. In 1868 the daughter Alexandra was born, who died of meningitis in 1869 at the age of 13 months . At about the same time, Nina Grieg had a miscarriage . Although Nina and Edvard Grieg wanted a family with many children, there were no more offspring. They tried to overcome their grief by focusing on the music.

In the first years of their marriage, Edvard Grieg earned an income primarily from piano lessons and at the same time Nina Grieg as a singing teacher. Edvard Grieg soon became more and more successful and well-known as a composer and conductor, supported by his wife, who was very committed to her husband's work from the start. She was his musical partner, artistic advisor and assistant. Many of Edvard Grieg's letters show that she was an important advisor for his compositional work. He dedicated his songs op. 4 and op. 18 to her. With him she went on numerous concert tours through Europe. In the Grieg archive of the public library in Bergen there are more than 300 online concert programs, with which Edvard and Nina Grieg's travels and performances in Norway, Germany, Denmark, England, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Belgium can be traced.

Nina Grieg was able to fascinate the audience with expressive performances. She sang among others for the Norwegian and Swedish royal families and for the British Queen Victoria . Edvard Grieg regarded her as his best interpreter, according to a diary entry from 1905 even as the "only true interpreter" of his songs. She not only sang his songs, mostly with her husband as accompanist on the piano, but also performed pieces for piano four hands with him. Edvard Grieg rejected his wife's independent concert activity, which he later regretted. Nina Grieg was also a sought-after singing teacher.

The multi-layered collaboration between the two idiosyncratic artistic personalities regularly led to conflicts and arguments. In 1883 there was a serious marriage crisis. Edvard Grieg spoke very little to his wife and for the first time in 16 years went on a concert tour of Europe alone in the fall of 1883. An affair with the Norwegian painter Leis Schjelderup may have led to this estrangement. However, Edvard Grieg continued to write letters to his wife. Through the mediation of his friend Frants Beyer, the reconciliation was achieved in January 1884. The couple met in Leipzig and went on a reconciliation trip from there to Rome, where they stayed for four months.

The Grieg couple were able to build their own house in the south of Bergen in 1885, a Victorian-style villa that Edvard Grieg named " Troldhaugen " after his wife suggested the name. The Grieg couple regularly invited musicians and other artists to their new home. On further trips through Europe they met artists such as Tchaikovsky and the young Frederick Delius in Leipzig in 1888 . Delius, who was in close correspondence with the couple and especially with Nina Grieg, dedicated two collections of twelve songs with texts by Norwegian poets to her between 1888 and 1890.

Return to Copenhagen

Nina Grieg, ca.1934

Edvard Grieg died in Troldhaugen in 1907. Nina Grieg moved to Copenhagen with her one year older sister Antonie ("Tonny") Hagerup, who had remained single, and lived with her there. Troldhaugen served as a summer residence. Nina Grieg dedicated the rest of her life to the memory of her husband and the dissemination of his work. She worked with music publishers on new editions. She monitored the information in Grieg biographies as well as the quality of performances of his works and gave musicians seeking advice information on the correct interpretation. She still had numerous students whose concerts she took part as a piano accompanist. Nina Grieg, like her husband, confessed to Unitarianism and belonged to the Unitarian community of Copenhagen, for which she made donations and concerts to finance an organ.

In old age, Nina Grieg suffered from kidney disease and declining eyesight, most recently she was almost blind. She outlived her husband by 28 years and died two weeks after her 90th birthday in 1935. After her death, her remains were buried in Troldhaugen.

Web links

Commons : Nina Grieg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Nina Grieg Lexicon article from the MUGI project (Music and Gender on the Internet) at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Lena Haselmann: Nina Grieg Article in the MUGI project (Music and Gender on the Internet) at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater.
2. ^ Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 198
3. ^ ^{A b c} Leah Kennedy: The Life and Works of Edvard Grieg , Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects, Utah State University , 2011, p. 11.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Edvard and Nina Grieg Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography.
5. ↑ Konsertprogram bergenbibliotek.no (Norwegian), see Konserter hvor Edvard og Nina Grieg opptrådte (concerts at which Edvard and Nina Grieg performed), including the individual countries.