Edvard Hagerup Grieg (June 15, 1843 – September 4, 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who was also of partial Scottish descent. He was born and died in Bergen. He married his first cousin, Nina Hagerup, in 1867. Marriages between cousins were far more common in an era of limited residential mobility.

Educated at the Leipzig Conservatory, and later by the Danish composer Niels W. Gade, Grieg is noted as a nationalist composer, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk music. Early works include a symphony and a piano sonata. He also wrote three sonatas for piano and violin, and his many short pieces for piano — often built on Norwegian folk dances — led some to call him the Chopin of the north.

Among Grieg's best-known pieces are his Piano Concerto in A minor, the Holberg Suite (for string orchestra), and ten volumes of Lyric Pieces (for piano).

He is also well known for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, especially for Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King, which appears in many places throughout popular culture. The former was a favorite of Carl Stalling who often used it for morning establishing shots in Warner Bros. cartoons; the latter was famously used in the 1931 film M, in which Peter Lorre's character, a serial killer who preys on children, whistles it.

External links

• Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen (http://www.troldhaugen.no/default.asp?sp=2)
• Biography of Grieg (http://www.mnc.net/norway/GRIEG.HTM)

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