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 shoulders, 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.