Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...

's Piano Sonata in E minor, Op.

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

 7 was written in 1865 when Grieg was only 22 years old. The sonata was published a year later and revised in 1887. The work was Grieg's only piano sonata

Piano sonata

A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement , two movements , five or even more movements...

 and was dedicated to Danish composer Niels Wilhelm Gade

Niels Wilhelm Gade

Niels Wilhelm Gade was a Danish composer, conductor, violinist, organist and teacher. He is considered the most important Danish musician of his day.-Biography:...

. A 1903 recording exists of Grieg performing his own sonata, showing that he was an accomplished pianist. The sonata has four movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

 with the following tempo markings:

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante molto
3. Alla Menuetto
   Minuet
   A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...
   
   , ma poco più lento
4. Finale: Molto allegro

A typical performance lasts just under 30 minutes.

In the first movement he used a technique probably most famously used by Bach

BACH motif

In music, the BACH motif is the motif, a succession of notes important or characteristic to a piece, B flat, A, C, B natural. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note B natural is written as H and the B flat as B, it forms Johann Sebastian Bach's family name...

 and Shostakovich: his own name, more precisely his initials E-H-G (H being the German name for note B

B (musical note)

B, also known as H, Si or Ti, is the seventh note of the solfège. It lies a chromatic semitone below C and is thus the enharmonic equivalent of C-flat....

), begins melody in the first two bars, which is reiterated in octaves and even echoed by the left hand in bars 13 and 14. He used the same method in his two compositions of the Lyric Pieces

Lyric Pieces

Lyric Pieces is a collection of 66 short pieces for solo piano written by Edvard Grieg. They were published in 10 volumes, from 1867 to 1901...

 "Gade", op.57 Nr. 2 and "Secret", op.57 Nr. 4 using the name of his admired colleague Gade.

In a 1944 letter to Ella Grainger, Percy Grainger

Percy Grainger

George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...

 mentioned planning to orchestrate the sonata. He apparently did so, but only a sketch is extant.
However, an orchestration of the Menuetto by Danish composer Robert Henriques exists.