In his earliest compositions, produced at this period, the traits that afterwards distinguished him are rather hampered by academic influences and uncertainty of intention. The four Pieces, opus 1, by no means devoid of his peculiar flavor, are yet tentative in style and reminiscent of older masters, particularly Chopin and Mendelssohn. Of the Poetic Tone-pictures, opus 3, the second and fourth are the well-established type of graceful _salon_ piece. Number four, indeed, might almost be a strayed leaf from that gentle but hackneyed work which some modern cynic has called the «Songs without Music.» Yet the very next piece is full-fledged Grieg. Here is the short four-measure phrase, transposed a third and repeated, here the descending chromatic harmonizations, here the raucous fifths as of peasant players, that we shall presently learn to look for among the hall-marks of his writings. But more important than any such technical details is the general animation, producing trenchant rhythm, graceful melody, and warm harmony, that always sparkles in Grieg's best work. In the Poetic Tone-pictures he is already himself, though not his mature self.
Being at graduation somewhat bewildered and uncertain as to his future course, Grieg turned his steps in 1863 to the Danish capital, the home of a great man whom he idolized. «One day,» he writes in an autobiographical fragment, «I had gone out with my friend Matthison-Hansen to Klampenborg. Suddenly he nudged my arm.
«'Do you see that little man with the large gray hat?'
«'That's Gade,' he said. 'Shall I introduce you?'
«And without waiting for my reply he took me up to the Professor, with the curt announcement:
«'Professor, a Norwegian friend of mine--a good musician.'
«'No, it is Grieg,' answered Matthison-Hansen.
«'Oh, that's who it is,' said Gade, scanning my insignificant and humble self from head to foot with a searching glance, while I stood, not without awe, face to face with the man whose works I treasured so highly. 'Have you something to show me?'
«'No,' I answered. For the things I had finished didn't seem good enough.
«'Then go home and write a symphony,' recommended Gade.»
It is indicative of the groping stage at which Grieg's genius still paused that he actually tried to write a symphony, two movements of which are preserved in the Symphonic Pieces, opus 14--Grieg, whose talent was symphonic in about the degree that Brahms's was operatic. Contact with the friendly little man in the large gray hat, who has been dubbed the «Danish Mendelssohn,» was doubtless a stimulus to the young Grieg; but other and more radical influences were needed to awaken his personality and bring him to his own. Such influences, however, he actually found in Copenhagen. The «Nordraak» for whom Gade had at first taken him, a fervently patriotic Norwegian of magnetic personality, acquainted him with Norwegian folk-songs and fired him with an ambition to found on them a finished art. Meeting in solemn conclave, with all the self-importance of youth, these two enthusiasts took the oath of musical allegiance to their fatherland. «It was as though scales fell from my eyes,» writes Grieg; «for the first time I learned ... to understand my own nature. We abjured the Gade-Mendelssohn insipid and diluted Scandinavianism, and bound ourselves with enthusiasm to the new path which the northern school is now following.» Nor did their zeal confine itself to composition. In 1864 they founded, with their Danish friends Horneman and Matthison-Hansen, the Euterpe Musical Society, for the performance of Scandinavian works. This institution, which must have reacted stimulatingly on their composition, they supported energetically up to Grieg's departure in 1866 for Christiania. Finally, it was in these years of his freshest vigor, in which he was conscious both of inner power and of outer opportunities, that Grieg met the lady, Miss Nina Hagerup, his cousin, who became in time his wife. It is not to be wondered at that no period in his life was so fruitful as this.