Christian Sinding
Christian Sinding was a Norwegian composer, music educator, and violinist. He was born in Kongsberg, Buskerud, on January 11, 1856, the son of mining engineer Matthias Wilhelm Sinding and Cecilie Marie Mejdell. His brothers were the sculptor Stephan Sinding and the painter Otto Sinding. He is regarded by many, alongside Edvard Grieg, as one of Norway's leading Romantic composers.
After his father's death, Sinding moved with his mother and family from Lillehammer to Christiania, now Oslo. He studied with Gudbrand Bøhn and L. M. Lindeman and worked for two years at the Hals brothers' piano factory. He then entered the Leipzig Conservatory, where he initially studied violin with Henry Schradiek and music theory with Salomon Jadassohn from 1874 to 1877. He interrupted his studies after receiving an unfavourable assessment, played in Oslo orchestras conducted by Edvard Grieg and Johan Severin Svendsen, and developed an interest in composition. Returning to Leipzig in 1879, he studied composition with Carl Reinecke.
His Violin Sonata was performed in Leipzig and his Piano Sonata in Oslo in 1879, though he later destroyed these and most of his other early compositions. A Norwegian government scholarship allowed him to live independently and move to Munich, where he encountered Richard Wagner's musical world. Wagner, as well as Franz Liszt, influenced Sinding's mature style. Although he received regular financial support from Norway, he spent forty years in Germany. In 1920 and 1921 he served as a visiting professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Sinding's breakthrough came at a Christiania concert on December 19, 1885, which included the String Quartet in A major, later destroyed; Old Tunes for voice and piano, later published as Op. 1, to poems by Gottfried Keller; and the Piano Quintet in E minor, Op. 5. Norwegian critics responded enthusiastically, particularly to the quintet, which was praised for its originality, harmony, and beauty. The same work was successful at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on January 19, 1889. His Symphony No. 1 in D minor premiered in Christiania in 1890 and was warmly received by critics and audiences.
His output includes four symphonies, three violin concertos, a piano concerto, chamber music, choral works, and about 250 songs. The Second Symphony in D major, Op. 83, was premiered in Berlin under Felix Weingartner on March 22, 1907. Sinding completed his only opera, The Holy Mountain, Op. 111, after three years of work; it premiered on April 19, 1914. His Fourth Symphony, Winter and Spring, Op. 129, received its first performance in Bergen under Harald Heide on January 13, 1936.
Sinding's best-known work is the third piece from Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 32: Rustle of Spring, composed in 1896. His songs, especially the cycles Opp. 18, 28, and 75, have been compared with Grieg's achievements in the genre. His music incorporates traces of Norwegian folk music and folklore but is less characteristically Norwegian than Grieg's. In the Piano Concerto, dedicated to Erika Nissen, he used classical forms while linking the movements through related themes; the principal themes of the second and third movements transform the opening theme of the first. The second movement approaches Debussy's Impressionist style.
Sinding was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1905, became a Commander of the Order of Vasa that year, and was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1909. He became a Commander of the Order of St. Olav in 1916 and received its Grand Cross in 1938. He died in Oslo on December 3, 1941.