Composer’s Atelier

Grieg’s home-cum-atelier was built c.1891. He needed peace and quiet in order to compose, so a place where he could withdraw from the often noisy main building, with its continuous stream of visitors, plagued by the clattering of dishes from the kitchen. So Grieg would go to his atelier every day and compose there. The first opus that he completed here was the opus 54 set of Lyric Pieces. These include Grieg’s only nocturne, which the composer furnished with the Italian title ‘Notturno’, possibly out of longing for the warm nights in Italy, which he was missing in that cold and rainy summer of 1891, when he suffered from rheumatism and a heavy cold. Consequently, he had a wood-burning stove installed at home.

After the composer’s death, the little house was transferred for some time to the open-air museum on Bygdøy in Oslo, but when the museum in Troldhaugen opened, in 1928, it returned to its original spot by the fjord.