ABSTRACT
Since Edvard Grieg depended so heavily upon his wife’s voice and her interpretive ability when writing his songs, it would be instructive to know what Nina’s voice was like, and what her impressions upon others were. Nina was gifted with musical instincts and an unusually keen ear, which was attuned to the nuances of the poetry that she declaimed in song. There exists a single recording of Nina’s voice, on a wax cylinder from the year 1889. Through the noise of the primitive recording, her voice shimmers as a silvery, medium-light lyric soprano, with absolutely pure intonation, a natural, easy vibrato, warmly resonant on the vowels, and skilled in dynamic shadings. Later in life Edvard admitted that he underrated his wife’s talent, and took for granted her unusual gift. His wife’s singing had created within Grieg an ideal for the performance of song, and therefore he wrote his songs with specific demands in mind.
