Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen on 15 June 1843, and was to remain extremely fond of his birthplace all his life, although in later years his delicate health could not withstand its climate for the whole of the year. His debt to Bergen and the consequence of being a Bergen man, he extolled in a speech to the people of the city on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday: ‘It is, you see, not only Bergen's art and Bergen's science I have drawn substance from; it is not only Holberg, Welhaven and Ole Bull I have learnt from. … No, the whole of the Bergen environment which surrounds me has been my material. Bergen's nature, Bergen's exploits and enterprises of every kind have inspired me …’

Grieg's musical talents seem to have come mostly from his mother's side of the family. She had studied singing, piano and theory in Hamburg, and was well known in Bergen as a pianist and poet. Grieg's sister Maren became a piano teacher, and his elder brother John was an accomplished cellist who also studied in Leipzig for a time. Grieg's own early predilection was for the spoken word, and his first ambition was to be a parson. In ‘Min forste succes’ (My First Success) he tells how he used to improvise sermons and declaim them to his long-suffering family. Even though music was to become his life, the early love of words shows itself time and again in his attention to detail in the poems he set, as well as in his articles and vast correspondence. His introduction to music was no doubt hearing his mother play the piano; her favourite composers were said to be Mozart, Beethoven, Weber and Chopin, and Grieg began to have lessons from her at the age of six. However, ‘Min forste succes’ describes his even earlier first encounter with the instrument: ‘Why not begin by remembering the strange, mystical satisfaction of stretching my arms up towards the piano and discovering not a melody. Far from it! No, it had to be harmony. First a third, then a triad, then a four-note chord.