The early 1880s were to prove another difficult period in Grieg's life, both artistically and personally. He was not even really happy in Lofthus any more, feeling, as he recalled in a letter to Gerhard Schjelderup in September 1903, that ‘the mountains had nothing more to tell me’and that the area as a permanent place to live was too confining. Neither was musical life in Bergen much better than in Christiania; the same petty problems of administration cropped up and there were arguments over his salary as director of Harmonien. He conducted the orchestra from the autumn of 1880 to the spring of 1882 and once again used up almost all his energies in the process, so that he had neither the strength nor the inclination, let alone the time, to teach and compose.

Always ready to turn the blame for lack of compositions on outside factors, Grieg wrote to Max Abraham in August 1881 that, perhaps, if he had a stipend, he would feel obliged to compose to justify it. Abraham promptly replied offering 3,000 marks for a series of works over the ensuing twelve months. Grieg hastily wrote again to say that he had meant the idea as a joke and although an informal contract was established, the first of the promised pieces, the Cello Sonata, was not despatched to Abraham until the spring of 1883.

It has been suggested that Grieg needed outside inspiration and initiative in order to compose. Certainly he was a Romantic composer in times that were turning against Romanticism, and he was too unsure of himself to follow his own inclinations. Therefore the non-productive patches continued to occur periodically and to depress him, and he tended to blame these times on all sorts of things – Leipzig's supposedly poor training, his personal relationships, his working conditions. Benestad and Schjelderup-Ebbe have noted the lack of reference to Nina in Grieg's letters to Beyer until later in his life, when he frequently expressed his gratitude to her as a wife and as an interpreter of and ambassadress for his songs. It is significant that from late 1880 to 1883, when the relationship between them was at its lowest ebb, Grieg wrote no songs. In fact the only compositions from this period are the Norwegian Dances, op. 35, for piano duet.