I saw the new flag hoisted above our nation: that flag which
adorns the harbors of the world, and which, at half–mast, has
mourned many of the men who, in the face of opposition, labored
to raise it. In this flag, floating above us, and the Constitution
under us, the Norse house has its roof and floor. The house can
now be seen, and has a name among the nations. But this does not
complete it, and it would be a sin to leave it half finished,
exposed to wind and weather. There are still many rooms to be
furnished, if the house is to be occupied by a nation claiming
civilization and culture. Between the Danish and the Norse drama
there is now drawn a tolerably definite line; but round about on
the home walls hang the pictures of all nations, brought by
wanderers from every corner of the globe—as might be expected in a
sailor’s home, which ours is. There is so much that is foreign and
so little of our own! Even our home subjects are worked up in
foreign lands, by our own homesick artists, it is true, but
bearing on them the servile mark of exile, set there by a
borrowed, foreign brush. I have spent many a sad hour with these
men,—exiled not so much because of our national poverty as of our
national lack of culture,—wanderers, to be met with the world
over. We have talked of the dream cherished in common by all Norse
artists: the coming home and uniting all the forces in schools in
which the national art could be developed to an independent
manhood, and Norway be given the honor which foreigners now take
from her. When these longings become too intense for control, the
exiles fly haphazard home—painters, sculptors, and musicians
striking against the old, gray, naked cliffs of their country’s
insensibility. Forgetting old and futile efforts in the new, one
now and then manages to gain a slight foot–hold; but the rest
must abroad again, to repeat the old story. This, the history of
our country’s attitude towards art is a disgrace to the nation,
and a crime against those men who have given their all to art, and
are driven to sell our honor abroad.
My calling in this world is the Norse music. I am no painter, no
sculptor, no writer. I am a musician, and, being one, I ought to
be trusted when I say that I hear a wonderfully deep and
characteristic sound–board vibrating in the breasts of my people.
The desire of my life has been to give it strings; that it may
find voice, and its deep tones penetrate the temple as Norway’s
church music bears the words of the minister to the hearts of the
congregation; that on the battle–field it may remind the country’s
defenders of their hearth–stones; that it may be heard from our
orchestras and from a National art which can rise only from this
source; that it may sound from the pianos round the land,
cultivating, ennobling the family–life more than all the languages
of the world, in charm and intelligibility unsurpassed! I have
spent my life in striving to climb these gray cliffs with the
other Norse artists, by trying to overcome the denationalized
musical taste. Now, I propose to my colleagues, the musicians,
that we each lend a hand in a united effort to scale the rocks and
reach the height; that we found an Academy for musical
instruction. It may be that we shall at last plant the flag on the
heights, and be able to reach a helping hand down to others who
are toiling upward!