The Northern Loft

Copenhagen's church lofts and its conservatory formed one circuit. J.P.E. Hartmann moved from Garnisons Kirke to the cathedral, Vor Frue Kirke, in 1843; Niels W. Gade, after Leipzig years beside Mendelssohn at the Gewandhaus, became organist of Holmens Kirke in 1858 and guided the conservatory founded in 1867. At Roskilde, Hans Matthison-Hansen served the old cathedral organ from 1832. His son Gottfred taught organ in Copenhagen and, as organist of Trinitatis from 1881, gave the recital series that introduced new French and German organ music there; Krygell studied with him, while Malling, a pupil of Gade and Hartmann, became cathedral organist in 1900.

Away from Copenhagen the idiom turned towards landscape and song. Edvard Grieg, Leipzig-trained and briefly drawn into Gade's Copenhagen circle, settled at Bergen, conducted Harmonien in the early 1880s, and built a piano style from Norwegian dance rhythms and modal turns. In Stockholm, Emil Sjögren, organist of S:t Johannes from the early 1890s, wrote songs and violin sonatas of French leaning and was admired for his improvising. Oskar Lindberg, first organist of the new Engelbrekt church from 1914 until his death in 1955, worked close to hymn tune and liturgy.

In Finland church music became public music. Oskar Merikanto, trained in Leipzig and Berlin, was organist of St John's Church in Helsinki, toured as a recitalist, wrote many solo songs, and in Pohjan neiti, composed in 1898 and first staged at Viipuri in 1908, wrote the first opera to a Finnish text; his organ pieces stayed in wide parish use. Toivo Kuula, Sibelius's first composition pupil and later a student in Bologna, Leipzig and Paris, worked from Ostrobothnian folk material before he was shot in Viipuri in 1918, aged thirty-four.