Peter Arnold Heise
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Peter Heise (1830 - 1879) was a Danish composer, best known for the opera Drot og Marsk (King and Marshall).
Heise's parents tried to press him into becoming a lawyer, but he scored highly in music at school, so he changed direction. He began writing songs at the age of 19. As a young man he collected several hundred folk songs directly from ordinary people. He used these tunes in Tornerose (Sleeping Beauty) and Bergliot (A Danish historical romance). He studied under Niels Wilhelm Gade, who was a major influence on his style. From 1857 to 1865 he was a teacher and organist at Sorø Academy. He did a setting of Hans Christian Anderson's poem Jylland mellem tvende Have (Jutland between two seas) in 1860.
The opera King and Marshall tells the story of the murder of a medieval king, and contains some folk ballads. It shows a Wagnerian influence. Apart from the opera, he is known for writing what is probably the best Danish piano quintet (1869). His setting of the Shakespeare song When I was and a little tiny boy and Five Erotic songs are also in print. Many of his songs, usually for soprano and piano, concern dreams, folk-tales and the middle ages.
