Niels Gade

He was intended for his father's trade, but his passion for a musician's career, made evident by the ease and skill with which he learned to play upon a number of instruments, was not to be denied.

[3] His work attracted the notice of the king, who gave the composer a Danish government fellowship which enabled him to go to Leipzig and Italy.

[2] Moving to Leipzig, Gade taught at the Conservatory there, working as an assistant conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and befriending Mendelssohn, who had an important influence on his music.

[4] Robert Schumann wrote a long enthusiastic article describing Gade as an exceptional young musician having the looks of Mozart and the four letters of whose name were those of the four strings of the violin.

At Mendelssohn's death in 1847, Gade was appointed to his position as chief conductor in Leipzig but was forced to return to Copenhagen in the spring of 1848 when war broke out between Prussia and Denmark.

Gade was joint director of the Copenhagen Conservatory with Hartmann (whose daughter he married in 1852) and Holger Simon Paulli, became court conductor in 1861, and was pensioned by the government in 1876.

An important influence on a number of Scandinavian composers, he encouraged and taught Edvard Grieg, Carl Nielsen, Louis Glass, Elfrida Andrée, Otto Malling, August Winding and Asger Hamerik.