The Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg stands as one of the most beloved musicians in the nation's history. In 2007, there was a Norwegian-led international project called Grieg07 which commemorated the 100-year anniversary of Grieg's death. The project had exhibitions, music festivals, concerts and conferences and seminars in numerous Norwegian and international cities, under three broad headings of ‘Grieg the Composer’, ‘Grieg the Humanist’ and ‘Grieg the Sampler’. The heading involving ‘Grieg the Humanist’ organised a conference at which the contributions of this book had their origins. The book started as ‘conference proceedings’ but the articles appear to be much more in-depth and substantial than typical conference papers, owing to the reworked nature of written work. The 10 essays are broken into two parts of five articles each; Part 1 about music and identity in Norway, as the title implies; and Part 2 about music and identity beyond Norway's borders. It is this second act which is problematic.

The first part is by far the better half. All the essays engage with Grieg – nominally one of the points of the book – and various issues on identity. Hans Weisethaunet begins, appropriately, with an article entitled ‘Music and national identity: Grieg and beyond’. Weisenthaunet touches on almost every aspect the other authors will explore in greater detail, from Norwegian identity to the use of folk musics and nationalism. He notes that Grieg was influenced by the National-Romantic ideals of the age involving nationalist composers, especially in Germany, but that Grieg also based much of his work on Norwegian folk music. Despite Grieg's obvious use of patriotic tones, he was nonetheless open to non-Norwegian music and musicians, especially his praise for Mozart and his use of the Dutch Concertgebouw Orchestra for an 1898 Bergen festival. Grieg wanted to be ‘cosmopolitan’ (p. 57), but has regularly been cited as simply ‘Norwegian’, a point that Susan McClary notes in her article.

Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby explores the idea of an ‘Oriental’ Norway in relation to the rest of Europe through an investigation of both Ibsen's text and Grieg's music for Peer Gynt. She notes that Norway has always played a peripheral role in relation to mainland Europe, explaining that at the Paris World Exposition 1867 – coincidentally the same year Peer Gynt was released – Norway was relegated to a small garden with the Arabian nations. Since Act Four of Peer Gynt is set in the ‘Orient’ of Morocco and Egypt, this association is highlighted further. Similarly, musically Grieg follows his European contemporaries in writing Oriental-style pieces for this ‘Other’ people. Grieg's piece ‘Anitra's Dance’ has musical similarities to French composer Saint-Saëns' ‘Danse des prêtresses de Dagon’ from his opera Samson et Dalila. Indeed, ‘Grieg himself describes his own musical depiction of Morocco as Turkish’ (p. 113), confusing ideas of a national music even further. In short, through an analysis of the 1867 World Exposition and both the text and music of Peer Gynt, Høgåsen-Hallesby explains how Norway was marginalised as ‘Oriental’ by mainland Europe in the 1870s.

One of the more touching essays is Brynjulf Stige's exploration of music therapy through Grieg. Stige details how the Bergen-based Upbeat, a music therapy group of six adults with Down's syndrome, performed Opus 12, No. 2 from Grieg's Lyric Pieces. Although not performed in the traditional way or tempo, the group nonetheless performed with pride and pleasure and was accepted. The lesson, Stige explains, is that the meanings and interpretations of music ‘can be recharged and exchanged, and thus also changed’ (p. 159), depending on context.

While Part 1 deals with Grieg and Norwegian identities, Part 2 is all about identity ‘beyond’ the borders. The first essay, Erik Steinskog's analysis of Duke Ellington's Peer Gynt Suite in Norway should have acted as a good bridge for the book. Steinskog offers a unique exploration into the differences, especially within Norway, of Ellington's work as a black foreigner using the ‘low’ or ‘common’ style of jazz as opposed to the white, native-born Grieg using ‘high’ classical music. Yet only two of the other works in Part 2 even mention Grieg: Invill Morlandstø's investigation of Cuban popular music and Annemette Kirkegaard's analysis of African Islamic pop, and both of these in the introduction more as a point of reference. Neither Paul Gilroy's essay on Bob Marley nor Thomas Solomon's short study of ‘Turkish rap’ in Germany make any mention of Grieg or Norway. What the five essays of Part 2 do have in common, however, is the expectation of music providing a multiplicity of identities. Ellington provides a platform to be both an American jazz performer and Norwegian transplant, because the music has travelled across the Atlantic twice which ‘brings out some of the cosmopolitan potential of this music’ (p. 180). Bob Marley's music allows him to be both a symbol of the oppressed and one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Cuban popular music highlights both the nationalism for the country, but also an acceptance of ‘the diasporic consciousness expressed in Castro's statement “We're all Africans”’ (p. 215). Similarly, African Islamic pop invokes different identities depending on regionality, everything from ‘romanticized exoticism’ to ‘making the Islamic social movement visible during the transition to multi-party democracy’ (p. 241). However, despite the emphasis on identity, Part 2 seems disconnected from the first.

Overall, Music and Identity in Norway and Beyond provides a variety of tools with which to evaluate the uses of music in the construction of an identity or multiple identities. While it attempts to bridge both classical and popular music studies, it does not seem entirely present in either. Further research is necessary in both fields, but trying to connect Turkish rap or African Islamic hip hop via Grieg was not successful at this attempt.