Norwegian composer Ole Olsen was an important successor to Edvard Grieg. He wrote operas influenced by Wagner and full-scale orchestral music, but he also produced a large amount of music at the juncture of classical composition with such gebrauchsmusik genres as church music and military music. Olsen was born July 4, 1850, in the northern Norwegian town of Hammerfest. His father was a local church organist and writer of doggerel, and Olsen learned to play the organ early, subbing for his father at church as early as age seven. In 1865 he was sent to Trondheim for a carpentry apprenticeship, but he also sought out musical training from Just Lindemann (the organist at Trondheim Cathedral) and his brother Fredrik. A German architect contracted for design work at the cathedral heard Olsen play the organ and contacted his friend Heinrich Schleinitz, director of the Leipzig Conservatory. The recommendation led to Olsen's studies in organ and composition at the conservatory from 1870 to 1874 and to the composition of his Symphony in G major and his first of his four operas, Stig Hvide. In 1874 Olsen moved to Oslo (then Christiania), becoming a music teacher and later an orchestral and choral conductor of both civilian and military groups. Except for sojourns abroad, he lived in Oslo for the rest of his life. He died there on November 4, 1927.

In addition to the single symphony and the operas, written between 1872 and 1910, Olsen wrote a Trombone Concerto, two symphonic poems, Asgårdsreien and Alfedans, a Petite Suite for piano and strings, keyboard music, a good deal of choral music including an oratorio, Nidaros (1897), songs, and many military marches. Some of his music was influenced by the Joik folk music genre of northern Norway, examples of which he collected during his work with the Norwegian military. After decades of neglect of Olsen's music, the Petite Suite and the Symphony in G major have received multiple recent recordings, but his operas await preservation in bytes. ~ James Manheim, Rovi