Background
When Ole Bornemann Bull was 14 he had persuaded a grandmother to buy him printed copies of the Caprices of Niccolò Paganini, works that the great violinist had written for himself. He was born in Lyso, Bergen, Norway, 1810.
When Ole Bornemann Bull was 14 he had persuaded a grandmother to buy him printed copies of the Caprices of Niccolò Paganini, works that the great violinist had written for himself. He was born in Lyso, Bergen, Norway, 1810.
Bull had no use for his Latin studies. Unsurprisingly, Bull failed the Latin exam that was given as part of his application to attend the University of Christiania (now the University of Oslo) in 1828. At first a pupil of the violinist Paulsen, and subsequently self-taught, he was intended for the church, but failed in his examinations in 1828 and became a musician, directing the philharmonic and dramatic societies at Bergen.
Although despondent at the failure of his university application, Bull soon found work as a violinist with a local theater orchestra and was soon promoted to temporary conductor. That was not the end of Bull's nonmusical education, however.
An intense nationalist, Bull did much to inspire the Norwegian cultural renaissance of the 19th century. In 1850 he founded the Norwegian National Theater in Bergen, and he appointed the 23-year-old Henrik Ibsen as playwright and stage manager. Bull was also the first to encourage the talents of Edvard Grieg.
Beginning with his first tour in 1843, Bull was for almost 40 years an immensely popular artist in America. In 1852 he made an abortive attempt to found a Norwegian colony in Pennsylvania, which cost him much of his fortune. Bull died at his home, Lysöen,Lysoen, outside Bergen, on Aug. 17, 1880.
Bull's parents had hoped that he would learn Latin and go on to study Lutheran theology, but by the time he was eight he had filled in with the string quartet himself and had bee
n made a student member of a local orchestra called the Harmonien.
Opinions differed about his wild, unorthodox style of playing the violin, but in many countries he remained a household name for decades. Ole Bornemann Bull was born in an apothecary shop, his family's business, on February 5, 1810, in Bergen, Norway. One of his teachers, according to Bull biographer Einar Haugen, shouted in frustration: “Take hold of your fiddle, Ole. He was not the first European artist to mount an American tour, but the scope of his activities in America (and also in Cuba and Quebec) exceeded anything that had been seen up to that point, and set the stage for the publicity extravaganza that later accompanied the arrival of Swedish opera star Jenny Lind.
Ole Bornemann Bull was married to Alexandrine Félicie Villeminot. They had six children, only two of whom survived him. Alexandrine died in 1862. His first wife died in 1862, and eight years later he married Sara Thorp of Madison, the daughter of a prosperous lumber merchant from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.