It's one of the few surviving works by the Norwegian composer and violin virtuoso Ole Bull. After a shaky start ('After living for a while in Germany, where he pretended to study law,' says Wikipdeia, 'he went to Paris but fared badly for a year or two'), Bull built a hugely successful international concert career, playing 274 concerts in England in the year 1837 alone. Along the way, he gave the young Edvard Grieg - Bull's brother was married to Grieg's aunt - a helping hand, and played his part in asserting Norwegian national identity and independence.
Bull had a huge success in America too, and in 1852 bought a tract of land in Pennsylvania, meaning to establish a Norwegian colony, New Norway, with his own castle built on the highest point. The castle was never completed and the whole project eventually failed. The land is now the site of Ole Bull State Park. Towards the end of his life, Bull bought an island south of Bergen and built a palatial villa there (that's a view of the courtyard below), in which he died in 1880.
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