Trolling Around with Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No 1
The Backstory
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46
Welcome, I'm Edvard Grieg, and here I'll tell you the backstory of my Peer Gynt Suite No 1. You'll learn how a play I agreed to score only reluctantly in 1874 led to music that I later gathered into a suite that people still love. If you'd like to test yourself, open the Trainer here , because my fellow composers and I teach you on this site to recognize our pieces when they play.
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A Request I Tried to Dodge
In 1874 Henrik Ibsen asked me to write music for his play Peer Gynt, and I agreed only reluctantly. Ibsen was already a giant of the theatre, so saying no wasn't easy, but saying yes felt like being handed a very large suitcase with no handle. The play is a long poem full of trolls, travels and wild turns, and it doesn't sit still long enough to be set to music. I accepted anyway, and I had no idea how many people would end up knowing the result.A Terribly Unmanageable Subject
In August 1874 I wrote to a friend that the work was moving slowly and that Peer Gynt was a terribly unmanageable subject. I meant it, too, because every scene seemed to pull in a different direction. My wife Nina later wrote that the power of the poem convinced me I was the right man for the job. I think she was right, since once the poem had its hold on me I stopped arguing with it.Opening Night in Christiania
I wrote the music over 1874 and 1875, and it was first heard together with the play on 24 February 1876 in Christiania, which we now call Oslo. That evening was the premiere of the play with its music, not of the suite you may know from concerts. The suite came later, and I'll explain how in a moment. On that night the music was there to serve the drama, and it did its work in the dark between the scenes.Patchwork on Demand
Working for the theatre was not always a pleasure, and I complained that the Swedish theatre management dictated how long each number should be and in what order it came. I called the result patchwork, because I was cutting and fitting pieces to a plan that wasn't mine. A composer who likes to let a melody breathe finds that sort of schedule rather confining. Still, some of the best tunes of my life came out of those cramped conditions.From Stage Music to Concert Hall
More than ten years after the premiere, I picked eight pieces from the incidental music and arranged them into two suites of four movements each. Suite No. 1 was published in 1888 by Edition Peters in Leipzig, and it is the one with the four pieces people recognize most quickly. I kept refining it, and I revised it again around 1891 and 1892. Once the music was freed from the stage, it no longer needed the play to make sense, and audiences took to it at once.Four Courses, One Meal
A movement is simply one self-contained part of a larger piece, much like the courses of a dinner, where each dish has its own character but all of them belong to the same meal. The suite opens with Morning Mood, a calm and gently flowing piece, and then comes Åse's Death, which is slow, hushed and sad. After that comes Anitra's Dance, light and delicate, played by strings with a triangle adding a small sparkle. The meal ends with In the Hall of the Mountain King, which starts almost in a whisper and builds into a loud, frantic rush.Who Is Anitra, and Why Is Åse Here?
Each piece comes from a particular moment in the play, and knowing that makes the music easier to follow. Åse is Peer's mother, and her music is quiet and crooning because it accompanies her death. Anitra is a Bedouin chieftain's daughter who charms Peer while he is posing as a prophet, and I wanted her dance to be soft, delicate and beautiful. Peer is a man who talks his way into trouble, and these two women are among the few people in the story who see him clearly.A Little Irony in the Mountain
In the Hall of the Mountain King accompanies Peer's dream-like entrance into the troll king's hall. The theme begins slowly and quietly in the low instruments, and then it climbs higher and moves faster, passing from one group of players to another. I once said the piece reeks of cowpats and ultra-Norwegianism, and I hoped its irony would be felt. Many listeners hear only the thrilling chase, and that is fine, though I did mean the trolls to be a little ridiculous.The Troll King Goes to the Cinema
Long after my time, film-makers discovered that this music suits tension remarkably well. You can hear it in The Birth of a Nation from 1915, and in Fritz Lang's M from 1931, where Lang himself is heard whistling the Mountain King theme. In 2010 The Social Network used an arrangement by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I never expected my troll tune to turn up in a film about a website, but it seems it can follow anyone anywhere.The Complete Score Arrives Late
The full incidental score, with its soloists, choir and orchestra, was not published until 1908, a year after I died. Johan Halvorsen edited it, so the complete music finally reached the public thanks to him. My Suite No. 2, Op. 55, had appeared much earlier, in 1893, as a companion to the first. It's a little odd that the pieces I extracted for the concert hall became famous long before the whole work did, but the music has always found its own way.---
So that's how a job I took on with some reluctance found its way out into the world. Looking back, I'm still a little surprised by it. The music began as part of a stage production, first heard with the play in 1876. Yet it went on to live a second life in the concert hall, after I gathered four of the pieces into a suite in 1888. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Peer Gynt Suite No 1? I hope it gives you something new to listen for the next time the flute begins Morning Mood, or the low strings start creeping toward the Mountain King's hall. There is still a good deal more to explore in Peer Gynt Suite No 1. You could look at how each of the four pieces is put together, or at the places its music has turned up since. My second suite is waiting for you as well, if you'd like to hear what else I took from the play. If you're curious to go further, please click on the links below and keep exploring Peer Gynt Suite No 1. I'd be glad to have you along.