The incidental music Edvard Grieg composed for Henrik
Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (1867) stands, along with his
Holberg Suite and Piano Concerto, among his most
universally popular orchestral works. By common
consent, the music itself achieved far more for Ibsen's
vast and bewildering dramatic poem than any mere stage
performance alone could have done, and therein lies a
problem. For as Ibsen's English biographer Michael
Meyer writes, Grieg's music "turns the play into a
jolly Hans Andersen fairy tal...(+)
The incidental music Edvard Grieg composed for Henrik
Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (1867) stands, along with his
Holberg Suite and Piano Concerto, among his most
universally popular orchestral works. By common
consent, the music itself achieved far more for Ibsen's
vast and bewildering dramatic poem than any mere stage
performance alone could have done, and therein lies a
problem. For as Ibsen's English biographer Michael
Meyer writes, Grieg's music "turns the play into a
jolly Hans Andersen fairy tale," one thing its author
would certainly never have wished for. And the critic
and playwright George Bernard Shaw, a fervent advocate
of Ibsen's works, similarly concluded that in his music
Grieg "could only catch a few superficial points in the
play instead of getting to the very heart and brain of
it." That may well be the case, but Grieg's Peer Gynt
incidental music has nevertheless become a universal
favorite, and it is not difficult to understand
why.
The most popular numbers are "In the Hall of the
Mountain King" (a textbook example of the dramatic
potency of cumulative crescendo and accelerando,
illustrating Grieg's fondness for Germanic orchestral
effects), in which Peer Gynt bargains for his life
after the assembled Trolls call for his blood, and the
highly evocative "Morning Mood" with its lovely flute
solo and expansive orchestral language -- the music
depicts, incidentally, not a fresh Nordic sunrise, but
rather a Saharan dawn in Act IV of Ibsen's drama! Other
memorable moments include the fragile lyric utterances
of "Solveig's Song," the beguiling "Anitra's Dance,"
the poignant "Death of Åse," "Peer Gynt's Homecoming:
Stormy Evening at Sea," and his eventual "Shipwreck."
As Anthony Burton writes, "the curtain falls as Peer's
long and eventful journey finally comes to its
end."
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