Grieg: Peer Gynt

Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt, Opus 23, is his 1875 incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play with the same name. Grieg's famous Peer Gynt Suites, Opus 46 (1888) and Opus 55 (1891), are two four-movement suites that Grieg extracted from the Peer Gynt music.

Suite Number 1, Opus 46

  • Morning Mood (Morgenstemning) (in E major)

  • The Death of Åse (Åses død) (in B minor)

  • Anitra's Dance (Anitras dans) (in A minor)

  • In the Hall of the Mountain King (I Dovregubbens hall) (in B minor)

Suite No. 2, Op. 55

  • The Abduction of the Bride. Ingrid's Lament (Bruderovet. Ingrids klage) (in G minor)

  • Arabian Dance (Arabisk dans) (in C major)

  • Peer Gynt's Homecoming (Stormy Evening on the Sea) (Peer Gynts hjemfart (Stormfull aften på havet)) (in F-sharp minor)

  • Solveig's Song (Solveigs sang) (in A minor)

Grieg's compositions have been used extensively in movies, television, music education, and popular music. Among the performers who have used his Peer Gynt Suites are the rock band The Who, The Electric Light Orchestra, the band Savatage, and The Foetus Band.

The movies in which the Peer Gynt Suites are used include The Birth of a Nation (1915), the movie M (1931), the Rat Race (2001), The Social Network (2010), and The Bugs Bunny Show cartoons (1960s). In China, the suites were used in a video by China High-Speed Railway about the illegality of smoking on trains. The suites have also been used for television and video games; for example, The Smurfs television cartoons (1980s), and The Witness video game (2016).

Edvard Grieg (1843 – 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is renowned as a nationalist composer, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk-music. He wrote, "I am sure my music has the taste of codfish in it". (Frommer's Norway: 3rd edition, ISBN 978-0-470-10057-8, page 274, 2007.)

Among his best known works are the Piano Concerto in A Minor, the Peer Gynt Suites, and the Lyric Pieces. He originally wrote his popular Holberg Suite for the piano, and later arranged it for string orchestra. Grieg wrote many songs, in which he set lyrics by poets Heinrich Heine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Rudyard Kipling, and others.


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