Peer Gynt

Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt (1867) is a monument of Norwegian theatre, and when writing it he asked Edvard Grieg to compose music that would fit into the action. Grieg responded with 26 individual movements, lasting 90 minutes in total. And though he complained of being forced to keep each number short, the music he wrote was of extremely high quality, contributing greatly to the success of the original five-hour-long Peer Gynt production. The play relates the story of a peasant lad whose wanderings yield wealth and fame but never happiness. The world Ibsen depicted mixed reality with strong infusions of fantasy and folk symbolism, and inspired Grieg to write his most evocative and sharply characterful orchestral music. Pieces such as the orgiastic “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, the billowing “Morning Mood” and the haunting “Solveig’s Song” soon became popular favourites. This led Grieg to publish two “Suites” from Peer Gynt, each with four movements, for performance in the concert hall. These remain hugely popular, though listening to the complete Peer Gynt music does greater justice to the scale of Grieg’s achievement, and to the influence it later exerted on film composers when moving pictures were invented.