Edvard Grieg
1875
Henrik Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt as a closet drama — a play meant to be read, not performed. Then he changed his mind and asked Edvard Grieg to write incidental music for a stage production. Grieg accepted, regretted it immediately, and spent two years complaining to anyone who would listen that the project was impossible. The trolls were the main problem. How do you write music for trolls? Ibsen's script called for a scene inside a mountain where the title character is chased by creatures from Norse mythology, and Grieg had to make it sound both terrifying and slightly ridiculous. He solved the problem brilliantly and never forgave Ibsen for asking.
In the Hall of the Mountain King starts with a melody so simple a child can hum it — and millions have. A single theme in B minor, played first by cellos and basses at pianissimo, then repeated at increasing volume and speed as more instruments pile on. It's the classical equivalent of a snowball rolling downhill. By the time the full orchestra reaches the fortissimo climax, the tempo has doubled and the effect is genuinely thrilling. Grieg called it the piece he hated most in all his output. 'It literally makes me sick,' he wrote to a friend, 'because it absolutely reeks of cow-dung, exaggerated Norwegian nationalism, and self-satisfaction.' He wasn't wrong about the nationalism. He was wrong about the quality.
Morning Mood, the suite's opening movement, is the polar opposite — four minutes of flute melody so serene it has become the universal musical shorthand for 'dawn.' Film and television have used it thousands of times. Grieg composed it to depict sunrise over the Sahara Desert, which is remarkable given that he never left Northern Europe and based his impression of North Africa entirely on imagination. The tune sounds nothing like the Sahara and everything like a Norwegian fjord at daybreak, which tells you more about the limits of programmatic music than any textbook.
Grieg was five foot two, asthmatic, and had a collapsed lung from a childhood bout of tuberculosis. He composed almost exclusively in short forms — songs, piano miniatures, suites — because his health didn't permit the sustained concentration that symphonic writing demanded. His one symphony, written at twenty-one, he later forbade from being performed. Within his limitations, he was perfect. The Peer Gynt Suite proves that miniatures, in the right hands, can be as vast as anything.
Recording: Wikimedia Commons recording “Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - IV. In the Hall of the Mountain King (Musopen Symphony)”. Public domain. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGrieg_-_Peer_Gynt_Suite_No._1%2C_Op._46_-_IV._In_the_Hall_of_the_Mountain_King_%28Musopen_Symphony%29.flac