Product Description
Duration: ca. 3:40. It is a super-famous, instantly recognizable tune that is not very difficult. It is suitable for a recital, funeral, or church meditation.
Grieg Background
First, Edvard Grieg (1843 1907) was a Norwegian composer and concert pianist. Most music historians consider him one of the foremost Romantic-era composers. Consequently, his music is part of the international standard classical repertoire. Grieg, moreover, used Norwegian folk music in his compositions. Therefore, he ushered Norwegian music into transnational consciousness. Furthermore, he forged a national musical identity for Norway. It is essential to realize that he did this like Jean Sibelius in Finland and Bedřich Smetana in Bohemia.
Legacy
Grieg is mainly celebrated in Bergen. For example, the city has erected numerous statues depicting Grieg. Specifically, the city has named a concert hall (Grieg Hall), a music school (Grieg Academy), and a professional choir (Edvard Grieg Kor) after him. There is also a museum located at his former home in Troldhaugen.
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (Op. 46)
Grieg wrote incidental music for illustrating Ibsen's play, Peer Gynt. The play includes, in particular, the famous selection entitled In the Hall of the Mountain King. In this composition, Grieg depicts the exploits of the scoundrel Peer Gynt. In one famous episode, for example, Peer steals a bride at her wedding. For this reason, the people chase him, but soon, Peer falls, striking his skull on a boulder. He wakens forthwith in a highland bounded by angry gnomes.
Consequently, the music of In the Hall of the Mountain King represents the mad gnomes taunting Peer. Therefore, each time the theme repeats, it gets louder and faster. In the end, Peer surprisingly escapes from the mountain.
Holberg Suite and Misc. Summary
It must be remembered that Grieg originally wrote his Holberg Suite for the piano. In other words, he only later arranged it for strings. Further, Grieg is composed of many prominent songs with lyrics by famous writers such as Heine, Goethe, Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Rudyard Kipling, and others. On balance, Norwegian pianist Eva Knardahl recorded altogether Grieg's whole piano catalog on LP in 1980. These recordings were released on CD in 2006. In any event, Grieg himself performed and recorded the bulk of these pieces toward the end of his life.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.