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Peer Gynt (Grieg)

Incidental music by Edvard Grieg to Ibsen's play

  • 4 min read
  • 3 chapters

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Background

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) was one of the definitive leaders of Scandinavian music. Although he composed many short piano pieces and chamber works, the work Grieg did for this play by Ibsen stood out. Originally composing 90 minutes of orchestral music for the play, he later went back and extracted certain sections for the suites. Peer Gynt's travels around the world and distant lands are represented by the instruments Grieg chooses to use.

When Ibsen asked Grieg to write music for the play in 1874, he reluctantly agreed. However, it was much more difficult for Grieg than he imagined, as he wrote to a friend:

"Peer Gynt" progresses slowly, and there is no possibility of having it finished by autumn. It is a terribly unmanageable subject.

— Edvard Grieg (August 1874)

Nina Grieg, his wife, wrote of Edvard and his music:

The more he saturated his mind with the powerful poem, the more clearly he saw that he was the right man for a work of such witchery and so permeated with the Norwegian spirit.

Even though the premiere was a "triumphant success", it prompted Grieg to complain bitterly that the Swedish management of the theatre had given him specifications as to the duration of each number and its order:

I was thus compelled to do patchwork... In no case had I opportunity to write as I wanted... Hence the brevity of the pieces.

For many years, the suites were the only parts of the music that were available, as the original score was not published until 1908, one year after Grieg's death, by Johan Halvorsen.

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