In the hall of the mountain king

In der Halle des Bergkönig ( Norwegian : I Dovregubbens hall ) is an orchestral piece from the musical epoch of Romanticism, which Edvard Grieg wrote as the eighth piece of his incidental music Peer Gynt for the sixth scene of the second act in Henrik Ibsen's dramatic poem Peer Gynt .

history

Grieg composed the piece between summer 1874 and summer 1875. It was premiered on February 24, 1876 in the Christiania Theater in Christiania (now Oslo ).

In 1888, Grieg took it over as the last piece in his Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46. Although the complete piece only takes 3 minutes to perform, the easily recognizable theme has given him cult status in popular culture where it has since been picked up by many artists.

The play tells how the eponymous Peer Gynt enters the “royal hall of the old man of the Dovre (the mountain king)” in a dreamlike fantasy. The scene description continues: “There are a large number of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. The old man sits on his throne with a crown and scepter, surrounded by his children and relatives. Peer Gynt stands before him. There is an enormous commotion in the hall. The first lines of the song are sung. "

Grieg himself wrote about the music for the Hall of the Mountain King: … made for the old man from Dovre's King's Hall that I literally can't stand, it sounds so much like cow dung, Norwegianism and complacency! But I also expect the irony to be felt.

Musical structure

The two familiar themes of the movement are written in the key of B minor :

The first theme begins slowly and quietly after a horn chord in the lowest registers of the orchestra. It is played first by the cellos and bassoons in the staccato articulation and describes Peer Gynt's slow, cautious steps in the king's hall.

After a repetition, the main theme is changed slightly with a few different, rising notes, but transposed a fifth higher to F sharp major , the dominant , but with the minor sixth . Various instruments represent the king's trolls .

The two groups of instruments then shift by different octaves until they finally “collide” with each other at the same pitch, while the trolls throw dirt at Peer and chase around him.

Peer Gynt's confrontation with the king who tries to capture him is represented by long chains of diatonic levels, interrupted by brief moments of silence in the form of short general pauses in which the mountain king searches for the hiding Peer.

Peer's hiding place is discovered at the end, and the music reaches its culmination point as he runs out of the cave.

A series of crashing cymbals and ecstatic drum rolls break out, silencing all other instruments as the mountain collapses and buries the trolls who chased the fleeing peer.

The piece ends with a return to tonic and a final B minor chord indicating Peer's successful escape.

The piece has 88 bars and begins at the measured tempo of a slow march ( Alla marcia e molto marcato ), for which the composer gives the metronome MM = 138. The quarter note should therefore be played at 138 beats per minute. In the course of the piece, however, the tempo increases with the increasing drama of the plot. From the 50th bar Grieg wants a più vivo (a little more lively), and from the 65th bar he prescribes a stringendo (at an accelerated tempo). The volume increases from an extremely dramatic forte fortissimo at the beginning , when the mountain king blods to the hustle and bustle of his courtiers with his exclamation Isvand i! puts an end to it.

The lyrics of the song

(The troll courtiers):
Slagt ham! Kristenmands søn har dåret Dovregubbens veneste mø! Slagt ham! Slagt ham!
Kill him! The son of the Christian tried the most beautiful daughter of the mountain king! Kill him! Kill him!
(A troll):
Må jed skjære ham i fingeren?
Can I cut his finger?
(Another troll):
Må jeg rive ham i håret?
Can I pull his hair out?
(A troll girl):
Hu, hey, lad mig bide ham i låret!
Hey, hey, let me bite his ass!
(A troll witch with a
wooden spoon): Skal han lages til sod og sø?
Should it be boiled with stock and broth?
(Another troll witch with a butcher's knife):
Skal han steges på spid eller brunes i gryde?
Should it be roasted on a spit or roasted in a pot?
(The Mountain King):
Isvand i blodet!
Cool your blood! (Literally: ice water in the blood!)

Audio sample

(Recording by the Český národní symfonický orchestr )

Use in film and television

Grieg's composition is one of the most commonly used pieces of classical music in film. Its use as a leitmotif in the film M - A City Seeks a Murderer (1931) by Fritz Lang is significant in terms of film history .

It was also used in films such as In a Small Town , Trollhunter , Adèle and the Pharaoh's Secret , The Social Network and 7 Dwarfs - Men Alone in the Forest . Also in television series such as Mork vom Ork , Danger Mouse , Tiny Toon Adventures , The Simpsons , Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency , How I Met Your Mother , Dr. She was used for House and Pose .

Musical reinterpretations

• The Electric Light Orchestra reinterpreted the piece with the morning mood as the intro on the 1973 album On the Third Day .  
• The British heavy metal group Witchfynde used the theme in the in and outro of the song Cry Wolf on their 1983 album Cloak and Dagger .
• The British synth-pop duo Erasure interpreted the piece in their own way on their 1987 album The Circus (CD version only).
• The US power metal band Savatage reinterpreted the piece as a pure instrumental on their 1987 album Hall of the Mountain King under the title Prelude to Madness .
• A cover version of The Who can be found as a bonus track on the 1995 CD version of The Who Sell Out .
• The Rainbow group around Ritchie Blackmore redesigned the piece of music into a conventional hard rock form, which can be heard on the 1995 album Stranger in Us All .
• The Finnish cello rock band Apocalyptica also plays the piece live and it can be heard on the studio album Cult, which was released in 2000 .
• The German rapper Eko Fresh used the melody of the work on his song Zeig dich from the 2003 album I am young and need money as a refrain.
• In 2005 a DVD by the band White-Noise called In the Hall of the Mountain King was released .
• In connection with the soundtrack to David Fincher's drama The Social Network from 2010, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross rearranged the title with electronic sounds. In the finished film, the piece can be heard during a rowing regatta.
• Zedd processed the theme of the work in his electro house track Dovregrubben from 2011.
• In 2012, a flash mob with the Young North German Philharmonic took place at Hamburg Central Station .
• The American band Blood on the Dance Floor repeatedly incorporated the melody of the piece into the song Poison Apple from their 2014 studio album Bitchcraft .
• A cover version can also be found on the 2015 Navy Metal Night by UDO , played by the Nordsee Marine Music Corps.
• The Swiss pagan metal band Eluveitie interpreted the piece in the 2015 program " Rock the Classic " together with Beat Blättler on the bassoon.
• The German dark metal band Schwarzer Engel (Band) released a reinterpretation on their album Imperium II - Titania in 2016 .

See also

Further information (interpretations, sheet music, web links) can be found in the articles on Peer Gynt (incidental music) and Peer Gynt Suite .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Edvard Grieg in a letter to his friend Frants Beyer dated August 27, 1874, Ibsen.net website
2. ↑ Peer Gynt Suite No.1, Op.46 (Grieg, Edvard) : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
3. ↑ Edvard Grieg. Retrieved July 5, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Video on YouTube
5. ↑ Video in the 3sat media library: Concert Eluveitie
6. ↑ Complete broadcast in the 3sat media library: Rock the Classic: Eluveitie