"In the Hall of the Mountain King" ( no, I Dovregubbens hall, , In the Dovre man's hall, link=no, italic=no) is a piece of orchestral music composed by

Edvard Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the foremost Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of ...

in 1875 as

incidental music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead ...

for the sixth scene of act 2 in

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential pla ...

's 1867

play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

Peer Gynt ''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five-act (drama), act play (theatre), play in verse (poetry), verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1876. Written in Norwegian language, Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian pla ...

''. It was originally part of Opus 23 but was later extracted as the final piece of ''Peer Gynt'', Suite No. 1, Op. 46. Its easily recognizable theme has helped it attain iconic status in popular culture, where it has been arranged by many artists (See

Grieg's music in popular culture The music of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg has been used extensively in media, music education, and popular music. Music education In 1993, Norway organized a celebration for the 150th anniversary of Grieg's birth, entitled "Grieg in the Sc ...

). The English translation of the name is not literal. Dovre is a mountainous region in Norway, and "gubbe" translates into (old) man or husband. "Gubbe" is used along with its female counterpart "kjerring" to differentiate male and female

troll A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human be ...

s, "trollgubbe" and "trollkjerring". In the play, Dovregubben is a troll king that Peer Gynt invents in a fantasy.

Setting

The piece is played as the title character Peer Gynt, in a dream-like fantasy, enters "Dovregubbens (the troll Mountain King's) hall". The scene's introduction continues: "There is a great crowd of

courtiers, gnomes and

goblin A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on t ...

s. Dovregubben sits on his throne, with crown and sceptre, surrounded by his children and relatives. Peer Gynt stands before him. There is a tremendous uproar in the hall." The lines sung are the first lines in the scene. Grieg himself wrote, "For the Hall of the Mountain King I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and 'to-thyself-be-enough-ness' that I can't bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt." The theme of "to thyself be... enough" – avoiding the commitment implicit in the phrase " To thine own self be true" and just doing enough – is central to ''Peer Gynt''s satire, and the phrase is discussed by Peer and the mountain king in the scene which follows the piece.

Music

The piece is in the overall key of B minor. The simple theme begins slowly and quietly in the lowest registers of the orchestra, played first by the

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

es, and bassoons. After being stated, the main theme is then very slightly modified with a few different ascending notes, but

transposed In linear algebra, the transpose of a matrix is an operator which flips a matrix over its diagonal; that is, it switches the row and column indices of the matrix by producing another matrix, often denoted by (among other notations). The t ...

up a

perfect fifth In music theory, a perfect fifth is the musical interval corresponding to a pair of pitches with a frequency ratio of 3:2, or very nearly so. In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is the interval from the first to the last of five ...

(to the key of F-sharp major, the dominant key, but with flattened sixth) and played on different instruments. The two groups of instruments then move in and out of different

octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...

s until they eventually "collide" with each other at the same pitch. The tempo gradually speeds up to a

prestissimo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...

finale, and the music itself becomes increasingly loud and frenetic.

Lyrics of the song in ''Peer Gynt''

Notes

Sources *

External links

* * {{Authority control Compositions by Edvard Grieg 1875 compositions Theme music Fictional trolls Goblins Compositions for symphony orchestra Compositions in B minor Peer Gynt (Grieg) Madness (band) songs

Setting

Music

Lyrics of the song in ''Peer Gynt''

See also

Notes

Further reading

External links