''Sigurd Jorsalfar'' is a work of

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 ...

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 ...

for a play by

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson ( , ; 8 December 1832 – 26 April 1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished ...

celebrating King

Sigurd I of Norway Sigurd Magnusson (1089 – 26 March 1130), also known as Sigurd the Crusader (Old Norse: ''Sigurðr Jórsalafari'', Norwegian: ''Sigurd Jorsalfar''), was King of Norway (being Sigurd I) from 1103 to 1130. His rule, together with his half-broth ...

. Published as Op. 22, it was first performed in Christiania on 10 April 1872. An

orchestral suite A suite, in Western classical music and jazz, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes and grew in scope to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with ...

compiled by Grieg from the main work and published as Op. 56 was premiered in Oslo on 5 November 1892 and revised by the composer the same year. The full work consists of nine parts; five are purely orchestral, and four are scored for tenor or baritone, male chorus, and orchestra. Three of the instrumental pieces comprise the suite. The first of these, entitled "In the King's Hall", is a prelude in ternary form which opens with a bassoon and clarinet theme played against plucked strings. The musical material of the exterior sections comes from the trio of a

gavotte The gavotte (also gavot, gavote, or gavotta) is a French dance, taking its name from a folk dance of the Gavot, the people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné in the southeast of France, where the dance originated, according to one source. Ac ...

for piano that Grieg composed in 1867 and left unpublished. The second, "Borghild's Dream", is an

intermezzo In music, an intermezzo (, , plural form: intermezzi), in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term ha ...

contrasting a sensitive string melody with an agitated section. The third, "Homage March", opens with

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standar ...

fanfare A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets, French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental perfo ...

s before presenting its main subject, a martial theme, on four

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 ...

s. The middle part, again a trio, is dominated by a melody for the first

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

s; the work ends with a recapitulation of the movement's first section.

Incidental music

# Prelude to Act 1 "In the King's Hall" # Borghild's Dream # The Matching Game # Northern Folk # Homage March # Interlude 1 # Interlude 2 # The King's Song # Horn Signals

Suite

References

*David Ewen, ''Encyclopedia of Concert Music''. New York; Hill and Wang, 1959.

External links

* 1872 compositions Suites by Edvard Grieg Incidental music Compositions for symphony orchestra {{classical-composition-stub