What's that, Grieg?
C...Codfish...?
OK I get it...
You've been hanging around the trawlers in Bergen docks again,
haven't you Grieg?
Getting your kicks off them fishy Norwegian odours again, yeah?
Yes: THAT's how Norwegian he thought his music sounded.
And with good reason
No other composer's produced such recognisably Norwegian music
or achieved Grieg's level of acclaim outside of Norway.
In fact, he was so highly respected that in 1873 a letter landed on his doorstep
from none other than Norway's greatest playwright:
Henrik Ibsen.
Crazy, beardy Ibsen wants to be buddies with the now 30-year-old composer.
Geniuses together.
Would Grieg write some music for his play?
I mean it's only FIVE HOURS LONG
has dialogue in verse
and was written a full SIX YEARS AGO!
Ibsen basically needs a soundtrack so it doesn't bore the pants off people.
And Grieg's super-flattered to have been asked.
But panic soon sets in.
You see, Grieg's thing is pop songs
nothing like what Ibsen is requesting.
So he goes into a funk.
"Peer Gynt progresses slowly"
he tells the playwright in summer 1874.
Forget that autumn deadline!
But things get harder...
You see, their creative styles are so different.
Ibsen's plays are stark, uncompromising, modernistic dramas.
Grieg's melodies: romantic and lyrical.
The play's an allegory.
It's about some peasant dude's adventures and misadventures
from Norway to North Africa
his downfall and redemption.
"A terribly unmanageable subject"
Grieg complains.
"MOST unmusical"
But Ibsen's no idiot.
The play's based on Norwegian fairytales and folklore,
and he knows THESE are right up the composer's street.
After all, Edvard Grieg was always a sucker for the rustic charms
and mysterious legends of his homeland
His idyllic childhood was virtually steeped in Norwegian tales.
Before going off to study at the Leipzig Conservatory
he meets an inspirational violinist called:
Ole Bull
a champion of Norwegian folk music.
So Eddy boy's now hooked on the musical heritage of his native land.
With Peer Gynt, Grieg's unique brew of nationalistic Norwegian music went VIRAL.
So Grieg completes the score in 1875
and the play premieres in February 1876 in Christiana:
Oslo to you and me.
It's extravagantly-staged.
And Grieg's 23 movements come out at 90 minutes of music.
But what really seals Grieg's destiny for immortality is his decision
12 years later
to create a spin-off suite,
a sort of 'Greatest Hits' of his favourite 4 movements.
Today, it is these suites that are heard most often.
They contain the most popular bits from Peer Gynt.
So what's it all about?
Well, Mr Peer Gynt is a happy-go-lucky scoundrel
who womanises, brags, lies and cheats.
What a guy!
The action begins with his banishment from his Norwegian hometown
for crashing a wedding party.
He was trying to abduct the bride.
Messed-up, right?
Well it's actually worse than that.
Because he changes tack and elopes with another gorgeous wedding guest called Solveig
only to abandon her in the wilderness.
That's the kind of guy we're talking about.
Up in the mountains he smacks his head on a rock, doses off and trips out.
He dreams of a woman clad in green who claims she is the daughter of the King of Trolls.
She takes Monsieur Gynt back to her dad's abode.
Place is packed with troll courtiers,
gnomes and goblins - all drunk;
like downtown Oslo on New Year's night without the riot police.
In the Hall of the Mountain King is one of the most recognisable themes.
A simple but menacing little melody is played deep down in the lower instruments of the orchestra:
double basses, cellos and bassoons.
It starts pianissimo - slowly and quietly.
The Troll King offers Peer the opportunity to become a troll
if only he'd marry his daughter .
You see, it looks like Peer's got her pregnant...
Should Peer accept?
All the while, that grotesque theme is repeating over and over again
each time a little different
a few added notes and instruments here and there.
Peer denies he's touched the King's daughter,
only to find out that he DID knock her up...
with his MIND.
You heard that?
WITH HIS MIND.
But Peer doesn't want to give up his humanity
and when his half-human brat child turns up later,
he freaks out and declines the offer.
This angers the trolls.
The orchestra accelerates to a prestissimo pace and plays at a fortississimo volume -
basically as loud and fast as you can go.
A frenetic finale and Peer's only just escaped the clutches of the nasty trolls.
Although iconic in popular culture, Grieg was less generous about this music:
"For the Hall of the Mountain King"
"I have written something that so reeks of cow turds, ultra-Norwegianism"
"and 'to-thyself-be-enough-ness'"
"that I can't bear to hear it!"
Who needs critics, right?
Back to it.
Peer's had enough action for the day so returns home
just in time to score brownie points with his mum for being a dutiful son.
Because his mum, Aase, is at her deathbed
and it's time for a weepy dirge.
Not that Peer and mum ever got on, you understand.
But she's dying and he IS her son
so Grieg gives us a brief lament for strings.
A mere 45 bars of music long
but full of sorrow and anguish.
The instruments are muted.
The melody simple yet poignant.
It repeats, each time getting louder and louder
until Peer's grief reaches a climax.
At which point, we get a chromatic descending line
that fades out into a haunting pianissimo.
But wipe away your tears PG
'cos we've gotta move on
and it's MORNING MOOD!
Yep, 'Morning Mood' - not the name of a funky acid jazz groove
but the most recognisable of all Grieg's melodies.
Turns out that after mum died, Peer's revived his adrenaline junkie adventures.
He's now inexplicably stranded on the desert sands of Morocco.
Huh?
Long story...
So you'd think Grieg's music would sound suitably North African for the occasion, right?
NO WAY.
Grieg's not having any of it.
He makes the scene so much his own that he convinces us that we're back in Scandinavia!
You'd think it's a scene of sunrise over some beautiful Norwegian fjord.
Ibsen originally wanted Grieg's music to reflect the souds of the various countries Peer visits.
But Grieg won't be tied down:
So we're given a Scandi-pop flute solo.
It alternates with oboe over sustained and unmoving bass notes.
All is tranquil.
A pastoral melody waxing and waning
before the texture swells.
Dawn breaks and the sun shines radiantly through the palm trees.
Peer has wrenched off a branch to defend himself against a group of monkeys.
Ever the opportunist, Peer discovers a quick way to get famous.
He steals some Bedouin clothing and gets himself worshipped as a local prophet.
A tribal chieftain invites Peer into his tent,
offers some hashish and gets his daughter, Anitra, to perform a seductive dance for him.
Will Grieg finally whip out that Arabian music we've been waiting for?
STILL no way!
Anitra's dance is set to a Polish mazurka!
Perhaps it's all about disguise...
Polish music in the Moroccan desert?
A Norwegian in Bedouin clothing?
But we go along with it because Grieg's playful chromatic melody
sinuous and exotic
is really entrancing our man Peer.
It is played on muted violins with many pizzicato passages -
plucking of the strings rather than bowing.
The sparkling sound of the triangle makes itself heard over the orchestra.
But Peer's cunning is outwitted only by Anitra's.
The fussy melody captivates him but Peer later discovers that he was taken in.
Anitra's robbed him of his money.
She's taken his bling, man!
Eventually Peer returns home only to find that the beautiful abandoned Solveig
has been waiting patiently and faithfully her entire life for his return.
Peer's globetrotting was his way of trying to make sense of his life
but ultimately he's been avoiding responsibility all along: life itself.
Now older and wiser, our anti-hero is saved for a more settled homecoming
by the redemptive love of the saintly Solveig.
And so, we return to Norway.
Back into the heart of the land that made Grieg.
Whose sound injects all that is most striking, direct and fresh
into an orchestra masterpiece.
Codfish?
Doesn't sound like that to me...