As we are exploring now program music in the Romantic Period
there are lots of different types and right now we're going to focus on the the type of
music that we call
incidental
music.
You hear incidental music all the time because practically every television
show and every movie that you watch has some sort of background music to it,
and that is basically what incidental music is.
But we're talking about the Romantic Period. There were no movies. There was no television.
So who needs incidental music?
People who are putting on plays.
So, imagine that we are now doing
a Shakespeare production in the nineteen...
19th Century,
and we want to enhance that production.
We could add some music to it.
So I, as the
person who is
putting on this play, might go to a composer and say,
"You know, I'd really like some
background music to go with this play to help
move this story along and to keep the audience entertained as they watch. So that's the
basic idea behind incidental music.
So, and there is actually a very good example of a Shakespeare production
from that period of time;
Mendelssohn did incidental music
for A Midsummer Night's Dream,
which we still play. Mostly we play the overture but
if you went to the play at that time you would've have had an orchestra there and
they would have played
music to go along with the action.
The piece we are going to listen to as an example of incidental music
is part of a set of pieces
written by the Norwegian composer
Edvard Grieg.
The music that he wrote was for a play by his countryman Henrik Ibsen, who is a
very well-known playwright,
and he had written a play called Peer Gynt.
Peer Gynt is a
sort of fairy tale,
folk tale character in Norway.
Might be compared in America, we might do
a Paul Bunyan
kind of story. So there are a lot of tall tales associated with Peer Gynt.
So it's a very long play, so I think probably someone was very smart to say, "Hey, let's
add some music to this to
move it along, because it's a long, long story."
But there are... we don't see the play anymore with the music but we have
the music and we hear it in concerts all the time and you have heard it
a ton
because this music is used in commercials. It's used as background for cartoons, you
know, for Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse and all those guys. They use this music. It's good stuff!
So if you go to a concert and hear it, you will not hear the entire incidental music.
That's a lot of music.
What you will hear instead is a suite from that incidental music,
where somebody after Grieg's time, or perhaps even Grieg himself, I'm not sure, would have chosen
what they thought were the best movements out of the original incidental
music
and put it into a set that could be performed as a concert event.
So there are actually two different sets of Peer Gynt suites.
So we're going to listen to one of the most famous of those movements
which is called,
"In the Hall of the Mountain King."
Let me tell you the story
that goes with this so you get a better sense of how this music would have fit
into the story.
So we have a story, we have Peer Gynt,
who is sort of an adventurous type and he is, you know, wandering around and he has all
sorts of crazy adventures in foreign countries and does all sorts of
interesting things.
But in this particular part,
he's wandering around in the mountains somewhere
and somehow he falls and knocks himself out.
So when he wakes up, lo and behold, there is a beautiful princess there. This is the
fairy tale quality of the story.
So, and of course because it is a fairy tale they immediately fall in love, right?
So he's fallen in love with this princess. Well,
sounds good so far, right?
So she takes him home to meet daddy.
Well, daddy is the Mountain King of the title.
But here's the kicker.
Daddy's a troll.
Trolls are very big in Norse mythology, in Norse storytelling. So,
Daddy's a troll
And as we know in fairy stories, it happens all the time, you know, daddy's a
troll, but he has this real knockout daughter, right? Happens all the time.
So, she looks like
somebody Peer Gynt wants to be with, but dad's a troll. So dad's not real
thrilled about his troll daughter
marrying this
mere mortal.
So he tells Peer Gynt,
"Okay, I'll let you marry my daughter
but there's some things you have to do because you have to sort of adapt to the troll
life if you're going to marry my daughter.
And Peer Gynt is thinking, oh well, you know, how bad can that be, what do I need to do?
So the dad says, "Well
first, you know, you have to eat what trolls eat,"
and you can use your own imagination about what you think trolls might eat,
but we're going to assume that it's not really very pleasant. But Peer Gynt thinks, ah, you know,
I can do that, I can eat whatever they want me eat if it means I get to marry this beautiful
woman.
So that's one thing. Alright,
so then he says, "Well, you know,
trolls live in the dark for the most part
and so
we have to slit your eyeballs
so that you'll be able to see in the dark.
Well, this is a pretty big thing to ask.
But Peer Gynt thinks well, you know, if I get the princess and assuming
eventually I'll get all the lands
that the king owns, that's probably worth doing, like I can do that. So
he says, "I'll do that,"
and the king says well you know and then you have to have a tail...
you have to have a tail 'cause trolls have tails.
Now this is getting really to be kind of a lot and Peer Gynt's having
some second thoughts about whether he wants to go to this much trouble for this woman.
Well in the best tradition of storytelling
the mere fact that the two of them fell in love
makes her pregnant.
So now we have pregnant daughter,
man who really doesn't want to go through all the steps it's going to take to get her,
angry father.
This is your classic story, right?
So now we have the angry father. We have Peer Gynt who has now decided that this is not
the thing that he wants to do. So what does he have to do?
He has to get away. So he is now in the Hall of the Mountain King, hence the title,
and he has to get away.
So, how is he gonna do that?
As you listen to the music think about the actions that might be happening on
stage
as Peer Gynt is trying to escape
from the Hall of the Mountain King and see how things change
as
the piece progresses. It's very short.
Alright, so think about what happened there. How did this piece start?
It's very soft at the beginning and it's very
bouncy staccato with lots of low instruments.
What I imagine happens here is that Peer Gynt is trying to sneak away.
Doop doo doom doo dooomp. He's trying to get out without anybody really noticing that he's leaving
because
obviously he's outnumbered. The king has all of his armies and Peer Gynt just has Peer Gynt.
So as the piece progresses,
we still have that same theme throughout so we can sort of think of that as Peer Gynt's
running away music.
Bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom. It starts with
basoons and progresses its way through different instruments,
and it just keeps repeating and repeating. But what happens as it repeats?
It gets louder. It gets faster. So you can say,
okay they've discovered he's trying to escape. Now he's trying to get away.
He's running faster.
There more people involved. It gets louder. So it just builds up this whole
frenzy at the end
and then there's all this sort of boom crash stuff at the end and you think,
You know what happened? Maybe they caught him!
Well, what really happens in the play is he wakes up and the whole thing was a dream.
So, lots of drama for something that really never even happens. It's all just a
dream.
so that's a really good example of how incidental music works.
I've given you one more example in the playlist from this same production, it's called
Anitra's Dance, and Anitra is a character that appears in sort of his
Arabian wanderings. So as you listen to that
think about how that music might sound sort of Middle-Eastern
This remember is a period of time when people are very much interested in
exotic sorts of sounds, so even in
deepest dark Norway, Grieg was thinking about
sounds from the nice warm Middle East.
So, incidental music accompanies a play
but today, most of the time, is performed in suites by orchestras
(grab the caption to drag it to a different location on the screen)